etc."

But when Lamon seized upon this as text for his recurrent sermon on
precautions against assassination, Lincoln turned the matter into a
joke. He did not appear to interpret the dream as foreshadowing his own
death. He called Lamon's alarm "downright foolishness."(4)

Another dream in the last night of his life was a consolation. He
narrated it to the Cabinet when they met on April fourteenth, which
happened to be Good Friday. There was some anxiety with regard to
Sherman's movements in North Carolina. Lincoln bade the Cabinet set
their minds at rest. His dream of the night before was one that he
had often had. It was a presage of great events. In this dream he saw
himself "in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same...
moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore." This
dream had preceded all the great events of the war. He believed it was a
good omen.(5)

At this last Cabinet meeting, he talked freely of the one matter which
in his mind overshadowed all others. He urged his Ministers to put
aside all thoughts of hatred and revenge. "He hoped there would be no
persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over. None need expect
him to take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of
them. 'Frighten them out of the country, let down the bars, scare them
off,' said he, throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. Enough lives
have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentment if we expect
harmony and union. There was too much desire on the part of our very
good friends to be masters, to interfere and dictate to those States,
to treat the people not as fellow citizens; there was too little respect
for their rights. He didn't sympathize in these feelings."(6)

There was a touch of irony in his phase "our very good friends." Before
the end of the next day, the men he had in mind, the inner group of
the relentless Vindictives, were to meet in council, scarcely able to
conceal their inspiring conviction that Providence had intervened, had
judged between him and them.(7) And that allusion to the "rights" of the
vanquished! How abominable it was in the ears of the grim Chandler, the
inexorable Wade. Desperate these men and their followers were on the
fourteenth of April, but defiant. To the full measure of their power
they would fight the President to the last ditch. And always in their
minds, the tormenting thought-if only positions could be reversed, if
only Johns