lace
subject to their jurisdiction. _Second_: Congress shall have power to
enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FALL OF RICHMOND, AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

From the Capitol, where he had spoken his inaugural on March 4, 1865,
Mr. Lincoln came back to the White House with less than five weeks of
life before him; yet for those scant weeks most men would have gladly
exchanged their full lifetimes. To the nation they came fraught with all
the intoxicating triumph of victory; but upon the President they laid
the vast responsibility of rightly shaping and using success; and it was
far less easy to end the war wisely than it had been to conduct it
vigorously. Two populations, with numbers and resources amply enough for
two powerful nations, after four years of sanguinary, relentless
conflict, in which each side had been inspired and upheld by a faith
like that of the first crusaders, were now to be reunited as fellow
citizens, and to be fused into a homogeneous body politic based upon
universal suffrage. As if this did not verge closely enough on the
impossible, millions of people of a hitherto servile race were suddenly
established in the new status of freedom. It was very plain that the
problems which were advancing with approaching peace were more
perplexing than those which were disappearing with departing war. Much
would depend upon the spirit and terms of the closing of hostilities.

If the limits of the President's authority were vague, they might for
that very reason be all the more extensive; and, wherever they might be
set, he soon made it certain that he designed to part with no power
which he possessed. On the evening of March 3 he went up, as usual, to
the Capitol, to sign bills during the closing hours of the last session
of the Thirty-eighth Congress. To him thus engaged was handed a telegram
from General Grant, saying that General Lee had suggested an interview
between himself and Grant in the hope that, upon an interchange of
views, they might reach a satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy
difficulties through a military convention. Immediately, exchanging no
word with any one, he wrote:--

"The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no
conference with General Lee, unless it be for the capitulation of
General Lee's army, or on some minor or purely military matter. He
instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or