ven a vehicle of any kind. by the hand, he walked ra mile and a half, guarded The negroes were wild with I their emancipator, before ted themselves. "Don't not right," he said; and a commanded in a hoarse be still; heah our Saviour : "You must kneel to God 's humble instrument, but I that as long as I live no ckle on your limbs. God pass on," he said to them, Again in the strange progonqueror an old slave lifted sident returned the salutaereat the crowd of negroes who followed him gaped in wonder to see a white man uncover to a black. Carl Schurz thus describes his entry into Richmond: "Richmond fell. Lincoln himself entered the city on foot, accompanied only by a few officers and a squad of sailors who had rowed him ashore from the flotilla in the James River, a negro picked up on the way serving as a guide. Never had the world seen a more modest conqueror and a more characteristic triumphal procession -no army with banners and drums, only a throng of those who had been slaves, hastily run together, escorting the victorious chief into the capital of the vanquished foe. We are told that they pressed around him, kissed his hands and his garments, and shouted and danced with joy, while tears ran down the President's carefurrowed cheeks." When he was in Richmond after it came into the possession of the Union forces, he looked for the home of George Pickett. "Is this where George Pickett lives?" he asked of a woman with a baby in her arms who answered his summons. She said she was Mrs. Pickett. Then he told her who he was, insisting that he came not as President, but simply as "Abraham Lincoln, George's old friend." He took the little one in his arms, and thus did this noble conqueror restore the Union in one heart. He had known Pickett in Illinois and he obtained for him his appointment at West Point. |