Robert Lincoln and the military

[L Verge]

This is a very good site and also has a timeline of events from April 9-14 showing Robert arriving in D.C. on April 14: http://www.fordstheatre.org/sites/defaul...incoln.pdf Since Robert was a junior officer whose main duty was to escort visiting dignitaries around Grant's headquarters, is it possible that more than one ship came up the Potomac from City Point and that RTL was not on Grant's flagship (if things were still called that)?

I also found this description of that time period on that site:

Washington in the Throes of Victory

Fruitful and teeming with hope, the North had … been celebrating heartily since the fall
of Richmond. That day merited a whopping 900-gun salute. After Appomattox, 500 guns
against boomed throughout the city, shattering windows across the way from the White
House in Lafayette Square and from Georgetown to Capitol Hill, Judiciary Square to
Center Market, Negro Hill to Swampoodle, Rock Creek Park to the fine estates of
Harewood and Kalorama in the far off suburbs north of Washington, have been “delirious
with joy.” For the better part of this week, the jubilation has been everywhere: bonfires
burn on every corner, flags snap festively in the wind, normally dour men stomp their
feet and wave their arms, children scamper about, chanting and cheering… Washington
reeks of one endless round of festivities: lawn fetes, bazaars, wild saloon gatherings,
smokers, parties, torchlight parades, and theatricals. And most of all the people are
hungering for speeches, above all, from the president. “Speech!” a crowd of some 3,000
cries out at the White House on Monday evening. Then once more: “Speech!” – as
though it were a simple one word cheer, an antiphon, echoed and reechoed by the
beaming, tearful, exultant Unionists who rejoiced in the ecstatic evidence that their
sacrifices had not been in vain.

But Abraham Lincoln curiously puts them off, instead promising to deliver an address on
Tuesday night. Oddly enough, only Lincoln, in his exhausted condition, seems strangely
immune to the intoxicating glow of impending military victory.

But why? Since the stunning news of Appomattox, he should be relishing the splendid
vindication of sticking to his guns over the last four years, of finally twitting his enemies
and his critics, and huddling with his aides and closest friends in enjoying the moment.

To be sure, there has been a striking change in his mood since Lee’s surrender. For those
who have seen him in the past few days, he “is like a different man,” “his face is
shining,” his conversations are “exhilarating,” his whole appearance is “marvelously
changed.” But others notice something else: he is still so exhausted that one newspaper,
the New York Tribune, urgently pleads that “his energies much be spared” if he is to
complete his second term. And, to some, he is almost at loose ends. He hasn’t been
sleeping well, troubled by insomnia and haunted by bizarre and ghoulish dreams. He is
afflicted with fierce headaches. He is thirty pounds underweight. One evening, aides
notice that he is grave and pale, even visibly disturbed. Mary Lincoln observes how
“dreadful solemn” he is. And he is beset by dark thoughts. Earlier that week, along the
James River near City Point, he and Mary had strolled through an old country graveyard.
“You will survive me,” he inexplicably muttered to her. “When I am gone, lay my
remains in some quiet place like this.”

(From Jay Winik, April, 1865: The Month that Saved America. HarperCollins, 2001.)11