President Trump Presents American Civil War History Lesson

[David Lockmiller]

Throughout the night, Stanton dictated numerous dispatches, which were carried to the War Department telegraph office by a relay team of messengers positioned nearby. “Each messenger,” Stanton’s secretary recalled, “after handing a dispatch to the next, would run back to his post to wait for the next.”

The first telegram went to General Grant, requesting his immediate presence in Washington. “The President was assassinated at Ford’s Theater at 10:30 tonight and cannot live. . . . Secretary Seward and his son Frederick were also assassinated at their residence and are in dangerous condition.”

The dispatch reached Grant in the Bloodgood Hotel, where he was taking supper. He “dropped his head,” Horace Porter recalled, “and sat in perfect silence.” Julia Grant guessed that bad news had arrived and asked him to read the telegram aloud. “First prepare yourself for the most painful and startling news that can be received,” he warned.

As he made plans to return to Washington, he told Julia that the tidings filled him “with the gloomiest apprehension. The President was inclined to be kind and magnanimous, and his death at this time is an irreparable loss to the South, which now needs so much both his tenderness and magnanimity.”

(Source: “Team of Rivals," by Doris Kearns Goodwin, pages 742-743.)