25

In May 1864, the triumphant Grant plunged across the Rapidan River with 122,000 men. He was going to destroy's Lee's army forthwith and end the war at once.

Lee met him in the “wilderness” of North Virginia. The place was well named. It was a jungle of rolling hills and swampy swales smothered with a dense second growth of pine and oaks and matted with underbrush so thick that a cottontail could hardly crawl through it. And in those gloomy and tangled woods, Grant fought a grim and bloody campaign. The slaughter was appalling. The jungle itself caught on fire and hundreds of the wounded were consumed by the flames.

At the end of the second day even the stolid Grant was so shaken that he retired to his tent and wept.

But after every battle, no matter what the results, he gave the same order: “Advance! Advance!”

At the end of the sixth bloody day he sent the famous telegram: “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”

Well, it did take all summer. Moreover, it took all autumn, and all winter, and a part of the next spring.

Grant had twice as many men in the field now as the enemy had, and back of him, in the North, lay a vast reservoir of manpower upon which he could draw, while the South had almost exhausted its recruits and supplies.

“The rebels,” said Grant, “have already robbed the cradle and the grave.”

Grant held that the quick way and the only way to end the war was to keep on killing Lee's men until Lee surrendered.

What if two Northern soldiers were shot for every one the South lost? Grant could make up the wastage, but Lee couldn't. So Grant kept on blasting and snooting and slaying.

In six weeks he lost 54,926 men—as many as Lee had in his entire army.

In one hour at Cold Harbor he lost seven thousand—a thousand more than had been killed on both sides in three days during the Battle of Gettysburg.

And what advantage was achieved by this ghastly loss?

We shall let Grant himself answer the question: “None whatever.” That was his estimate.

The attack at Cold Harbor was the most tragic blunder of his career.

Such slaughter was more than human nerves and human bodies could endure. It broke the morale of the troops; the rank and file of the army were on the verge of mutiny, and the officers themselves were ready to rebel.

“For thirty-six days now,” said one of Grant's corps commanders, “there has been one unbroken funeral procession past me.”

Lincoln, broken-hearted though he was, realized that there was nothing to do but keep on. He telegraphed Grant to “hold on with a bull dog grip and chew and choke.” Then he issued a call for half a million more men, to serve from one to three years.

The call staggered the country. The nation was plunged into an abyss of despair.

“Everything now is darkness and doubt and discouragement,” one of Lincoln's secretaries recorded in his diary.

On July 2 Congress adopted a resolution that sounded like the lamentations of one of the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament. It requested the citizens to “confess and repent of their manifold sins, implore the compassion and forgiveness of the Almighty, and beseech him as the Supreme Ruler of the world not to destroy us as a people.”

Lincoln was being cursed now almost as violently in the North as in the South. He was denounced as a usurper, a traitor, a tyrant, a fiend, a monster, “a bloody butcher shouting war to the knife and knife to the hilt, and crying for more victims for his slaughter pens.”

Some of his most bitter enemies declared that he ought to be killed. And one evening as he was riding out to his summer headquarters at the Soldiers' Home, a would-be assassin fired at him and put a bullet through his tall silk hat.

A few weeks later the proprietor of a hotel in Meadville, Pennsylvania, found this inscription scratched on a windowpane: “Abe Lincoln Departed this Life August 13, 1864, by the effect of poison.” The room had been occupied the night before by a popular actor named Booth—John Wilkes Booth.

The preceding June the Republicans had nominated Lincoln for a second term. But they felt now that they had made a mistake, a woeful mistake. Some of the most prominent men in the party urged Lincoln to withdraw. Others demanded it. They wanted to call another convention, admit that Lincoln was a failure, cancel his nomination, and place another candidate at the head of the ticket.

Even Lincoln's close friend Orville Browning recorded in his diary in July, 1864, that the “nation's great need is a competent leader at the head of affairs.”

Lincoln himself now believed that his case was hopeless. He abandoned all thought of being elected for a second term. He had failed. His generals had failed. His war policy had failed. The people had lost faith in his leadership, and he feared that the Union itself would be destroyed.

“Even the heavens,” he exclaimed, “are hung in black.”

Finally a large group of radicals, disgusted with Lincoln, called another convention, nominated the picturesque General John C. Fremont as their candidate, and split the Republican party.

The situation was grave; and there is hardly a doubt that if Frémont hadn't withdrawn from the race later, General McClellan, the Democratic candidate, would have triumphed over his divided opponents and the history of the nation would have been changed.

Even with Fremont out of the race, Lincoln received only 200,000 more votes than McClellan.

Notwithstanding the vitriolic condemnation poured upon him, Lincoln went calmly on, doing his best and answering no one.

“I desire,” he said, “to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if, at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be deep down inside of me.... I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have.”

Weary and despondent, he often stretched himself out on a sofa, picked up a small Bible, and turned to Job for comfort: “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.”

In the summer of 1864, Lincoln was a changed man, changed in mind and body from the physical giant who had come off the prairies of Illinois three years before. Year by year his laughter had grown less frequent; the furrows in his face had deepened; his shoulders had stooped; his cheeks were sunken; he suffered from chronic indigestion; his legs were always cold; he could hardly sleep; he wore habitually an expression of anguish. He said to a friend: “I feel as though I shall never be glad again.”

When Augustus Saint-Gaudens saw a life-mask of Lincoln that had been made in the spring of 1865, the famous sculptor thought that it was a death-mask, insisted that it must be, for already the marks of death were upon his face.

Carpenter, the artist who lived at the White House for months while he was painting the scene of the Emancipation Proclamation, wrote:

During the first week of the battle of the Wilderness, the President scarcely slept at all. Passing through the main hall of the domestic apartment on one of those days, I met him, clad in a long morning wrapper, pacing back and forth, his hands behind him, great black rings under his eyes, his head bent forward upon his breast—the picture of sorrow and care and anxiety.... There were whole days when I could scarcely look into his furrowed face without weeping.

Callers found him collapsed in his chair, so exhausted that he did not look up or speak when they first addressed him.

“I sometimes fancy,” he declared, “that every one of the throng that comes to see me daily darts at me with thumb and finger and picks out his piece of my vitality and carries it away.”

He told Mrs. Stowe, the author of “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” that he would never live to see peace.

“This war is killing me,” he said.

His friends, alarmed at the change in his appearance, urged him to take a vacation.

“Two or three weeks would do me no good,” he replied. “I cannot fly from my thoughts. I hardly know how to rest. What is tired lies within me and can't be got at.”

“The cry of the widow and the orphan,” said his secretary, “was always in Lincoln's ear.”

Mothers and sweethearts and wives, weeping and pleading, rushed to him daily to obtain pardons for men who had been condemned to be shot. No matter how worn he was, how exhausted, Lincoln always heard their stories, and generally granted their requests, for he never could bear to see a woman cry, especially if she had a baby in her arms.

“When I am gone,” he moaned, “I hope it can be said of me that I plucked a thistle and planted a flower wherever I thought a flower would grow.”

The generals scolded and Stanton stormed: Lincoln's leniency was destroying the discipline of the army, he must keep his hands off. But the truth is he hated the brutal methods of brigadier-generals, and the despotism of the regular army. On the other hand, he loved the volunteers on whom he had to depend for winning the war—men who, like himself, had come from the forest and farm.

Was one of them condemned to be shot for cowardice? Lincoln would pardon him, saying, “I have never been sure but what I might drop my gun and run, myself, if I were in battle.”

Had a volunteer become homesick and run away? “Well, I don't see that shooting will do him any good.”

Had a tired and exhausted Vermont farm boy been sentenced to death for falling asleep on sentinel duty? “I might have done the same thing, myself,” Lincoln would say.

A mere list of his pardons would fill many pages.

He once wired to General Meade, “I am unwilling for any boy under eighteen to be shot.” And there were more than a million boys under that age in the Union armies. In fact, there were a fifth of a million under sixteen, and a hundred thousand under fifteen.

Sometimes the President worked a bit of humor into his most serious messages; as, for example, when he wired Colonel Mulligan, “If you haven't shot Barney D. yet, don't.”

The anguish of bereaved mothers touched Lincoln very deeply. On November 21, 1864, he wrote the most beautiful and famous letter of his life. Oxford University has a copy of this letter hanging on its wall, “as a model of pure and exquisite diction which has never been excelled.”

Although written as prose, it is really unconscious and resonant poetry:

Executive Mansion,

Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

To Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass.

Dear Madame,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department

A statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts

That you are the mother of five sons

Who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel

How weak and fruitless must be any words of mine

Which would attempt to beguile you from the grief

Of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain

From tendering to you the consolation that may be found

In the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage

The anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only

The cherished memory of the loved and lost,

And the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid

So costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

One day Noah Brooks gave Lincoln a volume of Oliver Wendell Holmes's verses. Opening the book, Lincoln began reading the poem “Lexington” aloud, but when he came to the stanza beginning:

Green be the grass where her martyrs are lying!

Shroudless and tombless they sunk to their rest,

his voice quavered, he choked, and handing the volume back to Brooks, he whispered: “You read it. I can't.”

Months afterward he recited the entire poem to friends in the White House, without missing a word.

On April 5, 1864, Lincoln received a letter from a brokenhearted girl in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

“After long hesitation through dread and fear,” she began, “I have at last concluded to inform you of my troubles.” The man to whom she had been engaged for some years had joined the army, had later been permitted to go home to vote, and they had, as she put it, “very foolishly indulged too freely in matrimonial affairs.” And now “the results of our indulgences are going to bring upon us both an unlawful family providing you do not take mercy upon us and grant him a leave of absence in order to ratify past events.... I hope and pray to God that you will not cast me aside in scorn and dismay.”

Reading the letter, Lincoln was deeply touched. He stared out the window with unseeing eyes in which there were doubtlessly tears....

Picking up his pen, Lincoln wrote the following words to Stanton across the bottom of the girl's letter: “Send him to her by all means.”

The terrible summer of 1864 dragged to an end, and the autumn brought good news: Sherman had taken Atlanta and was marching through Georgia. Admiral Farragut, after a dramatic naval battle, had captured Mobile Bay and tightened the blockade in the Gulf of Mexico. Sheridan had won brilliant and spectacular victories in the Shenandoah Valley. And Lee was now afraid to come out in the open; so Grant was laying siege to Petersburg and Richmond....

The Confederacy had almost reached the end.

Lincoln's generals were winning now, his policy had been vindicated, and the spirits of the North rose as on wings; so, in November, he was elected for a second term. But instead of taking it as a personal triumph, he remarked laconically that evidently the people had not thought it wise “to swap horses while crossing a stream.”

After four years of fighting, there was no hatred in Lincoln's heart for the people of the South. Time and again he said: “‘Judge not that ye be not judged.’ They are just what we would be in their position.”

So in February, 1865, while the Confederacy was already crumbling to dust, and Lee's surrender was only two months away, Lincoln proposed that the Federal Government pay the Southern States four hundred million dollars for their slaves; but every member of his Cabinet was unfriendly to the idea and he dropped it.

The following month, on the occasion of his second inauguration, Lincoln delivered a speech that the late Earl Curzon, Chancellor of Oxford University, declared to be “the purest gold of human eloquence, nay of eloquence almost divine.”

Stepping forward and kissing a Bible open at the fifth chapter of Isaiah, he began an address that sounded like the speech of some great character in drama.

“It was like a sacred poem,” wrote Carl Schurz. “No ruler had ever spoken words like these to his people. America had never before had a president who had found such words in the depths of his heart.”

The closing words of this speech are, in the estimation of the writer, the most noble and beautiful utterances ever delivered by the lips of mortal man. He never reads them without thinking somehow of an organ playing in the subdued light of a great cathedral.

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

Two months later, to a day, this speech was read at Lincoln's funeral services in Springfield.

25

一八六四年五月，春风得意的格兰特率领着十二万两千人横渡拉皮丹河。格兰特想借此一举打败李，然后结束战争。

两军在北弗吉尼亚的“蛮荒之地”交战。这个地方正如它的名字一样，到处都是连绵的山丘和沼泽地。整个地区都覆盖着一层浓密的松树和橡树次生林，地面上还长满了下层灌木。这些灌木相互缠绕，就连白尾灰兔也钻不出去。就是在这些昏暗又错综复杂的林子里，格兰特打了一场惨烈又血腥的仗，伤亡人数骇人听闻。林子里燃起了大火，成百上千名负伤的士兵只能眼睁睁地被大火吞噬。

到了第二天晚上，即便是镇定的格兰特也大受震动。他回到自己的营帐哭了起来。

但是每场战斗过后，不管结果如何，格兰特都会下达相同的命令：“进攻！进攻！”

经过六天鲜血淋漓的战斗，格兰特发送了那封著名的电报：“我准备在这儿一直耗下去，即便要打一个夏天也在所不惜。”

结果，这场仗确实打了一个夏天，而且还持续了一个秋天和一个冬天，一直到来年开春才结束。

格兰特的兵力是敌军的两倍，而且他身后是北方源源不断的供给，而南方军的兵源和物资却即将枯竭。

“看来，”格兰特说，“叛军只能强抢襁褓里的婴儿和即将迈入坟墓的老人了。”

格兰特认为，结束战争唯一的也是最快速的方法，就是不断地屠杀李的士兵，直到李投降为止。

每打死一名南方士兵就要损失两名北方士兵？没关系，格兰特能得到源源不断的兵源补充，但李却不行。于是格兰特不停地进攻、冲锋、屠杀。

六个星期之内，他损失了五万四千九百二十六名将士——而李总共也只有这么多人。

在冷港，他一个小时就损失了七千人——比葛底斯堡战役三天双方伤亡总人数还要多一千人。

如此可怕的伤亡又带来了什么呢？

我们应该让格兰特自己来回答这个问题：“什么也没有。”这是他自己说的。

冷港之战是他职业生涯中犯的最悲剧性的错误。

如此惨绝人寰的屠戮超越了人类心理和生理可以承受的范围，军队的士气瓦解，士兵们处于兵变的边缘，军官们也准备叛逃。

“开战三十六天以来，”格兰特手下的一名指挥官说，“从我面前走过的出殡队伍就没有间断过。”

林肯也伤心欲绝，但他知道除了继续坚持别无他法。他给格兰特发电报，要求格兰特“像用钢丝绳夹套牢斗牛犬一样套牢敌人，然后撕碎他们的喉咙。”然后他又发布了征兵令——再招五十万新兵，服役一到三年。

这道征兵令震惊了全国，整个国家陷入了绝望的深渊。

“如今的一切都是一片黑暗，人们十分气馁，心中充满了怀疑。”林肯的一位秘书在日记中这样写道。

七月二日，国会采纳了一项决议，其内容和措辞就像《旧约全书》中先知写的悲歌。它要求国民“坦白忏悔自己身上各种各样的罪孽，恳求全能的主的怜悯与原谅，恳求他作为这个世界的最高统治者不要摧毁我们的民族”。

现在，不管是南方还是北方，都口径一致地咒骂着林肯。他们骂林肯是篡位者、叛徒、暴君、恶魔，还骂他是“一个残忍地将将士送到敌人刀口下的屠夫，一个哭嚷着要更多人去送死的刽子手”。

林肯的一些死敌宣称应该将林肯处死。某天晚上，当林肯骑着马从军人之家夏令总部出来时，一名刺客向他开枪。子弹穿过了他头顶的丝绸礼帽。

几个星期后，宾夕法尼亚州米德维尔的一位旅馆老板发现一间房间的窗玻璃上刻着这样一句话：“一八六四年八月十三日，亚伯拉罕·林肯中毒身亡。”这间房间前一晚登记在了一位名叫布斯的著名演员名下——约翰·威尔克斯·布斯（John Wilkes Booth）。

之前六月份的时候，共和党提名林肯连任总统，现在他们却万般悔恨，觉得那完全是一个错误。共和党内一些重量级的人物都奉劝林肯主动放弃提名。其他人的态度则更为强硬，他们想要再召开一次大会，承认林肯的失败，取消他的提名，然后让其他候选人替代林肯的位置。

即便是林肯的密友奥威尔·勃朗宁（Orville Browning）也在一八六四年七月的日记中这样写道：“现在国家迫切需要一位有能力的领导人来主持大局。”

现在，林肯也认为自己毫无希望。他完全放弃了连任的想法。他失败了，他的将领失败了，他的战争政策也失败了。人们对他的领导失去了信心，他害怕联邦会因此毁于一旦。

“即便是天堂，”林肯说，“现在也是黑暗的。”

终于，一群讨厌林肯的激进分子召开了党内会议，提名约翰·弗里蒙特（John C．Frémont）将军为候选人，分裂了共和党。

当时的形势非常糟糕，而且几乎可以肯定的是，若不是弗里蒙特之后退出了选举，那么民主党候选人麦克莱伦将军便会战胜分裂的共和党，整个国家的历史也会因此而完全被改变。

即便弗里蒙特退出了选举，林肯的票数也只比麦克莱伦多了二十万张选票。

尽管受到了刻薄的谴责，林肯仍保持着冷静，只管做好自己的事，不去搭理那些人。

“我希望，”林肯说，“自己可以这样执政：等到了卸下权力的那天，即便失去了所有朋友，但我至少能留住一位朋友，而那位朋友便是我内心深处的良知……我不是一定要赢，但我一定不能虚假。我不是一定要成功，但一定要对得起内心的那份光明。”

他常常疲倦又沮丧地躺在沙发上，拿着《圣经》，从《约伯记》中寻求安慰：“你要如勇士束腰，我问你，你可以指示我。”

一八六四年夏天，林肯的身心都发生了很大的变化。他已不再是三年前那个来自伊利诺伊大草原的高大汉子了。年复一年，他的笑声越来越少，脸上的皱纹加深了，脸颊凹陷，肩背也佝偻起来。他患有慢性消化不良，冬天的时候腿总是发冷。他晚上睡不着觉，脸上总是习惯性地挂着一副痛苦的表情。他对朋友说：“我觉得自己好像再也不会快乐了。”

当奥古斯都·圣·高登斯（Augustus Saint-Gaudens）看到一八六五年春天制作的林肯脸模塑像时，这位著名的雕塑家坚持认为那是林肯的遗容面模，因为塑像的脸上已经显示出了死亡的气息。

卡朋特住在白宫创作历史名画《林肯总统首次宣读解放奴隶宣言》时这样写道：

蛮荒之地战役开始的第一周，总统几乎没有睡过觉。那天，我穿过后宅大厅的时候遇到了总统先生。他正穿着长长的晨袍来回踱步。他双手背在身后，眼睛周围有很重的黑眼圈，头耷拉在胸前——他很悲伤，也很焦虑……在那段日子里，每次看到他那布满皱纹的脸庞，我就忍不住心疼地哭泣。

访客们来的时候，总是能看到他瘫坐在椅子里。他看上去非常疲倦，以至于访客们一开始和他说话，他都没有力气抬头或者答话。

“我有的时候觉得，”他说，“每天接待的每一位访客都仿佛伸着手指向我冲来，然后从我身上挖走一部分生命力。”

他对《汤姆叔叔的小屋》的作者斯托太太说，自己活不到和平的时候了。

“这场战争在一点一点地谋杀我。”他说。

他的朋友们意识到他的外形发生了巨大变化后，都劝他好好给自己放个假。

“休息两三个星期对我来说根本没用。”他回答道，“我根本躲不开自己的思绪。我不知道该怎么休息。疲倦蛰伏在我的体内，我拿它一点儿办法也没有。”

“林肯的耳边，”他的秘书说，“总是回响着寡妇和孤儿的哭声。”

每天都有女人——有的是母亲，有的是妻子，有的是恋人——跑到林肯面前哭泣，恳求他饶恕她们被判枪决的男人。林肯不管多疲惫，多筋疲力尽，都会耐心地倾听她们的故事，而且基本上都会同意她们的请求，因为他见不得女人哭，尤其是怀里抱着婴儿的女人。

“等我走后，”他悲叹道，“我希望人们在评价我时能认为我拔掉了那些我认为能长出花朵的土壤上的荆棘，然后种上了花朵。”

将军们骂声一片，斯坦顿也大发雷霆：林肯的仁慈正在摧毁军队的纪律，他必须不再插手此事。但是事实上，林肯厌恶准将们残酷的作风和正规军专制的制度。相反，他喜欢和他一样来自森林和农场的志愿军，并将胜利的希望放在了他们身上。

有人因为胆怯而被判死刑？林肯会饶恕他。林肯说：“我从来都不能确定，如果自己上了战场，会不会因为害怕也弃枪逃跑。”

有志愿兵想家然后逃跑了？“我看不出枪毙了他有什么好处。”

一个来自佛蒙特州的农场男孩在放哨的时候睡着了？“我自己也有可能会睡着。”林肯也许会这样说。

他开出的赦免名单长达好几页。

他曾给米德将军发电报说，“我不希望看到任何十八岁以下的士兵被执行枪决。”而在联邦军的队伍里，十八岁以下的士兵大约有一百万人。事实上，大约有二十万士兵年龄在十六岁以下，约有十万士兵小于十五岁。

有的时候，总统会在最严肃的命令中加入一些幽默色彩。例如，他曾这样给穆里根上校发电报：“如果你还没来得及枪毙巴尼，那就别下手啦。”

母亲们的丧子之痛深深地触动了林肯。一八六四年十一月二十一日，他写下了一生中最为动人的一封信。牛津大学将这封信的副本贴在了墙上，作为“无法超越的纯美措辞的典范”。

这封信是一篇散文，也是一首能引起共鸣的绝美诗歌：

致华盛顿马萨诸塞州比克斯比夫人

敬爱的夫人：

我在战争办公室的文件堆里看到麻省副官的一份报告，得知您的五个儿子都光荣地牺牲在了战场上。我觉得，我的任何话语都是那么的苍白和无济于事，无法让您从这令人难以承受的悲痛中得到解脱。但我无法抑制自己代表您的儿子们誓死捍卫的共和国向您表示感谢，希望您能因此得到些许安慰。我恳求天父抚慰您的丧子之痛，只为您留下与已逝的儿子们最珍贵的回忆和您当之无愧的为自由的祭坛奉上了巨大牺牲的庄严的自豪感。

您最诚挚且心怀尊敬的

亚伯拉罕·林肯

于华盛顿总统府

一八六四年十一月二十一日

有一天，诺亚·布鲁克斯（Noah Brooks）给了林肯一本奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯（Oliver Wendell Holmes）的诗集。林肯翻开书页，大声地朗读起《莱克星顿》这首诗来，可是当他读到诗节的开头几句时，他的声音颤抖了，他哽咽着说不出话，然后将诗集还给了布鲁克斯。他喃喃地说：“你读吧，我读不下去了。”

那几句诗是这样的：

英灵长眠之处绿草如茵，

他们就地安息，

没有寿衣，也没有坟墓

几个月后，林肯在白宫当着朋友们的面完整地背诵了这首诗，一字不差。

一八六四年四月五日，林肯收到了一封来自宾夕法尼亚州华盛顿郡一位伤心欲绝的女孩的来信。

“我在担心与害怕中犹豫了很久，”女孩写道，“最终还是决定将我的烦恼告诉您。”她订婚多年的未婚夫参军了，之后经部队允许回家投票。他们两人，用那女孩的话说“十分愚蠢地沉溺在了夫妻生活中”，现在“如果您不怜悯我们，不允许他回家让我们把之前的事合法化，那么这份沉溺便会为我们带来一个私生子……我恳求上帝，希望您不要让我活在嘲笑和伤心之中”。

读了这封信后，林肯深受触动。他无神地凝视着窗外，眼中蓄满了泪水……

林肯拿起笔，在女孩的信下方给斯坦顿写了这样一句话：“务必让他回到她的身边。”

一八六四年那个可怕的夏天终于过去了。秋天便传来了好消息：谢尔曼拿下了亚特兰大，正在朝佐治亚州进军。海军上将法拉格特经过了一场卓绝的海战后拿下了莫比尔湾，加强了对墨西哥湾的封锁。谢里丹在谢南多厄河谷赢得了辉煌的胜利。现在的李只能缩在老窝里一步也不敢动，于是格兰特开始围攻彼得斯堡和里士满……

南方联盟已是穷途末路。

林肯的将军们打了胜仗，林肯的政策也被证明是对的，北方军气势如虹。因此，十一月的时候，林肯获得了连任，但林肯并未将这看作是个人的胜利，而是简洁地说，人们终于不再认为“过河的时候交换马匹”是一件明智的事了。

经过了四年征战，林肯心中竟未有半点儿对南方人民的憎恨。他总是说：“‘你们不要评判人，免得你们被评判。’若我们处于他们的位置，也会那样做的。”

因此，一八六五年二月，南方联盟濒临瓦解，距李投降还有两个月的时候，林肯向联邦政府提议拿出四亿美元，作为南方诸州释放黑奴的补偿。但是内阁无人同意他的这个提案，于是他只能作罢。

一八六五年三月，在第二次就职典礼上，林肯发表了第二次就职演说。这篇演说被当时的牛津大学校长柯曾伯爵誉为“是人类口中，不，是神明口中说出的最珍贵的金玉良言”。

当时的林肯走上前去，亲吻了一下翻开在《以赛亚书》第五章的《圣经》，如戏剧中的伟人一般开始了他那著名的演讲。

“那是一首神圣的诗，”卡尔·舒茨这样写道，“从没有哪位领袖对民众说过那样的话。美国也没有哪位总统有着如此深情的肺腑之言。”

在舒茨的眼中，林肯演说的结束语是人类能说出的最高尚最美丽的语言，令人想起昏暗的大教堂中奏响的管风琴曲。

我们痴心地希望——我们常常祈祷——这场灾难能够快速地走向终结。但如果上帝一定要让它继续下去，直到二百五十年来因奴隶的无偿辛劳而堆积起来的财富烟消云散，直到像三千年前所说的那样，鞭笞所流的每一滴血都被宝剑刺出的每一滴血抵消，那么我们仍然只能说，“主的裁判是完全正确而且公道的。”

对任何人都不能心怀恶意，对所有人都要心存宽容。上帝让我们看见正义，让我们坚持完成我们正在进行的事业，因此我们更要坚持正义。怀着这样的信念，我们要治愈这个国家的伤口，照顾那些承受战争之苦的战士，以及他们的遗孀和孤儿——我们要做一切能为我们以及所有的民族带来公正而持久的和平的事。

两个月后，在林肯的葬礼上，这篇演讲再次被人宣读。