Lincoln, the unknown

212 •LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNStanton had been assassinated. Grant shot. So ran the wild tales.People were sure now that Lee's surrender had been a ruse,that the Confederates had treacherously crept into Washingtonand were trying to wipe out the Government with one blow, thatthe Southern legions had sprung to arms again, that the war,bloodier than ever, was starting once more.Mysterious messengers dashed through the residence districts,striking the pavement two short staccato raps, thricerepeated—the danger-call of a secret society, the Union League.Awakened by the summons, members grasped their rifles andrushed wildly into the street.Mobs with torches and ropes boiled through the town, howling:"Burn the theater!" . . . "Hang the traitor!" . . . "Kill therebels!"It was one of the maddest nights this nation has ever known!The telegraph flashed the news, setting the nation on fire.Southern sympathizers and copperheads were ridden on railsand tarred and feathered; the skulls of some were crushed withpaving-stones. Photograph galleries in Baltimore were stormedand wrecked because they were believed to contain pictures ofBooth; and a Maryland editor was shot because he had publishedsome scurrilous abuse of Lincoln.With the President dying; with Johnson, the Vice-President,sprawled on his bed stone-drunk and his hair matted with mud;with Seward, Secretary of State, stabbed to the verge of death,the reins of power were grasped immediately by Edward M.Stanton, the gruff, erratic, and tempestuous Secretary of War.Believing that all high officers of the Government weremarked for slaughter, Stanton, in wild excitement, dashed offorder after order, writing them on the top of his silk hat ashe sat by the bedside of his dying chief. He commanded guardsto protect his house and the residences of his colleagues; heconfiscated Ford's Theater and arrested every one connectedwith it; he declared Washington to be in a state of siege; hecalled out the entire military and police force of the District ofColumbia, all the soldiers in the surrounding camps, barracks,and fortifications, the Secret Service men of the United States,the spies attached to the Bureau of Military Justice; he threwpickets around the entire city, fifty feet apart; he set a watchat every ferry, and ordered tugs, steamers, and gunboats topatrol the Potomac.Stanton wired the chief of police in New York to rush him