Several futile attempts had been made to bring about a reconciliation between North and South before the bitter end;[357] but Lincoln, eager as he was for peace, stood out irrevocably for the acknowledgment of the Union, and now added to it the emancipation of the slaves. It was clear that nothing short of Lee's capitulation could satisfy the country or end the war. On the 3rd April, Richmond surrendered to Grant; and on the day after, the President, who was then with the army, entered the city which the evacuating forces had fired. Five more days and Lee gave himself up: by the end of the month the surrender of the Confederate troops had been effected, while Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia on the 10th of May. A fortnight later the combined hosts of Grant and Sherman passed before the President in a last grand review along Pennsylvania Avenue and before the White House, to be thereafter disbanded. But the President was no longer Abraham Lincoln. Re-elected in the preceding autumn, in spite of Republican intrigues and the dangerous opposition of General McClellan, who was put forward by the Democrats, Lincoln had been assassinated during a performance at Ford's Theatre, on the evening of the 14th of April, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter. The loss to his country was irreparable. More than any other of its Presidents, either before or since, Abraham Lincoln embodied the real genius of the American nation, and in the hour of their agony he was the father of his people. Slowly they had learnt his strength and his wisdom; but they had hardly begun to understand the greatness of a heart which was able to love the South with a mother's tenderness even while it was in arms against him. The Vice-President, who stepped into his place, was a Union Democrat; he also loved the South, but less wisely than well. His rash haste in the reconstruction of the governments of the defeated States threw the nation into the hands of the group of narrowly partisan Republicans which continued to rule America with unscrupulous ability and ill-concealed self-interest[358] for sixteen years, threatening by its attitude towards the Southern people to alienate their sympathies forever from the Union. FOOTNOTES: [323] Burroughs, 20, 21. [324] _Literary Gazette_, 7th July, 1860; _qu._ Bucke, 202. [325] W. M. Rossetti, _Selections from W. W._, introd., and E. Rhys, _Selections from W. W._, introd.; W. B. Scott, _Autobiog._, ii., 32, 33, 268, 269. [326] There is no fact more important to be remembered for a right understanding of the events that follow than this, that the Slave party only controlled a portion, perhaps a minority, of the Democrats. [327] _L. of G._, 190; _Mem. Hist. N.Y._, iii., 472. [328] _L. of G._, 1876. [329] Bryce, _op. cit._, i., 46, 47. [330] But see _ib._, i., 44. [331] _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 445. [332] _Camb. Mod. Hist._, 449. [333] _Comp. Prose_, 302. [334] See _supra_, p. 24. [335] Roosevelt, 202-04.