"It was too late; the ball had penetrated his heart, and Charles was dead. The sharp report aroused his sleeping companions, who were lying by the roadside, a little distance from him, and the noise they made as they sprang for their guns warned Mr. R----s of his danger, who quickly sprang to his saddle and dashed away unharmed, but not without being fired at by the remaining pickets. He made a safe return, and reported to General Grant, but since that time his acquaintances have noticed that he has become a changed man." I arrived at General Granger's head-quarters in Mobile, Alabama, April 9, 1865, the next day after the capture of Blakely. I had traveled in all, since leaving Savannah, a distance of nine hundred miles, and that without molestation. During my journey, two of the most important events of the war had transpired. General Lee had surrendered his command to General Grant, and General Johnston had surrendered his command to General Sherman. Kirby Smith's command, west of the Mississippi, was the only armed force that had not surrendered. The returned Confederate soldiers, wherever I met them in my route, had expressed themselves as satisfied with their attempt to sustain the Confederacy, and gave it up as a lost cause. Experience is said to be the "best school-master." The Confederate soldiers evidently thought so. A few days after my arrival, the intelligence was received that President Lincoln had been murdered. It was too sad intelligence for the soldiers to believe, nor would they believe it until officially confirmed. Then their anger knew no bounds, and it was with the utmost difficulty that commanding officers restrained their men from committing retaliatory depredations. In the midst of a nation's rejoicing, she was called to mourn the death of the man who had steered the Ship of State clear of the shoals that threatened her destruction, was to be swept from the helm as the ship was entering the haven of peace, and within sight of her desired moorings. While it was hard to deprive him thus of the sweet anticipations in prospect before him, it was nevertheless necessary, in the wise directions of a beneficent Providence. The murder of Abraham Lincoln was necessary as the closing act of the great rebellion. The picture of the scene, revolting as it had been, was not complete until the finishing shades of blackness had been added by the hand of an assassin.