An amusing, yet touching instance of the President’s preoccupation of mind, occurred at one of his levees, when he was shaking hands with a host of visitors passing him in a continuous stream. An intimate acquaintance received the usual conventional hand-shake and salutation, but perceiving that he was not recognized, kept his ground instead of moving on, and spoke again; when the President, roused to a dim consciousness that something unusual had happened, perceived who stood before him, and seizing his friend’s hand, shook it again heartily, saying, “How do you do? How do you do? Excuse me for not noticing you. I was thinking of a man down South.” He afterward privately acknowledged that the “man down South” was Sherman, then on his march to the sea. Mr. Lincoln may not have expected death from the hand of an assassin, but he had an impression, amounting to a “presentiment,” that his life would end with the war. This was expressed not only to Mr. Lovejoy, as stated on a previous page, but to Mrs. Stowe and others. “He told me, in July, 1864,” says a correspondent of the Boston “Journal,” “that he was certain he should not outlast the rebellion. “It was a time of dissension among the Republican leaders. Many of his best friends had deserted him, and were talking of an opposition convention to nominate another candidate; and universal gloom was among the people. “The North was tired of the war, and supposed an honorable peace attainable. Mr. Lincoln knew it was not,--that any peace at that time would be only disunion. Speaking of it, he said: ‘I have faith in the people. They will not consent to disunion. The danger is, in their being misled. Let them know the truth, and the country is safe.’ He looked haggard and careworn; and further on in the interview I remarked on his appearance, ‘You are wearing yourself out with work.’ ‘I can’t work less,’ he answered; ‘but it isn’t that,--work never troubled me. Things look badly, and I can’t avoid anxiety. Personally, I care nothing about a reëlection; but if our divisions defeat us, I fear for the country.’ When I suggested that right must eventually triumph, that I had never despaired of the result, he said:-- “‘Neither have I, but I may never live to see it. I feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the Rebellion. When it is over, my work will be done.’” “The Freedmen,” once said the President to the Secretary of War, “are the ‘wards’ of the nation.” “Yes,” replied Stanton, “wards in chancery.” A few days before the President’s death, Secretary Stanton tendered his resignation of the War Department. He accompanied the act with a heart-felt tribute to Mr. Lincoln’s constant friendship and faithful devotion to the country; saying, also, that he as Secretary had accepted the position to hold it only until the war should end, and that now he felt his work was done, and his duty was to resign.