This wood engraving by Thomas Nast of President Abraham Lincoln in Richmond on April 4, 1865, appeared in Harper’s Weekly in February of 1866. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
Around 3:30 p.m. on the warm afternoon of April 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad disembarked from a rowboat near 17th and Dock streets by present-day Bottoms Up Pizza.
They were accompanied by at least a dozen Marines under the command of Adm. David Dixon Porter. Bringing Lincoln to Richmond proved a fraught task. Amid the burnt ruins of the city’s commercial district that rose above them, assailants could be lurking.
Porter needed to escort Lincoln through the potentially perilous wreckage to Maj. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel, who had claimed Richmond for the Union and established headquarters at the former Confederate White House, which still stands at the corner of 12th and Clay streets, behind VCU Medical Center.
The only problem? Nobody in the party knew how to navigate the city or how to find Weitzel.
One day prior, Lincoln ambled through the streets of Petersburg en route to Richmond, almost in the dust of evacuating Confederates. Then, a few hours before dawn on April 4, an effort by retreating Confederates to burn warehoused tobacco, cotton and military equipment went wrong due to winds. The ensuing conflagration consumed Richmond’s business and waterfront districts.
Lincoln telegraphed an anxious Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to ease his concerns: “I’ll take care of myself.”
After four years of seeing the city’s name on a map and multiple failed attempts to seize the Confederate capital, perhaps Lincoln wanted to set eyes on the crucible of this fratricidal war.
Paddling on the James
Porter intended to bring Lincoln up the James River from the command and depot center of City Point (near Hopewell) with a flag-flying flotilla of victory. It didn’t work.
His flagship, Malvern, couldn’t negotiate through obstacles near Drewry’s Bluff in Chesterfield County, site of the Confederate Fort Darling, which is now part of Richmond National Battlefield Park, just off Interstate 95. Porter, with Lincoln, 10-year-old birthday boy Tad and the Marines, transferred into a rowboat. This meant paddling almost 9 miles to Mayo Island near 14th Street, where clustered rocks blocked their passage, causing Lincoln to quip that perhaps the Army would need to assist the Navy.
Meanwhile, Gen. Weitzel went to Rocketts Landing thinking he’d receive the president and transport him by carriage to headquarters.
Saloons and brothels thrived in the Shockoe of 1865. Several auction houses and jails for the enslaved around First Market, today’s 17th Street Farmers Market, and Shockoe Creek, near present day Main Street Station, were emptied.
Boston Herald reporter Charles Coffin observed the debris-clearing work near 17th and Dock streets. He watched, too, as a group clambered from a rowboat. One tall figure wore a long black overcoat, a high silk hat and a black suit despite the warm, summery day.
Coffin asked the laborers whether until recently they’d been enslaved, which they affirmed. He responded that if they looked, they’d see their liberator.
Asking for Directions
Lincoln’s progress slowed due to forming crowds, primarily of newly emancipated Blacks but with some German and Irish immigrants who’d worked in Richmond without special affection for the cause. Most other residents kept behind shuttered windows.
Amid the warm rubble, Lincoln sat, overcome by the day’s heat, the moment’s emotional weight, the press of a joyful crowd and the protective concern of the Marines. Coffin offered to put the group on the right path.
Near the Exchange Hotel at 14th and Franklin streets, the burgeoning party crossed paths with two Union generals, George F. Shepley and August V. Kautz. Lincoln offhandedly asked one of them for directions, and the officers accompanied him up the hill to the former Confederate White House.
Housekeeper Mary O’Melia, a widowed Irish mother of three, stayed behind after Confederate President Jefferson Davis left. She let the guests into the foyer, where they encountered two large lamps, one representing Tragedy, the other Comedy.
The generals adjourned to a side room for celebratory whiskey while the teetotaler Lincoln, seated in the study, asked O’Melia for a glass of water.
Weitzel’s carriage clattered up. The general offered apologies and asked if Lincoln would like a tour of the city.
When they viewed Libby Prison at 20th and East Cary streets, a former tobacco warehouse that held Union captives and later held Confederates awaiting parole, Lincoln wept. (The prison was later dismantled and exhibited at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.)
Weitzel asked how to treat the defeated Confederates. The president replied, “If I were in your place, I’d let ’em up easy — let ’em up easy.”
Lincoln returned to Washington on April 9, by then absent 17 days. On his arrival, he first heard of Robert E. Lee’s surrender.
An assassin’s bullet killed the president five days later.
