{"id":3793,"date":"2014-05-09T09:41:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T15:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/digitalservices\/?p=2778"},"modified":"2014-05-09T09:41:05","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T15:41:05","slug":"april-15-1865","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/coolathoole\/2014\/05\/09\/april-15-1865\/","title":{"rendered":"April 15, 1865 – A Tale of Two Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"headline2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Englishman Charles Dickens wrote that in 1859, just two years before England’s former colonies began a long and bloody civil war. I wonder if that quote came to the minds of any Americans during the\u00a0week of April 9-15, 1865.\u00a0Depending on what perspective one had about\u00a0the state of national politics, that one\u00a0week entailed both a triumphant victory and a crushing\u00a0defeat.<\/p>\n

On Sunday April 9, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered, signaling the beginning of the end for\u00a0the Confederacy and the Civil War. On Friday\u00a0April 14, President Lincoln, who had been determined to keep the country together, was assassinated, dying the next morning.<\/p>\n

In the process of digitizing a collection of newspaper clippings that had little to do with either the Civil War or Lincoln, we ran across what must’ve been a treasured copy of the New York Herald<\/em> from April 15, 1865. We thought we’d share some clippings from it.<\/p>\n

The Death of a President<\/h2>\n

Beyond the details of the tragedy, perhaps the most interesting thing about this news story is the insight it gives us on how newspaper reporting was done in the middle of the nineteenth century. Much of the news\u00a0is presented as “dispatches,” first-person observations sent by telegraph or messenger. As with modern news stories, newer information was often tacked on to older information, to give a sense of how things have developed.<\/p>\n

The April 15 edition\u00a0repeated the\u00a0earliest\u00a0dispatches from Washington, from the night before:<\/p>\n

\"april14\"<\/a>Just after midnight, more news began coming in. At first, there was no talk of the president’s fate, as no one had apparently heard the doctor’s prognosis. Instead, the focus is on the crime’s perpetrators, and on the city waiting and fearing:<\/p>\n

\"april15_1am-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When the news did come in, it wasn’t good, as evidenced in the reactions\u00a0of those at Lincoln’s bedside:<\/p>\n

\"april15_1am-2\"<\/a> \"april15_1am-3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, a\u00a0dispatch came from Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, who was on hand at the scene:<\/p>\n

\"april15_9am\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By 7:30 a.m., the Herald\u00a0was able to pronounce that the assassination had ultimately been successful:<\/p>\n

\"april15_730am\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This was just the beginning of the story, fleshed out in editions to come.<\/p>\n

The End of a War<\/h2>\n

The Dickens quote above comes from his novel\u00a0A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>, the cities in question being London and Paris. But the\u00a0two cities most in the minds of Herald<\/em> readers\u00a0were likely\u00a0the fractured country’s two capitals: Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Virginia, just over 100 miles apart.<\/p>\n

It’s also where our two stories meet, in a way. During the\u00a0week\u00a0before the\u00a0surrender at Appomattox Courthouse and\u00a0the assassination,\u00a0Lincoln\u00a0toured\u00a0the newly fallen Confederate stronghold himself. He must’ve felt that the war’s end was near.<\/p>\n

News from Richmond was slow to come to the Herald\u00a0<\/em>— it was apparently gleaned almost entirely second-hand, from southern newspapers — so some\u00a0of what was reported in the\u00a0April 15 edition stretched back to before the surrender.<\/p>\n

News from April 5, the day after the fall of Richmond, brings the “first rebel account of how the city was abandoned”:<\/p>\n

\"civilwar_april5b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“We have no doubt that a considerable portion of the brave city has been laid in ashes and a number of its people insulted, outraged, robbed, and massacred.”<\/em><\/p>\n

From that same day came report of a plea by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Viewing the situation in hindsight, the Herald editors were able to label it “Jeff. Davis’ last proclamation.” It was one that called on southerners’ “unconquered and unconquerable hearts”:<\/p>\n

\"civilwar_april5a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“It is for us, my countrymen, to show by our bearing under reverses how wretched has been the self-deception of those who have believed us less able to endure misfortune with fortitude than to encounter dangers with courage.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In a dispatch from April 11, the\u00a0fall of Richmond was reported in greater detail, including the response of the Union army and the continued advance of Confederate General Johnston, who did\u00a0not give up until a few days after this edition was published:<\/p>\n

\"civilwar_april11\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Johnston’s refusal to back down is also mentioned here, with the report of April 14:<\/p>\n

\"civilwar_april14\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The following are all second-hand reports from southern newspapers on\u00a0April 13. They include details of the surrender as well as an exhortation to southerners — taken from\u00a0a Richmond newspaper —\u00a0to\u00a0“dismiss rancor from their hearts” and make peace:<\/p>\n

\"civilwar_april13\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And they did make peace. Was one of the costs of that peace the death of the wartime President? We’ll never quite know the answer to that question. What we do know is this tale of two cities gripped the nation, making it one of the most eventful and momentous weeks of newspaper reporting the country has ever seen.<\/p>\n

It just goes to show how\u00a0much a single item from an archive can tell you!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\u00a0 Englishman Charles Dickens wrote that in 1859, just two years before England’s former colonies began a long and bloody civil war. I wonder if that quote came to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3750,3700,4264,5117],"tags":[5468,3744,3686],"class_list":["post-3793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-war","category-cool-collections","category-newspapers","category-southern-history","tag-1860s","tag-historic-figures","tag-military-service-rewards"],"yoast_head":"\nApril 15, 1865 - A Tale of Two Cities - What's Cool at Hoole<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apps.lib.ua.edu\/blogs\/coolathoole\/2014\/05\/09\/april-15-1865\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"April 15, 1865 - A Tale of Two Cities - What's Cool at Hoole\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\u00a0 Englishman Charles Dickens wrote that in 1859, just two years before England’s former colonies began a long and bloody civil war. 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