Edward Achorn - Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey:

How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild

Pennant Fight Made Baseball Americas Game

Fifty-Nine in 84:

Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had

Every
Drop of
Blood

THE MOMENTOUS
SECOND INAUGURATION
OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

EDWARD ACHORN

Copyright 2020 by Edward Achorn

Cover design by Becca Fox Design

Cover photographs: cover, Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner Chronicle/Alamy; back, Lincolns second inauguration, 1865 Alamy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

FIRST EDITION

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in Canada

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: March 2020

This book was set in 11 pt. Janson by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-4874-2

eISBN 978-0-8021-4876-6

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

20 21 22 23 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my mother

until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword

ABRAHAM LINCOLN , Second Inaugural Address

Image credits for the insert section are as follows:

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, DAG no. 1224 (Cabinet A).

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19219.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-B813- 1764 A-1 [P&P] LOT 4192.

: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, object number NPG.2002.87.

: Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-BH82- 2460 B [P&P].

: Timothy H. OSullivan (American, about 1840 - 1882). A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1863, Albumen silver print. 17.8 22.1 cm (7 8 11/16 in.), 84.XO.1232.1.36. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

: Civil War photographs, 1861-1865, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-B817- 7929 [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LOT 6286, p. 15 [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-B813- 1747 B [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-BH82- 5341 B [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-F81- 2009 [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, DRWG/US - Meyer, no. 2 (B size) [P&P].

Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19671.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LOT 14043-2, no. 697 [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19421.

: National Archives and Records Administration, item number 530494.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-122395.

: Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-BH82- 5077 C [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-B813- 6532 A [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-53391.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-BH82- 2417 [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-BH831- 565 [P&P].

: Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, Mercy Heritage Center, Belmont, North Carolina.

: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933, accession number 33.65.306.

: Photograph courtesy of Hillsdale College. Frederick Douglass. Edwin Burke Ives (1832-1906) and Reuben L. Andrews, January 21, 1863, Howell Street, Hillsdale, MI, Carte-de-visite (2 1/2 4 in), Hillsdale College.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, PGA - Ritchie (A.H.)First reading (D size) [P&P].

: Alderman Library, University of Virginia, via the Walt Whitman Archive, ID number 013.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-79930.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19233.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-BH826-476 [P&P].

: Carol M. Highsmiths America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-04748.

: Gilman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 2005.100.1118.

: Brady-Handy photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-BH835- 26 [P&P].

of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-BH826-1516 [P&P].

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-2578 (b&w film copy neg.).

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-279 (b&w film copy neg.).

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USA7-16837.

: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02927.

: Courtesy of Heritage Auctions, HA.com.

: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, object number NPG.83.241.

Saturday, February 25, 1865

The wound refused to heal. a Confederate bullet shattered his thighbone at the Battle of the Wilderness, Selden Connor was still trapped in a hospital bed on a cold morning in Washington, D.C., hounded by pain. Doctors had hoped the two sides of the broken femur, the splinters sawed off, might fuse back together, making Connor whole again. But the bad leg, four and a half inches shorter than the good one, was too weak to stand on without snapping. It kept becoming infected and needed to be drained periodically of putrid pus.

tall twenty-six-year-old, keenly intelligent, with a commanding presence, a cascading beard, and dark, calm eyes. As a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Tufts College bent on a career in law, he had once had an extraordinarily bright future. Now, a week before Abraham Lincolns inauguration to another term, Connor was one more shattered casualty of an extraordinarily cruel and murderous war.

A less resolute man than Lincoln might have backed away from this catastrophic struggle with a united South bent on its independence. Breaking the might of the largest slave society in the worldprobably the largest slave society in human historywas always going to be an enormous challenge.

The erudite and experienced man who had preceded Lincoln in the White House, Pennsylvania Democrat James Buchanan, did not have the slightest intention of going to war after Southern states seceded , but pernicious, as a means of holding the States together. President Buchanan accordingly informed the members of Congress in December 1860 that, under the Constitution, they might rescue the nation by conciliation, but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force. Opponents of war could also reflect on the sobering example of the American Revolution eight decades earlier, of resistance so fierce and widespread that even Britain, possessing the worlds strongest military, could not subdue it.