Lord Byron - "The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4"

Robert Bloomfield - "The Farmer's Boy"

John. T. Morse - "John Quincy Adams"

Frederick Jackson Turner - "The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2

G >> George S. Boutwell >> Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2




Mrs. Surratt made a second call the afternoon preceding the murder,
when this conversation took place, as stated by Lloyd: "When I drove
up in my buggy to the back yard Mrs. Surratt came out to meet me. She
handed me a package, and told me as well as I remember to get the guns
or those things--I really forget now which, though my impression is
that guns was the expression she made use of--and a couple of bottles
of whisky and give them to whoever should call for them that night."

That night, after the murder, Booth and Herold called, and took the
carbine and drank of the whisky. In these facts there is a basis for
a reasonable theory. The theory is this. Previous to the fall of
Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army the Confederate authorities
set on foot a scheme for the capture and abduction of Mr. Lincoln.
The articles deposited, including the rope and the monkey wrench,
might be useful had Mr. Lincoln been abducted, but when the crime
became murder the rope and wrench were neglected.

This view derives support from two directions. In Booth's diary is
this entry. "April 13-14 Friday. The Ides. Until to-day nothing was
ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For six months
we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost something
decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others
who did not strike for their country with a heart."

Colonel Baker, a detective, testified that when he was in Canada,
engaged in negotiations for the purchase of letters that had passed
between the Confederate authorities at Richmond and Clay, Tucker,
Thompson and others, he read a letter from Jefferson Davis to Jacob
Thompson dated March 8, 1865, in which was this expression: "The
consummation of the act that would have done more to have ended this
terrible strife, being delayed, has probably ruined our cause."

The scheme for the abduction of Mr. Lincoln was a wild scheme, born of
desperation, and its success would have worked only evil to the
Confederacy. The purpose of the North would have been strengthened,
the public feeling would have been embittered and the friendship of
England and of the Continental states would have been suppressed.
When Lee had surrendered, when Davis was fleeing from Richmond, when
Benjamin was preparing to leave the country, the leaders of the
Confederacy could not have entertained a project for the capture of
Mr. Lincoln, nor of any injury to him whatever. Their opposition to
Mr. Lincoln was not tainted with personal hostility. One fact remains;
the persons who had knowledge of the project to abduct Mr. Lincoln and
who were engaged in it at Washington, were implicated in the final
crime.

If Booth's diary can be accepted as a faithful representation of his
mental condition it will appear that he had on that fatal Friday
submitted himself to the influence of three strong passions. He had
accepted the South as his country, and he had come to look upon Mr.
Lincoln as a tyrant and as its enemy. Hence he was influenced with
hatred for Mr. Lincoln. Finally he had become maddened by an ambition
to rival, or to excel Brutus. The influence of his possession is to
be seen in the entries in his diary in the days following the 14th of
April:

"I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all
our troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his
punishment.

"The country is not what it was. This forced union is not what I have
loved. I have not desired to outlive my country. . . . After being
hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased
by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving with
every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing
what Brutus was honored for--what made Tell a hero. And yet I for
striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as
a common cut-throat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One
hoped to be great. The other had not only his country's, but his own
wrongs to avenge. I knew no private wrong. I struck for my country
and that alone. A country that groaned beneath this tyranny, and
prayed for the end, and yet now behold the cold hand they extend to me.

"God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong, yet I cannot see my wrong
except in serving a degenerate people. The little, the very little I
left behind to clear my name, the Government will not allow to be
printed. So ends all. For my country I have given up all that makes
life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there
is no pardon for me in Heaven since man so condemns me.

"I do not repent of the blow I struck. I may before my God but not to
man. I think I have done well. Thought I am abandoned with the curse
of Cain upon me, when if the world knew my heart that one blow would
have made me great, though I did desire no greatness."

Finally, he writes:

"I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This
last was not a wrong unless God deems it so; and it is with him to
damn or bless me."

These extracts from Booth's diary reveal the influences that controlled
him in the great tragedy in which he became the principal actor.


The death of Booth was only a lesser tragedy than the death of Mr.
Lincoln.

Following the murder and escape of Booth a small military force was
organized hastily under the direction and command of Colonel Lafayette
C. Baker, a detective in the service of the War Department. The force
consisted of about thirty men chiefly convalescents from the army
hospitals in Washington. Colonel Everton G. Conger was in command of
the expedition, and his testimony contains a clear account of what
transpired at Garrett's Farm, where Booth was captured and shot.
Conger reached Garrett's Farm on the night of the 25th of April, or the
early morning of the 26th. The men were posted around the tobacco shed
in which Booth and Herold were secreted and their surrender was
demanded by Conger. Booth refused to surrender and tendered, as a
counter proposition, a personal contest with the entire force. Herold
surrendered. Upon Booth's persistent refusal to surrender, a fire was
lighted in a corner of the building. Booth then came forward with his
carbine in his hand and engaged in a conversation with Lieut. L. Byron
Baker. While so engaged a musket was fired from the opposite side of
the shed and Booth fell, wounded fatally in the neck, at or near the
spot where Mr. Lincoln had been struck. Conger had given orders to the
men not to shoot under any circumstances. The examination disclosed
the fact that the shot was fired by a sergeant, named Boston Corbett.
When Colonel Conger asked Corbett why he shot without orders Corbett
saluted the colonel and said: "Colonel, Providence directed me."
Thus the parallel runs. Booth claimed that he was the instrument of
the Almighty in the assassination of Lincoln, and Boston Corbett
claimed that he acted under the direction of Providence when he shot
Booth.

Booth was shot at about three o'clock in the morning of April 26, and
he died at fifteen minutes past seven. During that time he was
conscious for about three fourths of an hour. He asked whether a
person called Jett had betrayed him. His only other intelligible
remark was this:

"Tell my mother I died for my country."

During the afternoon preceding the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, Booth
met John Matthews a brother actor, and requested him to hand a letter
to Mr. Coyle, of the _National Intelligencer,_ the next morning.
Mathews had a part in the play at Ford's Theater. When the shot was
fired and Mathews was changing his dress to leave the theater, he
discovered the letter, which for the time he had forgotten. When he
reached his rooms he opened the letter. It contained an avowal of
Booth's purpose to murder the President, and he named three of his
associates. Booth referred to a plan that had failed, and he then
added: "The moment has at length arrived when my plans must be
changed." These statements were made by Mathews from recollection.
Mathews destroyed the letter under the influence of the apprehension
that its possession would work his ruin.

The records seem to warrant certain conclusions:

1. That the Confederate authorities at Richmond made a plan for the
capture of Mr. Lincoln, and that Booth, Mrs. Surratt and others--who
were implicated finally in the murder--were concerned in the project
to abduct the President and to hold him a hostage.

2. That the undertaking failed.

3. That following Lee's surrender and the downfall of the Confederacy,
Booth originated the plan to murder the President, under the influence
of the motives and reasons that are set forth in his diary and in the
letter to Mr. Coyle.

4. His influence over the persons who were involved in the conspiracy
to abduct Mr. Lincoln, was so great that he was able to command their
aid in the commission of the final crime.

When the investigations were concluded there remained in the possession
of the Committee on the Judiciary a quantity of papers, affidavits,
letters and memoranda of no value as evidence. These were placed
within a sealed package. The package was deposited with the clerk of
the House of Representatives. The preservation of the papers may have
been an error. They should have been destroyed by the committee. Some
doubts were expressed however as to the authority of the committee.
Further investigations were suggested as not impossible. I am the only
person living who has knowledge of the papers. They are now in the
possession of the House of Representatives. It is not in the public
interest that the papers should become the possession of the public.

MR. LINCOLN AND THE ATTACK ON FORT SUMTER

The testimony of John Minor Botts of Virginia, given before the Joint
Committee on Reconstruction, February 18, 1866, presents Mr. Lincoln as
a diplomatist at the outset of his experience as President.

Mr. Botts had been a leading member of the Whig Party and he was a
Union man from the beginning of the contest to the end of the war. As
the work of secession was advancing in the Gulf States Mr. Lincoln
became anxious for the fate of the border States and especially for
Virginia and Kentucky, which promised to serve as barriers to the
aggressive movements of the South in case of war. Mr. Botts came to
Washington at the request of Mr. Lincoln in the early days of April,
1861, and they were together and in private conversation during the
evening of the 7th of April from seven to eleven o'clock. In the
conversation of that evening the President gave Mr. Botts an account
of the steps that he had taken to prevent a collision in the harbor
of Charleston.

Mr. Summers and Mr. Baldwin of Virginia had been delegates in the Peace
Congress and they had been counted among the Union men of the State.
Soon after the inauguration the President was informed that the small
garrison in Fort Sumter was nearly destitute of provisions and that
an attempt to add to the supply would be resisted. The President,
Mr. Summers and Mr. Botts had served together as Whigs in the Thirtieth
Congress and the President invited Mr. Summers by letter and by special
messenger to a conference in Washington. To this invitation no
answer was given by Mr. Summers until the 5th of April, when Mr.
Baldwin appeared and said that he had come upon the request of Mr.
Summers. Mr. Lincoln said at once: "Ah! Mr. Baldwin, why did you
not come sooner? I have been expecting you gentlemen to come to me
for more than a week past. I had a most important proposition to make
to you. I am afraid you have come too late. However, I will make the
proposition now. We have in Fort Sumter with Major Anderson about
eighty men and I learn from Major Anderson that his provisions are
nearly exhausted . . . I have not only written to Governor Pickens, but
I have sent a special messenger to say that if he will allow Major
Anderson to obtain his marketing at the Charleston market, or, if he
objects to allowing our people to land at Charleston, if he will have
it sent to him, then I will make no effort to provision the fort, but,
that if he does not do that, I will not permit these people to starve,
and that I shall send provisions down,--and that if fires on that
vessel he will fire upon an unarmed vessel, loaded with nothing but
bread but I shall at the same time send a fleet along with her, with
instructions not to enter the harbor of Charleston unless the vessel
is fired into; and if she is, then the fleet is to enter the harbor
and protect her. Now, Mr. Baldwin, that fleet is now lying in the
harbor of New York and will be ready to sail this afternoon at five
o'clock, and although I fear it is almost too late, yet I will submit
anyway the proposition which I intended for Mr. Summers. Your
convention in Richmond, Mr. Baldwin, has been sitting now nearly two
months and all they have done has been to shake the rod over my head.
You have recently taken a vote in the Virginia Convention, on the right
of secession, which was rejected by ninety to forty-five, a majority
of two thirds, showing the strength of the Union Party in that
convention; and, if you will go back to Richmond and get that Union
majority to adjourn and go home without passing the ordinance of
secession, so anxious am I for the preservation of the peace of this
country and to save Virginia and the other States from going out, that
I will take the responsibility of evacuating Fort Sumter, and take the
chance of negotiating with the cotton States, which have already gone
out."

This quotation is from the testimony of Mr. Botts and there cannot be
better evidence of the facts existing in the first days of April, nor
a more trustworthy statement of the position of Mr. Lincoln in regard
to the secession movement. At that time the Virginia Convention had
rejected a proposed ordinance of secession by a vote of ninety to
forty-five, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Lincoln had hopes that
his proposition might calm the temper and change the purposes of the
secessionists in that State if he did not change the schemes of
Governor Pickens, of which, indeed, the prospect was only slight.

In his Inaugural Address, and in all his other public utterances, Mr.
Lincoln sought to place the responsibility of war upon the seceding
States. At a later day Mr. Lincoln, in a conversation with Senator
Sumner and myself, expressed regret that he had neglected to station
troops in Virginia in advance of the occupation of the vicinity of
Alexandria by the Confederates, a course of action to which he had
been urged by Mr. Chase and others.

Mr. Lincoln's proposition for the relief of Fort Sumter was rejected
by Mr. Baldwin, as was the proposition for the adjournment of the
convention, _sine die_.

When Mr. Botts appeared the time had passed when arrangements could
have been made for the relief of Sumter and the adjournment of the
convention. Although the situation may not have been realized at the
time it was not the less true that Mr. Botts and the small number
of Union men in Virginia were powerless in presence of the movement
in favor of secession under the lead of Tyler, Seddon and others.

The political side of Mr. Lincoln's character is seen in the fact that
he enjoined secrecy upon Mr. Botts. He may have been unwilling to
allow his supporters in the North to know how far he had gone in the
line of conciliation. In the conversation with Mr. Baldwin, Mr.
Lincoln had given an assurance that upon the acceptance of his two
propositions he would evacuate Fort Sumter. When Mr. Lincoln made
these facts known to Mr. Botts at the evening interview, Mr. Botts
said; "Will you authorize me to make that proposition to the Union
men of the convention? I will take a steamboat to-morrow morning,
and have a meeting of the Union men to-morrow night, I will guarantee
with my head, that they will adopt your proposition." In reply, Mr.
Lincoln said: "It is too late. The fleet has sailed." In truth it
was too late for the acceptance of the propositions in Virginia. The
Union men were powerless, and the secessionists were dominant in
affairs and already vindictive. The charge that Mr. Seward gave a
promise that Sumter would be abandoned, may or it may not have been
true, but there can be no ground for doubting the statement made by
Mr. Botts in regard to the terms tendered by Mr. Lincoln, and which
were rejected by Mr. Baldwin.

Mr. Baldwin admitted the interview with Mr. Lincoln, and the nature of
it as herein given, to Mr. John F. Lewis, who was a Union man and a
member of the convention that adopted the Ordinance of Secession by
a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five.

Of the three witnesses, Baldwin, Botts and Lewis, Mr. Baldwin was the
first witness who was examined by the Committee on Reconstruction.
At that time the committee had no knowledge of the conversation
between Mr. Baldwin and President Lincoln. Speaking, apparently, under
the influence of the criticisms of Botts and Lewis of his rejection of
Mr. Lincoln's propositions, Baldwin introduced the subject with the
remark: "I had a good deal of interesting conversation with him (that
is with Mr. Lincoln) that evening. I was about to state that I have
reason to believe that Mr. Lincoln himself had given an account of
this conversation which has been understood--but I am sure
_mis_understood--by the persons with whom he talked, as giving the
representation of it, that he had offered to me, that if the Virginia
Convention would adjourn _sine die_ he would withdraw the troops from
Sumner and _Pickens_." As there was no occasion in the conversation
between Lincoln and Baldwin for a reference to Fort Pickens, and as the
President did not mention _Fort Pickens_ in the account of the
conversation that he gave to Mr. Botts, the denial of Mr. Baldwin may
fall under one of the forms of falsehood mentioned by Shakespeare.

The evidence is conclusive to this point: That at an interview at the
Executive Mansion, April 5, 1861, between President Lincoln and Colonel
John B. Baldwin, then a member of the Virginia Convention that finally
adopted the Ordinance of Secession, President Lincoln assured Mr.
Baldwin that he would evacuate Fort Sumter if the fort could be
provisioned and the Virginia Convention would adjourn _sine die_.

Colonel Baldwin's voluntary and qualified denial is of no value in
presence of President Lincoln's report of the interview as given by
Mr. Botts and in presence of the testimony that Mr. Baldwin did not
deny the truthfulness of Mr. Botts' limited statement, when it was
asserted by Mr. Botts in the presence of Lewis.

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS AND HIS STATE-RIGHTS DOCTRINES

Upon the death of Mr. Calhoun the task of maintaining the extreme
doctrine of State Rights, as that doctrine had been taught by Mr.
Calhoun fell upon Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens. That
doctrine was carried to its practical results in the ordinances of
secession as they were adopted by the respective States under the lead
of Mr. Davis.

If Mr. Stephens advised against secession, the advice given was not due
to any doubt of the right of a State to secede from the Union, but to
doubts of the wisdom of the undertaking.

In form of proceedings Mr. Stephens was examined by the Committee on
the Judiciary, the 11th and 12th days of April, 1866, but in fact I was
the only member of the committee who was present, and I conducted the
examination in my own way, and without help or hindrance from others.

It was the opinion of Governor Clifford of Massachusetts, that the
examination of Mr. Stephens gave the best exposition of the doctrine
of State Rights that had been made. I was then ignorant of the fact,
that in the convention of 1787 the form of the Preamble to the
Constitution was so changed as to justify the opinion, if not to
warrant the conclusion that the State-Rights doctrines had been
considered and abandoned. In two plans of a constitution, one
submitted by Mr. Randolph, and one by Mr. Charles Pinckney, and in
the original draft of the Constitution as reported by Mr. Rutledge,
the source of authority was laid in the respective States, which were
named. This form was adhered to in the Rutledge report, which was made
August 6, 1787. On the 12th of September the Committee on Style
reported the Preamble which opens thus: _"We the people of the United
States, etc."_ This change seems not to have been known to Mr.
Webster, nor have I noticed a reference to it in any of the speeches
that were made in the period of the active controversy on the
doctrine of State Rights.

Mr. Stephens was a clear-headed and uncompromising expositor and
defender of the doctrine of State Rights as the doctrine was accepted
by General Lee and by the inhabitants generally of the slave States.

Mr. Stephens did not disguise his opinions: "When the State seceded
against my judgment and vote, I thought my ultimate allegiance was due
to her, and I prepared to cast my fortunes and destinies with hers and
her people rather than take any other course, even though it might
lead to my sacrifice and her ruin."

When he was asked for his reason for accepting the office of vice-
president in the Confederacy, he said: "My sole object was to do all
the good I could in preserving and perpetuating the principles of
liberty as established under the Constitution of the United States."
Mr. Stephens advanced to his position by conclusively logical
processes. Standing upon the ground of Mr. Lincoln and the Republican
Party, he assumed that, inasmuch as the States in rebellion had never
been out of the Union, they had had the opportunity at all times during
the war of withdrawing from the contest and resuming their places in
the Senate and House as though nothing had occurred of which the
existing government could take notice.

If, however, there were to be terms of adjustment, then those terms
must have a "continental basis founded upon the principles of mutual
convenience and reciprocal advantage, and the recognition of the
separate sovereignty of the States." He was ready for a conference or
convention of all the States, but he did not admit the right of the
successful party to dictate terms to the States that had been in
rebellion. He expressed the personal, individual opinion, that tax
laws passed in the absence of representatives from the seceded States
would be unconstitutional. It was the opinion of Mr. Stephens that
the people of Georgia by a large majority thought that the State was
entitled to representation in the national Congress and without any
conditions.

When he was invited to consider the alternative of universal suffrage
or a loss of representation as a condition precedent to the
restoration of the State, he said with confidence that neither branch
of the alternative would be accepted. "If Georgia is a State in the
Union her people feel that she is entitled to representation without
conditions imposed by Congress; and if she is not a State in the Union
then she could not be admitted as an equal with the others if her
admission were trammeled with conditions that did not apply to all the
rest alike."

It had been his expectation, and in his opinion such had been the
expectation of the people generally that the State would assume its
place in the Union whenever the cause of the Confederacy should be
abandoned.

Such were the results of the State-Rights doctrines as announced by
the most intellectual of the Southern leaders in the war of the
Rebellion. In the opinion of Mr. Stephens a State could retire from
the Union either for purposes of peace or of war and return at will,
and all without loss of place or power.

At the close of his examination he made this declaration: "My
convictions on the original abstract question have undergone no change."

As a sequel to the doctrines of Mr. Stephens, I mention the history of
Andrew J. Lewis. When the Legislature of Massachusetts assembled in
January, 1851, Lewis took a seat in the House as the Democratic member
from the town of Sandisfield. He acted with the Coalitionists, and he
voted for Mr. Sumner as United States Senator. Lewis was returned for
the year 1852, and in General Pierce's administration he held an office
in the Boston Customs House.

Upon the fall of Port Hudson I received a letter from General Banks.
In that letter he mentioned the fact that Lewis was among the
prisoners, holding the office of captain in a South Carolina regiment.
His account of himself was this: "I was born in South Carolina. When
my State seceded I thought I must go too, and so I left Massachusetts
and returned to South Carolina."

GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT

General Grant's examination during the investigation embraced a variety
of topics and the report is a volume of not less than twenty thousand
words. His testimony is marked by the qualities for which he was known
both on the civil and military side of his career. These qualities
were clearness of thought, accuracy and readiness of memory, directness
of expression and the absence of remarks in the nature of exaggeration
or embellishment. The character of the man and the history of events
may gain something from an examination of his testimony upon three
important points to which it related: the opinion of President Lincoln
in regard to the reconstruction of the government; the opinion of
President Johnson upon the same subject, and his own view of the
rights of General Lee and of the army under his command that had
surrendered at Appomattox.

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