So accustomed is the public mind to associating Lincoln and Grant as coworkers for the Union cause that few persons suspect that the two men never met till the Civil War was three-fourths over. Then, Congress having revived the grade of Lieutenant-general of the Army, Grant was ordered to Washington to receive his promotion. Arriving early in March, 1864, he went at once to the White House, where the President happened to be holding a reception in the east room. He held back till most of the people had passed, when Lincoln, recognizing him from his portraits, turned to him with hand outstretched, saying: “This is General Grant, is it not?”
“It is, Mr. President,” answered Grant. And with this self-introduction, fittingly simple, the two great figures of the war faced each other for the first time.
Although constantly urged to take precautions for his own safety, Lincoln never did. He used to walk about the streets as freely as any ordinary citizen; and night after night, during the darkest period of the war, he would stroll across to Secretary Stanton’s office to talk over the latest news from the front. Stanton’s remonstrances he would dismiss with a weary smile, protesting that, as far as he was aware, he had not an enemy in the world, but if he had, anybody who wished to kill him had a hundred chances every day--so, why be uneasy? His second inaugural address was shorter than the first; he wrote it about midnight of the third of March, seated in an armchair where he was resting after a hard day’s work, and holding the cardboard sheets in his lap. Its concluding words were as memorable as those of four years before: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, let us go forward with the work we have to do: to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who has borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, and to do all things which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Early on the fourth, he went to the Capitol quietly and devoted the remaining hours of the morning to reading and signing bills. The procession which had been arranged to escort him was formed at the White House, with the President’s carriage at its head, occupied by Mrs. Lincoln and Senators Harlan and Anthony. A platoon of marshals pioneered it, and a detachment of the Union Light Guard surrounded it. The crowd, recognizing the White House coachman on its box, but not seeing distinctly who sat behind, cheered it all along the line under the supposition that it held the President. Two companies of colored troops and a lodge of colored Odd Fellows were among the marchers, this being the first time that negroes ever took part in an inaugural pageant except in some servile capacity.