*Dream archive: Abraham Lincoln* -- 15 April 2000 *Le Morte d'Arthur*, the first important English romance written in prose; Book 4, Chapter 15: Then said Morgan, Saw ye Arthur, my brother? Yea, said her knights, right well, and that ye should have found an we might have stirred from one stead, for by his army-vestal countenance he would have caused us to have fled. I believe you, said Morgan. Anon after as she rode she met a knight leading another knight on his horse before him, bound hand and foot, blindfold, to have drowned him in a fountain. When she saw this knight so bound, she asked him, What will ye do with that knight? Lady, said he, I will drown him. For what cause? she asked. For I found him with my wife, and she shall have the same death anon. That were pity, said Morgan le Fay. Now, what say ye, knight, is it truth that he saith of you? she said to the knight that should be drowned. Nay truly, madam, he saith not right on me. Of whence be ye, said Morgan le Fay, and of what country? I am of the court of King Arthur, and my name is Manassen, cousin unto Accolon of Gaul. Ye say well, said she, and for the love of him ye shall be delivered, and ye shall have your adversary in the same case ye be in. So Manassen was loosed and the other knight bound. And anon Manassen unarmed him, and armed himself in his harness, and so mounted on horseback, and the knight afore him, and so threw him into the fountain and drowned him. And then he rode unto Morgan again, and asked if she would anything unto King Arthur. Tell him that I rescued thee, not for the love of him but for the love of Accolon, and tell him I fear him not while I can make me and them that be with me in likeness of stones; and let him wit I can do much more when I see my time. And so she departed into the country of Gore, . . . Thomas Malory, 1469 Selected works documenting revelation by way of Abraham Lincoln: (From *Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years and the War Years*, Carl Sandburg, 1954.) Chapter 64 “Negotiations -- An Ominous Dream” . . . The two men who most often warned Lincoln about his personal safety were Stanton and Lamon. To Lamon he had laughing retorts. The envelope on which he had written “Assassination,” wherein he filed threat letters, numbered 80 items in latter March. He told Seward, “I know I am in danger; but I am not going to worry over threats like these.” Lamon took no ease about this matter because of a dream Lincoln told him. To Lamon he spoke more than once of his failure to produce again the double image of himself in a looking glass, which he saw in 1860 lying on a lounge in his home in Springfield. One face held glow of life and breath, the other shone ghostly pale white. “It had worried him not a little . . . the mystery had its meaning, which was clear enough to him . . . the lifelike image betokening a safe passage through his first term as President; the ghostly one, that death would overtake him before the close of the second.” Sternly practical and strictly logical man that Lincoln was, using relentless scrutiny of facts and spare derivations of absolutes from those facts, he nevertheless believed in dreams having validity for himself and for others. According to Lamon’s study, Lincoln held that any dream had a meaning if you could be wise enough to find it. When a dream came Lincoln sought clues from it. Once when Mrs. Lincoln and Tad were away he telegraphed her to put away a pistol Tad was carrying. “I had an ugly dream about him.” To Lamon it was appropriate that Lincoln held the best dream interpreters were the common people. “This accounts in large measure for the profound respect he always had for the collective wisdom of the plain people, -- ‘the children of Nature,’ he called them.” The very superstitions of the people had roots of reality in natural occurrences. “He esteemed himself one of their number, having passed the greater part of his life among them.” Of the dream that came to Lincoln this second week of April ‘65, Lamon wrote that it was “the most startling incident” that had ever come to the man, of “deadly import,” “amazingly real.” Lincoln kept it to himself for a few days; then one evening at the White House, with Mrs. Lincoln, Lamon and one or two others present, he began talking about dreams and led himself into telling the late one that haunted him. Of his written account of the evening, Lamon said, “I give it as nearly in his own words as I can, from notes which I made immediately after its recital.” . . . (Finishing out the chapter, Sandburg essentially quotes Laman, who's own words are reproduced now from *The Lincoln Reader*, 1947, editted by Paul M. Angle.) Chapter Twenty-four “Death -- and a People’s Grief” “Enough lives have been sacrificed; we must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union.” Thus spoke Lincoln to his Cabinet on the 14th of April, 1865” Part 1 Ward Hill Lamon tells the strange story of a dream. The most startling incident in the life of Mr. Lincoln was a dream he had only a few days before his assassination. To him it was a thing of deadly import, and certainly no vision was ever fashioned more exactly like a dread reality. . . . After worrying over it for some days, Mr. Lincoln seemed no longer able to keep the secret. I give it as nearly in his own words as I can, from notes which I made immediately after its recital. There were only two or three persons present. The President was in a melancholy, meditative mood, and had been silent for some time. Mrs. Lincoln, who was present, rallied him on his solemn visage and want of spirit. This seemed to arouse him, and without seeming to notice her sally he said, in slow and measured tones: “It seems strange how much there is in the Bible about dreams. There are, I think, some sixteen chapters in the Old Testament and four or five in the New in which dreams are mentioned; and there are many other passages scattered throughout the book which refer to visions. If we believe the Bible, we must accept the fact that in the old days God and His angels came to men in their sleep and made themselves known in dreams. Nowadays dreams are regarded as very foolish, and are seldom told, except by old women and by young men and maidens in love.” Mrs. Lincoln remarked: “Why, you look, dreadfully solemn; do you believe in dreams?” “I can’t say that I do,” returned Mr. Lincoln; “but I had one the other night which has haunted me ever since. After it occurred, the first time I opened the Bible, strange as it may appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, which relates the wonderful dream Jacob had. I turned to other passages, and seemed to encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked. I kept on turning the leaves of the old book, and everywhere my eye fell upon passages recording matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts -- supernatural visitations, dreams, visions, etc.” He now looked so serious and disturbed that Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed: “You frighten me! What is the matter?” “I am afraid,” said Mr. Lincoln, observing the effect his words had upon his wife, “that I have done wrong to mention the subject at all; but somehow the thing has got possession of me, and, like Banquo’s ghost, it will not down.” This only inflamed Mrs. Lincoln’s curiosity the more, and while bravely disclaiming any belief in dreams, she strongly urged him to tell the dream which seemed to have such a hold upon him, being seconded in this by another listener. Mr. Lincoln hesitated, but at length commenced very deliberately, his brow overcast with a shade of melancholy. “About ten days ago,” he said, “I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin!’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.” “That is horrid!” said Mrs. Lincoln. “I wish you had not told it. I am glad I don’t believe in dreams, or I should be in terror from this time forth.” “Well,” responded Mr. Lincoln, thoughtfully, “it is only a dream, Mary. Let us say no more about it, and try to forget it.” This dream was so horrible, so real, and so in keeping with other dreams and threatening presentiments of his, that Mr. Lincoln was profoundly disturbed by it. During its recital he was grave, gloomy, and at times visibly pale, but perfectly calm. He spoke slowly, with measured accents and deep feeling. In conversations with me he referred to it afterward, closing one with this quotation from *Hamlet*: “To sleep; perchance to dream! ay, *there’s the rub!*” -- with a strong accent on the last three words. Once the President alluded to this terrible dream with some show of playful humor. “Hill,” he said, “your apprehension of harm to me from some hidden enemy is downright foolishness. For a long time you have been trying to keep somebody -- the Lord knows who -- from killing me. Don’t you see how it will turn out? In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on someone else. And this reminds me of an old farmer in Illinois whose family were made sick by eating greens. Some poisonous herb had got into the mess, and members of the family were in danger o of dying. There was a half-witted boy in the family called Jake; and always afterward when they had greens the old man would say, ‘Now, afore we risk these greens, *let’s try ‘em on Jake. If he stands ‘em*, we’re all right.’ Just so with me. As long as this imaginary assassin continues to exercise himself on others I can stand it.” He then became serious and said: “Well, let it go. I think the Lord in His own good time and way will work this out all right. God knows what is best.” These words he spoke with a sigh, and rather in a tone of soliloquy, as if hardly noting my presence. (Now, continuing on with Sandburg --) Chapter 65 “The Calendar Says Good Friday” . . . Killed in action or dead from wounds and disease were some 620,000 Americans, 360,000 from the North, 260,000 from the South -- planted in the tomb of the earth, spectral and shadowy. They were phantoms never absent from Lincoln’s thoughts. Possibly from that vanished host, rather than from the visible and living, Lincoln took his main direction and moved as though the word “reconciliation” could have supreme beauty if he could put it to work. . . . The sunset of the Confederacy had shaded over into evening stars, into lasting memories of a Lost Cause. Some would find welfare and kindness in the old Union. Two sections of the country fought a duel and came out with honors enough for both -- this was the philosophy of some who really loved two flags -- and why was a mystery, their personal secret. Some who had starved and suffered and taken wounds in the rain and lived on the food of rats and lost everything except a name for valor and endurance -- some of these could never repent or be sorry. As Davis packed his kit for moving farther south he knew there were not a few in the North who wished to see him hang on a sour-apple tree. One report credited Lincoln with saying: “This talk about Mr. Davis tires me. I hope he will mount a fleet horse, reach the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and ride so far into its waters that we shall never see him again.” * * * Interlude: (From *Jefferson Davis: Tragic Hero*, 1964, the third book of Hudson Strode’s three volume biography.) . . . In May [1875], while he was in Jackson, Mississippi, on legal business, telegrams of invitation poured in from Texas. The press announced his coming to appear at the Agricultural Fair at Houston, before he had actually consented. So he felt obligated not to disappoint his friends. At Houston, when Davis stepped out of the train at 7:45 in the evening of May 10, he received an overwhelming greeting. His old friend ex-Governor Lubbock was on hand, . . . . . . Davis wrote his wife on May 15 that he had been “so strongly urged to go to Austin and Dallas” that he had consented to do so. The people here in Houston have been more than kind and in general wish to make it my interest to remain with them. Some propose the Presidency of the Agricultural Mechanical College, . . . The route from Austin to Dallas passes by Bryan, the site of the College, and gives an opportunity to see it. . . . Though while in Houston Davis had verbally been offered the Presidency of the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, He now received a formal offer from Governor Richard Coke, dated June 14, 1875. His salary would be $4,000 a year “with a residence, properly furnished, and as much land as he desired for gardens.” The Governor declared that the Texas people “would never cease to love and honor” him, and that he knew of no living man whose name and efforts could do so much towards accomplishing the building up of the college. Gratified by the warm tone of Coke’s letter, for a month Davis considered accepting the position. In the meantime his family protested stoutly that the burden would be too great a strain. And Davis did doubt that his wife could ever become adjusted to the searing heat of Texas and the isolation of Bryan. When it became generally known in Mississippi that the Presidency of Texas A and M had been offered him, Davis received many letters and many callers insisting that he decline and spend the balance of his life in Mississippi. . . . On July 14 Davis finally declined the Texas offer. It had been a hard decision, for he felt that Texas was perhaps destined one day to be “the most useful, most necessary and most important” State in the Union. . . . [Texas A&M University opened in 1876.] . . . On November 12, 1889, Jefferson Davis wrote his wife what proved to be his last letter. He was so near delirium that he misspelled some words and left out others entirely. My deerest If I can get to the landing I will go down on the heathers [*Leathers*, the riverboat] to-morrow -- Lest you should hear alarming I write say I have suffered much but by the help of the Lord -- Nothing is as it should be, and I am not able even to look at the place -- With best wishes to all the household I am as ever Your Husband In the phrase “nothing is as it should be,” Davis unconsciously epitomized the frustrations of his last quarter century and the ending of an era. [The next day he took the riverboat for New Orleans.] . . . [In New Orleans the evening of December 5,] . . . Mrs. Davis poured out a spoonful of medicine and brought it to his bedside. He smiled wanly and made a slight negative movement with his head. She insisted. With a gentle gesture, he pushed her hand from him and murmured courteously: “Pray excuse me. I cannot take it.” They were the last words the ex-President spoke. He closed his eyes and seemed to lose consciousness. . . . It was seven o’clock before the two physicians arrived. As Mr. Davis became comatose, they agreed that the end would not be long in coming. There was nothing they could do for him. He just lay there peacefully, without a trace of pain, his hand in his wife’s. . . . . . . Time merged into the Friday morning of December 6, 1889. Three quarters of an hour later the faint breathing stopped altogether. The thread of life was broken with the utmost gentleness. The great spirit of Jefferson Davis was no longer connected with his frail mortal body. * * * Lincoln sat for a photograph by Alexander Gardner -- and for the first time when facing a camera in the four years of his administration permitted a smile to wreath his face. Until this camera register in the second week of April ‘65, he had most often been grave and somber. Now he smiled. The hurricane was spent, the high storm winds gone down. Rough weather and choppy seas were ahead -- but the worst was over and could not come again. He hoped for good will and mutual trust and let that hope shine on his face. . . . . . . On the calendar it was Holy Week and April 14th was Good Friday. Some were to say they had never before this week seen such a shine of beneficence, such a kindling glow, on Lincoln’s face. He was down to lean flesh and bone, 30 pounds underweight, his cheeks haggard, yet the inside of him moved to a music of peace on earth and good will to men. He let it come out in the photograph Gardner made this Holy Week. The schedule for this day as outlined beforehand was: office business till eight; breakfast and then interviews till the Cabinet meeting at 11; luncheon, more interviews, a late afternoon drive with Mrs. Lincoln; an informal meeting with old Illinois friends; during the day and evening one or more trips to the War Department; another interview, then to the theater with Mrs. Lincoln and a small party. Such was the prepared docket for this Good Friday. The city of Washington outside the White House kept on being gay. Flags and bunting still flew across streets. Churchgoers in large numbers heard Good Friday sermons of the Prince of Peace having brought unutterable blessings to the country. In Washington General Grant had arrived from the front, heard shouts of welcome, and in trying to walk from his hotel to the War Department had to call on the police to help make a path through the curious, cheering throngs. . . . . . . Lincoln was disinclined to go to the theater party planned by Mrs. Lincoln. . . . But Mrs. Lincoln had set her heart on it, and on his suggestion she invited General and Mrs. Grant. And General Grant accepted, the newspapers were announcing. Grant however had changed his mind. . . . The General himself, anyone who knew him would testify, could see no fun in such a social evening. Grant sat that morning in his first session with a President and a Cabinet. Welles wrote in his diary the President’s comment on re-establishing law and order and new state governments in the South. . . . Early in this Good Friday session of the Cabinet curiosity was sharp about army news. Stanton had not arrived. Grant said he was hourly expecting to hear from Sherman. Wrote Welles: “The President remarked it would, he had no doubt, come soon, and come favorable, for he had last night the usual dream which he had preceding nearly every great and important event of the War. Generally the news had been favorable which succeeded this dream, and the dream itself was always the same. I inquired what this remarkable dream could be. He said it related to your (my) element, the water; that he seemed to be in some singular, indescribable vessel, and that he was moving with great rapidity towards an indefinite shore; that he had this dream preceding Sumter, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, Wilmington, etc. General Grant said Stone River was certainly no victory, and he knew of no great results which followed from it. The President said however that might be, his dream preceded that fight. ‘I had,’ the President remarked, ‘This strange dream again last night, and we shall, judging from the past, have great news very soon. I think it must be from Sherman. My thoughts are in that direction, as are most of yours.’” . . . A long afternoon carriage drive made an interlude. Mrs. Lincoln told Crook and others later of her query whether some friends should be invited for this drive, Lincoln saying No, he wanted “just ourselves.” As the carriage rolled along he talked about the next four years in Washington, how he hoped afterward perhaps for a trip abroad, then a return to Springfield, perhaps law practice and a prairie farm on the banks of the Sangamon. Mrs. Lincoln spoke too of a happiness moving him, a happiness so strange and unusual that she could not read it, and it troubled her. She quoted him as saying, “I never felt so happy in my life,” and a fear crossed her as she replied, “Don’t you remember feeling just so before our little boy died?” Walking over to the War Department late this afternoon of April 14, Lincoln did one thing perhaps for the first time. Always others had brought up the matter of possible harm to come to him -- and he had laughed them off or promised to take care. In this instance it was Lincoln who first mentioned it, according to Crook’s account. They passed some drunken men, profane, violent, irresponsible. And Lincoln turned, saying, “Crook, do you know, I believe there are men who want to take my life?” And after a pause, half to himself, “And I have no doubt they will do it.” Lincoln’s tone was so calm and sure that Crook found himself saying, “Why do you think so, Mr. President?” “Other men have been assassinated” -- this still in the manner of half talking to himself. “I hope you are mistaken, Mr. President,” offered Crook. And after a few paces in silence, Lincoln in a more ordinary tone: “I have perfect confidence in those who are around me -- in every one of you men. I know no one could do it and escape alive. But if it is to be done, it is impossible to prevent it.” . . . After a short conference in Stanton’s office Lincoln came out, Crook noticing that the “depression” or “intense seriousness” had passed. “He talked to me as usual.” Of the theater party planned for the evening he said: “It has been advertised that we will be there, and I cannot disappoint the people. Otherwise I would not go. I do not want to go.” This surprised Crook, who knew well the ease and enjoyment Lincoln usually found at the theater. So Crook meditated, “It seems unusual to hear him say he does not want to go tonight.” At the White House door he stood facing his guard a moment and then, “Good-bye, Crook.” This puzzled Crook somewhat. Until then it had always been “Good-night, Crook.” . . . Another account of April 14, 1865, from *The Lincoln Reader* -- Chapter Twenty-four Part 2 On the morning of April 14, Lincoln asked Frederick W. Seward, acting as Secretary of State during his father’s incapacity, to call the Cabinet together at eleven o’clock. Again there was talk of a dream. Seward recalls the occasion. I sent out the notices, and at the appointed hour came Secretaries McCulloch and Welles; Postmaster General Dennison and Attorney General Speed soon arrived, and I appeared as representative of the State Department. Mr. Lincoln, with an expression of visible relief and content upon his face, sat in his study chair, by the south window, chatting with us over “the great news.” Some curiosity was expressed as to what had become of the rebel government -- whether they would escape from the country, or would remain to be captured and tried; and if tried, what penalty would be visited upon them? . . . The conversation turning upon the subject of sleep, Mr. Lincoln remarked that a peculiar dream of the previous night was one that had occurred several times in his life -- a vague sense of floating -- floating away on some vast and indistinct expanse, toward an unknown shore. The dream itself was not so strange as the coincidence that each of its previous recurrences had been followed by some important event or disaster, which he mentioned. The usual comments were made by his auditors. One thought it was merely a matter of coincidences. Another laughingly remarked, “At any rate it cannot presage a victory nor a defeat this time, for the war is over.” I suggested, “Perhaps at each of these periods there were possibilities of great change or disaster, and the vague feeling of uncertainty may have led to the dim vision in sleep.” “Perhaps,” said Mr. Lincoln, thoughtfully, “perhaps that is the explanation.” Mr. Stanton was the last to arrive. He brought with him a large roll of paper, upon which he had been at work. General Grant entered, in accordance with the President's invitation, and was received with cordial welcomes and congratulations. He briefly and modestly narrated the incidents of the surrender. Mr. Lincoln’s face glowed with approval when, in reply to his inquiry, “What terms did you make for the common soldiers?” General Grant said, “I told them to go back to their homes and families, and they would not be molested, if they did nothing more.” Kindly feeling toward the vanquished, and hearty desire to restore peace and safety at the South, with as little harm as possible to the feelings or the property of the inhabitants, pervaded the whole discussion. At such a meeting, in such a time, there could be but one question -- the restoration or re-establishment of the Federal Union. The conference was long and earnest, . . . . . . The Secretary of War then unrolled his sheets of paper, on which he had drafted the outlines of reconstruction, embodying the President’s views, and, as it was understood, those of the other members of the Cabinet. . . . It must have been about two o’clock when the Cabinet meeting ended. At its close, the President remarked that he had been urged to visit the theatre that evening, and asked General Grant if he would join the party. The General excused himself, as he had a previous engagement. He took his leave, and some of the others followed him. . . . Now, simply entertainment, yet modesty forbids my publishing a transcript: The Discourses of Several Heathers, from the motion picture *Heathers* (1988). Heathers_1_CroquetSera (0:44) Heathers_2_intoTheCafPronto (1:35) Heathers_3_SpewBurritoChunks (0:50) Heathers_4_GentlyWithaChainSaw (1:36) (my personal favorite) http://roswell.fortunecity.com/lefanu/539/heather/heather.html . . . Whatever will be, will be The future's not ours to see . . . What will be, will be * * * * * * Reply to: angel_marvelzombie@yahoo.com