Surrenders of the Civil War | From Appomattox to Citronelle

 

The Strange Life of Robert Todd Lincoln

Robert Todd Lincoln (August 1, 1843 – July 26, 1926) was an American lawyer and businessman. The eldest son of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, he was the only one of their four children to survive past 18 and also the only one to outlive both his parents.

Most students of history probably recall these basic facts about Abraham Lincoln's oldest son, yet, he is also the equivalent of a real-life Forrest Gump. 

Consider just a few of these historical moments that he either witnessed or was directly part of: 

Sometime in either late 1864 or early 1864, he was saved from possible serious injury or death by Edwin Booth, whose brother, John Wilkes Booth, would go on to assassinate Robert's father. This event took place on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. 

He served on General Grant's staff for almost five months, during which he witnessed Robert E Lee's surrender at Appotomax. 

On the night his father was assassinated, Robert had turned down an invitation to accompany his parents to Ford's Theatre due to fatigue after spending much of his recent time in a covered wagon at the battlefront. The president was moved to the Petersen House after the shooting, where Robert attended his father's deathbed.

Lincoln was an eyewitness when Charles J. Guiteau shot President James A. Garfield at the Sixth Street Train Station in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881. Lincoln was Garfield's Secretary of War at the time.

He was also present at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, when President William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz. Though not an eyewitness, he was just outside the Temple of Music when the shooting occurred.

Lincoln himself recognized these coincidences. He is said to have refused a later presidential invitation with the comment, "No, I'm not going, and they'd better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present."

"Life Is Fleeting . . . "

"Life is fleeting; it just slips through your fingers. All vanishes like mist." - Ecclesiastes 12:8

As I write these words I'm reminded of Harold Schweizer’s book, On Waiting. An idea that he proposes is that when we are waiting for something, time is passing us by. Or at least, that’s what we think. But time doesn’t pass us by. Actually, he says, we are the ones that are passing by.

Mortality, the sense that time happens, that we are in time, and that our time will end, is responsible for much anxiety. The writer of Ecclesiastes had the same feeling. All is vanity. It’s all meaningless, because, in the end, we’re all going to die: “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.” (Ecclesiastes 1:4)

And yet during our march past the constant, watching eyes of time, we are all destined, for at least one moment in our lives, with a confrontation with "The Truth". The truth of our mortality, our helplessness, and our sinful nature measured against the standard of the law of our Creator.

"NUTS!"

“Men, we are surrounded by the enemy. We have the greatest opportunity ever presented an army. We can attack in any direction.” - Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe

On December 22, 1944, at about 11:30 in the morning, a group of four German soldiers, waving two white flags, approached the American lines using the Arlon Road from the direction of Remoifosse, south of Bastogne. The group consisted of two officers and two enlisted men. 

The Americans defending in that location were members of F Company of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. The Germans walked past a bazooka team in a foxhole in front of the Kessler farm and stopped in front of the foxhole of PFC Leo Palma, a B.A.R. gunner. The Germans explained that they had a written message to be presented to the American Commander in Bastogne.

They consented to being blindfolded and taken to the American Commanding Officer. In fact, they had brought blindfolds with them. The German surrender demand was typewritten on two sheets. One was in English, the other in German. They had been typed on an English typewriter as indicated by the fact that the diacritical marks required on the German copy had been entered by hand.