Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

IN CIVIL WAR TIME

35

John Hay is authority for the statement that Mr. Lincoln
found no dissenting opinion among his advisers at the
table. That same afternoon Dana, just returned from
Richmond in company with Grant, received a telegram
informing the War Department that Jacob Thompson
of Mississippi, the Confederate commissioner who had
been Buchanan's secretary of the interior, was expected
to pass through Portland in disguise, on his way from
Canada to England. Secretary Stanton was for arresting
Mr. Thompson when he arrived in Maine by the Grand
Trunk, but he sent Dana over to the White House to consult the President. Lincoln was found in his shirt-sleeves,
in the little closet off his office, washing his hands.
"Halloa, Dana," he said, "What is it now?"
Dana told him that the department had an opportunity
to arrest Thompson, and that Mr. Stanton thought it
ought to be done.
"Well," drawled Lincoln, "I think not. When you
have an elephant on hand and he wants to run away,
better let him run."
That was but a few hours before Abraham Lincoln lay
unconscious in the Petersen house, whither he had been
borne from the stage-box in Ford's Theatre. Dana was
with Stanton till two o'clock in the room next the deathchamber, preparing despatches for the wires. Then he
went home to sleep. He was aroused in the morning by
Colonel Pelouze, one of the assistants of the adjutantgeneral.
"Mr. Dana," said Pelouze, "Mr. Lincoln is dead and
Mr. Stanton directs you to arrest Jacob Thompson."
This story has been told with trifling variations and it
may be proper to add that the version given here was

read and approved by Mr. Dana before it was published
in McClur 's Magazine three years before the death of
the original narrator. Jacob Thompson was not arrested.
He left the Dominion by way of Halifax.