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toward Atlanta with Sherman that she “quake[d] all night with terror.” Even her normally cheerful father was perpetually “grave & anxious,” certain that if Frank were taken prisoner, the Confederates “would be as eager to kill him physically—as the Radicals are politically.” Bates feared for his twenty-one-year-old son, Coalter, who was with General Meade and the Army of the Potomac, and Welles was pained “beyond what I can describe” when his eighteen-year-old son, Thomas, departed “with boyish pride and enthusiasm” to join General Grant. “It was uncertain whether we should ever meet again,” he recorded in his diary, “and if we do he may be mutilated, and a ruined man.” His anxiety left Welles “sad, and unfit for any labor.” The painful apprehension within the administration mirrored the fears experienced in hundreds of thousands of homes throughout the country.

Lincoln knew the ravages of this most bloody war had touched every town and household of America. The time had come to revive the oppressed spirits of the people. In mid-June, he found the perfect forum for a public speech when he journeyed to the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia, designed to benefit the Sanitary Commission. Thousands of citizens had come from the surrounding area to enjoy the collections of art, statuary, and flowers, the zoological garden, restaurants, raffles, and games that covered a two-mile concourse and were said to offer “miracles as many as Faust saw in his journey through the world of magic.”

At seven o’clock on the morning of June 16, Lincoln, Mary, and Tad left for Philadelphia by train. Word of their journey had spread. At every depot along the way, cheering crowds gathered for a glimpse of the first family. Arriving before noon, they were escorted in an open carriage up Broad Street to Chestnut Street and the Continental Hotel. The streets were “lined with citizens” and the windows “crowded with ladies waving their handkerchiefs.” The unbounded ardor and spontaneous applause was such, one reporter noted, “as has not been heard for many a day in Philadelphia.” Lincoln declined to speak at the hotel or at the fairgrounds that afternoon, preferring to wait until the dinner that evening. Perhaps he knew that his remarks, which he had carefully drafted, would be recorded more accurately in that setting.

“War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible,” he began. “It has destroyed property, and ruined homes; it has produced a national debt and taxation unprecedented…. It has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the ‘heavens are hung in black.’” Nonetheless, he reminded his listeners, “We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will until that time.” The force of his words and the unshakable determination they embodied instantly uplifted and emboldened his audience.

A few days later, in order to stem his own “intense anxiety” about the stalemate in Virginia, Lincoln decided to visit Grant at his headquarters at City Point. Welles strongly disapproved of the decision. “He can do no good,” he predicted. “It can hardly be otherwise than to do harm, even if no accident befalls him. Better for him and the country that he should remain at his post here.” The navy secretary failed to understand the importance of these trips to Lincoln, who needed the contact with the troops to lift his own spirits so that he, in turn, could better buoy the spirits of those around him.

Accompanied by Tad and Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox, Lincoln left the Washington Navy Yard aboard the river steamer Baltimore in the early evening of June 20. The journey to City Point, which was about 180 miles farther south by water than Aquia Creek, took more than sixteen hours. Horace Porter, Grant’s aide-de-camp, recalled that when the steamer arrived at the wharf, Lincoln “came down from the upper deck…and reaching out his long, angular arm, he wrung General Grant’s hand