Lincoln In Petersburg

At noon on April 7, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln traveled from City Point to Petersburg on the newly repaired City Point Railroad with Mary Todd Lincoln, their son Tad, Elizabeth Keckley, Sen. Charles Sumner, and Adm. David Porter, and the party went to Centre Hill, headquarters of Union Gen. George L. Hartsuff, commanding officer of the Petersburg garrison. While the others toured the house, Lincoln and Hartsuff discussed the temper of Petersburg’s white population, probably in the study off the stair hall. Hartsuff suggested that Lincoln might rent Centre Hill from its owners, Robert Buckner Bolling and his wife, who were still at a country place in northern Virginia, and Lincoln, looking at the shell-torn walls, remarked that Federal batteries had “made rent enough here already.” On the return trip to City Point, Lincoln shared Hartsuff’s encouraging view that animosity in the town was abating and that the inhabitants accepted the final downfall of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery as accomplished facts, with new reason for confidence in the future each day. Eight days later, Lincoln lay dying in Washington with Sumner holding his hand. In March 1865, Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had invited Lincoln to City Point for a respite from the capital as the nine-and-a-half-month siege of Petersburg neared its end, and Lincoln arrived on March 24. There he met with Grant, reviewed the army, and toured fortifications. On April 3, the day Federals occupied Richmond and Petersburg, Lincoln and Grant held their last meeting in Petersburg. Lincoln visited Richmond the next day and returned to Washington on April 9 as Grant accepted the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox Court House.

Petersburg, Virginia · United States