[From Le Pays, April 28, 1865.]
MR. LINCOLN.
President Lincoln has fallen under the ball of an assassin, at the moment when the rare honor of a re-election crowned with eclat his political life—at the moment when victory pronounced definitively for the arms of the North.
We are not among those who have approved of everything that has been done in Mr. Lincoln’s administration. We have never hesitated to speak the truth about him, however severe it may appear to have been. Upon points to which a portion of the French press gave a blind admiration, we ourselves, with candor and firmness under the loyal impulse of our conscience, observed a necessary reserve.
More than once we have had occasion to censure an unfortunate choice—more than once to regret imprudent or illegitimate acts. Having never been the flatterers of Mr. Lincoln, we are, on that account, more at liberty now to declare that we lament from the bottom of our heart this most cruel death, and that we condemn in the strongest possible manner this detestable crime.
Mr. Lincoln was an excellent man, and united in himself everything which can constitute the character of a great citizen.
In the terrible crisis during which Providence put into his hands the destinies of America, he showed an unalterable firmness, and a confidence beyond all praise in the rightfulness of his mission, and in the future of his cause.
Assuredly, the American people reckon amongst the glorious list of her Presidents men who were, in intelligence, superior to Mr. Lincoln, but there were none who were above him in largeness of heart; in the vigor of patriotism; in tenacity of will; in the energy of the active faculties. Thus these masculine and simple characteristics, with the truly democratic stamp of roughness and primitive austerity, will not fail to occupy an honorable place in the history of our time.
What will be the consequences, in a political point of view, of this bloody event? That, however, is what we shall soon learn; moreover it would seem to us to be impious, at this early hour of grief and sorrow, when so much and such mournful news is constantly reaching us from the other side of the Atlantic.
[Page 136]All that we have at heart to-day is to render sorrowful homage to the memory of an honest man, struck down by an assassin in the midst of a renewed career and a triumphant achievement, and to address to the American nation, so cruelly deprived of their chief, the expression of our sympathy and fraternal grief.