[From the Siècle, April 28, 1865.]
The American republic had triumphed over the rebellion of the slave States; nothing more was required than to subdue the difficulties of peace itself. The man who had accomplished the first of these tasks, and was on the point of effecting the second, Abraham Lincoln, has just fallen beneath the blow of a secessionist. Slavery, therefore, has its fanatics!
What was Lincoln before the suffrages of his fellow-citizens placed him at the, head of the republic? A carpenter. Then a grocer, taking advantage of his brief intervals of leisure to study the law. Charged with the government of one of the greatest nations in the world, in a crisis the most terrible in its history, the ex-carpenter showed himself equal to the situation. It will be the same with him who succeeds Mr. Lincoln in so unexpected a manner, and who, like his predecessor, attained to the rank he occupies by the various gradations of labor. The great republic will pursue the course of her glorious career. As for the man who has just paid with his life for the place which history [Page 141] reserves for him, by the side of Washington, he goes down to the grave followed by the regret of the whole world. We should utter our own feelings of sorrow with greater emotion if the calm and simple figure which we have just employed did not arrest our pen, and impose upon us a degree of tranquillity and simplicity.
While one of the assassins killed Mr. Lincoln, another penetrated into the room of Mr. Seward, who was in bed suffering from an accident reported in all the journals, and stabbed him repeatedly with a dagger. The son of Mr. Seward lost his life in endeavoring to defend his father. It was only by an accident that General Grant himself escaped death. On the departure of the mail, Mr. Seward was still living. May his life be spared to find in the esteem and respect of every friend of liberty some compensation for the loss which he has just sustained as a father and a citizen. A distinguished writer, an eloquent speaker, Mr. Seward has been able to show what he was worth, as a statesman, under the most difficult and delicate circumstances. Thanks to him that northern America has been able to preserve an attitude at once calm and firm in the face of foreign powers, which have been nearly all either ill-disposed or hostile.