From the Siècle
a great democratic martyr.
Slavery, before expiring, has summoned up what remained to it of power and rage, in order to strike from behind the man by whom it was to be overthrown.
The satanic pride of misperverted society could not be resigned to defeat. It would not fall with honor, like other causes, destined to rise again. It expired as it had lived, by violating every law, human and divine.
There is the spirit and probably the work of the famous secret association of the Golden Circle, which, after having for twenty years made preparations for the great rebellion, spread its accomplices throughout the west and the north, and around the chair of the President gave the signal for that impious war on the day when public conscience at last snatched from the slaveholders the government of the United States.
On the day when the good man of whom they have just made a martyr was, raised to power, they endeavored to carry into effect what had been concocted by treason.
But they failed; not succeeding in overthrowing Lincoln by the force of war they felled him by assassination.
The conspiracy appeared to have been a most desperate one. In assailing with the President his two principal ministers, on one of whom an attempt was made, and the commander-in-chief, who was saved by an unforeseen circumstance, the murderers reckoned upon disorganizing the government of the republic, and imagine that they were resuscitating the rebellion.
Their expectations will be disappointed. These sanguinary fanatics, whose cause is much less damaged by material superiority than by the moral power of the democracy, had become incapable of comprehending the nature and the results of the free institutions which their fathers had gloriously contributed to establish. We shall see a fresh example of what these institutions are able to effect.
The indignation of the people will not be exhausted in a passing explosion; it will become concentrated, it will be resumed in the unanimous action, persevering and invincible, of the universal will. Whoever are to be the agents, the instruments of this work, we may rest assured that it will be accomplished. The event will show that it was not dependent upon the life of one man, or upon several men. It will be accomplished after Lincoln, as well as it was [Page 142] accomplished by him, but Lincoln will remain the austere and sacred personification of a great epoch, the most faithful exponent of democracy.
This man, simple and upright, strong and prudent, raised by degrees to the command of a great people, and always equal to the situation, executing quietly and without precipitation, and with excellent good sense, the most colossal undertakings, giving to the world an example of civil power in a republic, directing a gigantic war without for a moment compromising free institutions, or threatening them with military usurpation, dying at last at the moment when having conquered, he was about to pacify the country, (and God grant that the atrocious madman who killed him may not have destroyed with him the feeling of clemency, and determined upon pacification by force, instead of the peace which he desired!) this man will live in the traditions of his country and of the world, in some sort the embodiment of the people, modern democracy itself. It was necessary, then, that the blood of the just should seal the great work of emancipation, which the blood of the just had inaugurated! The tragic history of the abolition of slavery, opened with the gibbet of John Brown, will close with the assassination of Lincoln.
And now let him repose by the side of Washington, as the second founder of the great republic! The whole of the democracy in Europe is present in spirit at his funeral obsequies, in the same way, that it heartily voted for his re-election, and applauded the victory, in the arms of which he has fallen. Democracy will identify itself wholly and directly with the monument which America will raise to him in the capital in which he cast down slavery.