[From the Temps, April 28, 1865.]
The fresh and grievous details which we receive of the lamentable tragedy at Washington leaves scarcely any room for the doubt we expressed yesterday. The assassination perpetrated on President Lincoln, on Mr. Seward, and intended for Mr. Stanton, minister of war, and probably also for General Grant, is indeed the result of a political plot. American despatches confirm it, and it is the unanimous impression of the English press. We cannot help remembering, besides, that the passions which have just struck down Mr. Lincoln, conspired against him at the time of his first election, and that on going from Springfield to Washington to be installed, he was nearly being assassinated a Baltimore, in February, 1861.
Let us take care, however, not to fall into a too common error, and charge the whole of the southern people with the execrable crime, which completes the downfall of their cause. No doubt there are many in the rebel States, many who do not repudiate with horror the atrocity of this vengeance, and many politicians who do not look upon the evil as irremediable.
How are we to understand, for example, that a man like General Lee, if he were not bound by his word of honor, given to General Grant, if he still believed the struggle to be possible, would consent to resume his sword and place it again in the service of a cause dishonored by assassination? The wretches who killed Mr. Lincoln have at the same time destroyed the South.
It is probable that they meditated more than a simple act of vengeance. In their eyes, perhaps, the chief crime of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward was not that they had triumphed over the South, but rather that they had proclaimed a policy of moderation and conciliation which would assure to the restored Union peace with foreign nations, and the respect of the world. To create irreconcilable hatred between the two sections of the Union; to exasperate the North; to replace temperate chiefs of the States by men of an opposite character; to substitute passion for wisdom, and to hurl the United States into the dangerous hazard peculiar to violence and anarchy—this was no doubt what they desired [Page 144] to effect, but in which they have not succeeded. They have misunderstood human nature, in taking no account of the horror which would be excited by their act, even in the south, and they have not the less misconceived the imperishable destiny of the United States. We associate ourselves with the general grief, but we share in no way whatever the apprehensions which we perceive are attached to it. The United States will not fail in any of the duties prescribed to them by the situation of affairs. The policy which Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward have had the honor of sealing with their blood will be the policy of their successors; for the latter cannot deviate from it without making themselves the dupes and the accomplices of assassins.