[From the London Evening Star, May 2, 1865.]
the assassination of president lincoln.
Important meeting of Americans.
In accordance with an influentially signed requisition to Mr. Adams, the American ambassador, a public meeting of Americans, resident in London, was [Page 276] held yesterday at St. James’s Hall, in order to give expression to their feelings respecting the late distressing intelligence from America. The ball presented the same singularly effective and sombre appearance as on the occasion of the great demonstration last Saturday evening, under the auspices of the Emancipation Society, the entire front of the balconies being draped with black cloth, bordered with white lace, and festooned with cord of the same hue, and the front of the upper gallery being tastefully decorated with three American flags grouped together, and whose drooping folds were looped with crape, while the staves of the wand-bearers were tipped with the same material. Although the hour appointed (three o’clock) might be considered rather inconvenient, the attendance was very numerous. An hour before the time appointed the principal corridors leading to the hall were quite thronged with ladies and gentlemen waiting for admission, and soon after the doors were thrown open the spacious hall became comfortably filled. By the time appointed for commencing the proceedings the platform, which it is well known is of very large dimensions, presented quite a crowded appearance. Some few minutes after three o’clock Mr. Adams, accompanied by a large number of gentlemen, ascended the platform. His appearance was the signal for loud applause, and after taking the chair his excellency had several times to bow his acknowledgments. Among those present were Mr. Benjamin Moran, secretary of legation; Mr. Dennis R. Alward, assistant secretary of legation; Hon. F. H. Morse, United States consul, London; Mr. Joshua Nunn, deputy United States consul, London; Mr. G. H. Abbott, United States consul, Sheffield; Mr. H. Bergh, late United States secretary of legation, St. Petersburg; Lord Houghton, Alderman Salomons, Hon. A, Kinnaird, Hon. Lyulph Stanley, Mr. H. T. Parker, Mr. C. M. Fisher, Mr. James M’Henry, Mr. Gerald Ralston, consul general of Liberia; Mr. T. B. Potter, M. P.; Mr. John Goddard, Dr. W. R. Ballard, Dr. J. R. Black, Mr. C. M. Lampson, Mr. J. S. Morgan, Mr. Russell Sturgis, Judge Winter, Dr. Howard, Mr. Mason Jones, Colonel J. S. Chester, Captain E. G. Tinker, Mr. Gilead A. Smith, Mr. B. F. Brown, Mr. Nathan Thompson, Dr. E. G. Ludlow, Mr. C. Coutoit, Mr. H. G. Somerby, Mr. Horatio Ward, Dr. W. Darling, Mr. John Brougham, Mr. Charles Button, Rev. Dr. Storr, Mr. W. R. Dempster, Mr. James Beal, Mr. Marshall Woody, Captain Tomkin, General Tom Thumb, Commodore Nutt, Rev. Cramond Kennedy, Mr. Henry Stevens, Dr. Fred. Robinson, Dr. C. R. Nicholl, Mr. George Ross, Captain Richardson, (San Francisco,) Rev. Daniel Bliss, Rev. E. L. Cleveland, Mr. C. F. Dennet, Mr. E. G. Coates, Mr. T. B. Hubbell, Mr. George Atkinson, Mr. Edmond Beales, Mr. R. Hunting, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Os-good Field, Mr. Edward Thornton, Mr. John B. Stephenson, Mr. Levi Coffin, (Cincinnati, Ohio,) Mr. Stafford Allen, Mr. Peach, Mr. Massey, Mr. Phillips, (Wisconsin,) Mr. Westerton, Mr. John H. Goodnow, United States consul at Constantinople, Mr. M. D. Conway, &c.
The chairman, on entering the hall, was received with most enthusiastic applause, which was repeated on his rising to address the meeting. Silence having been restored, he said:
Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been desired to call you together for the sake of giving some common form of expression to our emotions, stirred up as they have been by the late fearful calamity. In presence of such an awful event, we are forcibly impressed not merely with the commonplace idea of mortal vicissitude, but with the more solemn idea of keeping ourselves wholly free from the indulgence of any unworthy passion. The ordinary jars of human life are hushed before such a catastrophe. A great Virginian statesman once said that “he trembled for his country when he reflected that God is just.” The dreaded visitation appears to have come upon us in the third and fourth generation. Let us endeavor to bear ourselves with patience and humility. But while acknowledging our shortcomings, let us draw closer and closer together while we unite in one earnest wail of sorrow [Page 277] for our loss, for I may be permitted to observe that in this loss the bereavement is wholly our own. We are entirely to bear the responsibility of it. The man who has fallen was immolated for no act of his own. It may well be doubted whether, during his whole career, he ever made a single personal enemy. In this peculiarity he shone prominent among statesmen. No; he who perpetrated the crime had no narrow purpose. It was because Abraham Lincoln was a faithful exponent of the sentiments of a whole people that he was stricken down. The blow that was aimed at him was meant to fall home upon them. The ball that penetrated his brain was addressed to the heart of each and every one of us. It was a fancied short way of paralyzing the government which we have striven so hard to maintain. It was, then, for our cause that Abraham Lincoln died, and not his own. If he was called a tyrant who was elevated to his high post by the spontaneous voices of a greater number of men than had ever been given in any republic before, it is only because he was obeying the wishes of those who elected him. It is we who must stand responsible for his deeds. It is he who has paid the penalty for executing our will. Surely, then, this is the strongest of reasons why all of us should join, as with one voice, in a chorus of lamentation for his fall. It was one of the peculiar merits of Mr. Lincoln that he knew how to give shape in action to the popular feelings as they developed themselves under his observation. He never sought to lead, but rather to follow, and thus he succeeded in the difficult task of successfully combining conservatism with progress. This surely was not like tyranny. His labor was always to improve. Hence it was that he conducted a war of unexampled magnitude, always bearing in mind the primary purpose for which it had been commenced, at the same time that he associated with it broader ones as the opportunity came. He had pledged himself at the outset to accomplish certain objects, and he never forgot that pledge. The time had at last arrived when he might honestly claim that it would be fulfilled. It was in that very moment he was taken away. On the very same day of the year when the national flag, which just four years before had been lowered to triumphant enemies at Fort Sumter, was once more lifted to its original position by the hand of the same officer who had suffered the indignity that commenced the war, Abraham Lincoln fell. His euthanasia is complete. For him we ought not to mourn. His work was done; he had fought the good fight; he had finished his course. The grief is all for ourselves alone. And now we who stand around his body may well cry, “Go up, go up, with your gory temples twined with the evergreen symbols of a patriot’s wreath, and bearing the double glory of a martyr’s crown. Go up, while for us here remaining on earth your memory shall be garnered in the hearts of us and our latest posterity, in common with the priceless treasures heaped up by the great fathers of the republic, and close by that of the matchless Washington.” But although we profoundly lament this loss, it must not be presumed that we do so having no hope. We have parted with a most faithful servant. But the nation has not lost with him one atom of the will which animated others of its servants as fully as it did him. It is one of the notable features of this great struggle that it is not particular men who have attempted to lead on the people, but rather that the people have first given the tone, to the level of which their servants must come up, or else sink out of sight and be forgotten. They have uniformly designated to them their wishes. To one man they have said “Come up,” and to another, “Give way,” and in either case they have been as implicitly obeyed. Whoever it be that is employed, the spirit that must animate him comes from a higher source. The cause of the country, then, does not depend on any man or any set of men. It has now called to the front the individual whom it had already elevated to the second post in the government. He had been pointed out for that place by a sense of his approved fidelity to the Union at the moment when all around him were faltering or falling away. In the national Senate he stood Ahdiel-like, firm and determined in encountering with truth and force the fatal sophistry of Jefferson Davis [Page 278] and his associates, and in denouncing the course of action which was leading them to their ruin. Four years of intense and continued trials within the borders of his own State have been passed in the effort to reconstruct the edifice of civil government, which they had overthrown. No one has braved greater dangers to his person and to all that was held most precious to a man in this world than he. Those four years have not been passed without at once proving the firmness of his faith and the progressive nature of his ideas. He, too, has been susceptible to the influence of the national opinion. He, too, has gradually been brought to the conviction that slavery, which he once defended, has been our bane, and the cause of all our woe. And he, too, will follow his predecessor in making the recognition of the principle of human liberty the chief pathway to restoration. Maybe that he will color his policy with a little more of the sternness gathered from the severity of his own trials. He may give a greater prominence to the image of justice than to that of mercy in dealing with notorious offenders. But if he do, to whom is this change to be imputed 1 Lincoln leaned to mercy, and he was taken off. Johnson has not promoted himself. The magician who worked this change is the enemy himself. It would seem almost as if it were the will of Heaven which has interposed the possibility of this marvellous retribution. Yet, even if we make proper allowances for this difference, the great fact yet remains clear that Andrew Johnson, like his predecessor, will exert himself to the utmost of his power fully to re-establish in peace and harmony the beneficent system of government which he has clearly hazarded so much to sustain. And should it happen that he too, which Heaven avert, should by some evil design be removed from the post now assigned to him, the effect would only be that the next man in the succession prescribed by the public law, and inspired from the same common source, will be summoned to take his place. And so it would go on, if need be, in a line like that in Macbeth’s vision, “stretching out to the crack of doom.” The republic has but to command the services of any of her children, and whether to meet open danger in the field or the perils of the more crafty and desperate assassin, experience shows them equally ready to obey her call. So long as the heroic spirit animates her frame the requisite agents will not fail to execute her will. Any attempt to paralyze her by striking down more or less of them will only end, as every preceding design to injure her has ended, in disappointment and bitter despair. Let us, then, casting aside all needless apprehensions for the policy of our land, now concentrate our thoughts for the moment upon the magnitude of the offence which has deprived us of our beloved chief, in the very moment of most interest to our cause, and let us draw together as one man in the tribute of our admiration of one of the purest, the most single-minded, and noble-hearted patriots that ever ruled over the people of any land.
The Hon. Mr. Morse, in moving the first resolution, said: If he were to consult his own feelings, he should allow the resolution to pass in silence. To attempt to add anything to the atrocious crime which had brought them together was useless. All human language failed to make it clearer, or to convey any stronger impressions than the fact itself. Having expressed his profound sorrow at the fact, and his admiration of the noble character of the late President, he said there was this consolation—the lamentable event was calculated to hasten the coming of the day which the North and all who sympathized with their cause longed to see, namely, the restoration of the Union and the promulgation of liberty throughout the land. (Cheers.) This was not a fit time to go into the question of slavery, but they well remembered the various stages through which Mr. Lincoln had carried his country with the view to wipe out that black stain upon its banner. (Applause) Now that the head of the State was dead, it was necessary to take a calm survey. What remained, now that Lincoln was no more? Lincoln was dead, but America was not—it still lived. (Applause.) This brought him to consider who were left behind to fill up the [Page 279] gap. First, as regarded President Johnson; of him he could speak from personal experience. Twenty-one years ago he entered the Congress of the United States with Andrew Johnson, who was then the representative of the State of Tennessee. He was on a committee with him, and sat three or four times a week with him perhaps for the space of two years, and he said here, that throughout the whole of that period, and for three or four years subsequently, during which time his acquaintance with Andrew Johnson continued, he never heard one word whispered against his fair fame. (Loud cheers.) He never heard the reproach of intemperance cast upon him. (Hear, hear.) He had seen him daily, and knew him well, and he knew that to charge him with habitual intemperance was one of the vilest slanders that could be brought against him. (Cheers.) Johnson came from the ranks of the people. He had now been in public life some thirty years; commencing as an alderman, then mayor, afterwards a member of the lower House, from which he was in time advanced to the Senate, eventually made Vice-President, and now, by the providence of God, President of the United States. (Applause.) He was a little particular in making these facts known, because, after what had been represented against him, it was not to be wondered at if a want of confidence should manifest itself in regard to the stability, and particularly the foreign policy, of a government with such a man presiding over it. (Cries of “No, no.” “No, no.”) He was glad to hear that, for he believed in his heart there need not be the slightest mistrust of that noble man—a man, in whose honor let it be added, who had made his way from the ranks of the people upward to his present eminence by his own untiring perseverance and manly conduct. (Applause.) As had been remarked by the chairman, when in 1661 the United states seemed to be fast crumbling away; when senator after senator and member after member boldly gave in his resignation, or left his seat without making any sign that they intended joining in the rebellion, while Slidell and Mason were plotting underground—where was Andrew Johnson? He was contending loudly against the adversaries of the Union; he was protesting loudly against secession; he was upholding the flag of his country like a brave and patriotic man, as he was, and as he remained, doubtless, to this day. (Cheers.) There was no faltering in his case; he went straight on; it mattered not who lagged behind, he was ever stoutly defending the front. He had suffered, as they had heard. He came from a State in which, more than anywhere else, it was dangerous to be a known Unionist—where hundreds and hundreds of men were shot down in cold blood, hanged upon trees, and hunted to the mountains for no other reason than that they had a leaning towards the North. He lost all his property. His wife was imprisoned, and became an invalid through the sufferings she endured while in prison. Was that the man to fail them in these times? (Cheers.)
Mr. C. M. Lampson briefly seconded the resolution, which, as was the case also with all the subsequent ones, was unanimously adopted.
Henry Bough, esq., of New York, moved the next resolution. With manifest emotion he expressed his detestation of the crime that inflicted such a blow on America. From Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Russia, and England—the cradle of the American race—(applause)—had already gone forth addresses and letters of condolence with the American nation generally, and the widow in particular. Within those very walls only on Saturday night a thrill of unfeigned sympathy and grief was excited by the noble utterances of those who took part in the proceedings of the occasion. He concluded an impassioned harangue by powerfully appealing in the language of Shakspeare to the sympathy of the Christian worlds—
“Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?” &c.—
and declared his belief that, by the aid of that Divine Providence which tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, they could, “with some sweet oblivious antidote, [Page 280] wipe out the written troubles of the mind” of the widow and family, bereaved by this shocking event.
Mr. J. S. Morgan seconded the resolution.
Dr. Black, in moving the third resolution, remarked upon the faults found with the late President by those whose sympathies favored the South. Lincoln was wrong in everything when he was living. What was said now he was dead? He had no villifiers now, and before long it would be difficult to find a man to dare acknowledge ever having said a wrong word against such a noble character. Andrew Johnson was now the man at whom attacks would be directed; it would not be many years, he (Dr. Black) apprehended, before his villifiers would also hang down their heads. Johnson had a very difficult task before him, and not the least difficult part of it was the question of slavery— where to place the slaves, how to provide for them, and what privileges to accord them. But it was not by far so difficult to deal with as the enemies of the North tried to make out. People in this country pointed to Jamaica, and said, “Look what difficulties we had there.” But Jamaica and America were two different places, and presented very different aspects in reference to the slave trade. In Jamaica, where fresh supplies were continually arriving from Africa, the negroes kept up the superstitions and bad habits of their race; their masters lived in England and knew nothing about them, had no sympathy with them; in fact, they never associated with anybody but their drivers, until at last slavery and labor became synonymous. Afterwards, when the slaves were made free, freedom and laziness became synonymous. In the United States the slaves had some degree of intelligence; since 1808 there had been no admixture with fresh importations from Africa, and let him say here, it was America who first abolished the African slave trade, Great Britain following the example. Leaving this question, he glanced at the financial condition of the United States, and replying to the alarm felt in certain quarters in this country that America would repudiate its liabilities, said that when this country came out of the Napoleonic war its debt was nearly twice as much as that which America had now entailed upon itself; the commerce of England was very little more than that of America even now while she was at war; the people of England were half the number of the American population; the leading men of America were English in origin, religion, language, morality, and habits of business; surely, then, if England was in a position to pay its way America would be. If anybody supposed, indeed, that the Americans had any other than an honest and honorable intention, they did them an injustice. Moreover, it was their interest, as well as their duty, to pay their just debts, and it was pure nonsense to talk any other way. (Hear.) In conclusion, he expressed his hope that the event which had called them together, and which had excited such universal sorrow, would be the starting point from which to establish amicable relations between this country and America—amicable relations in their truest and widest sense—from which both should march, treading down all past prejudices, to an honorable and lasting peace and unity, and from which to inaugurate the natural alliance, the most powerful combination the world ever knew—not for tyranny, but for the prosperity and happiness of mankind throughout the world. (Cheers.)
Mr. H. T. Parker seconded the resolution. He made a very able speech, hopefully picturing the future of America.
Mr. R. Sturgis, in moving the next resolution, remarked that an address of sympathy had that day emanated from the Bank of England and passed through city circles preparatory to being placed in the hands of Mr. Adams. He also stated that had that gentleman been well enough in health, Mr. Peabody, whose noble heart and liberal hand had spread blessings over both lands, (cheers,) would have occupied his place. He then proceeded to show that it was the interest as much of England as of America to cling closely to each other. The [Page 281] two countries had not only a common lineage and common language, but a common heart; and whatever differences of sentiment existed as to the issue of the present conflict, the heart was found in the right place when such a crime as this occurred. There was not one single throb on the American side but what had a corresponding movement on the English side. (Applause.)
Mr. E. M. Fisher seconded the resolution.
Mr. Cyrus Field proposed a vote of thanks to his excellency the chairman. In doing so, he remarked that just before he left America for this country he had an interview with Mr. Lincoln, and he was convinced, from what then transpired, as well as by what he knew of his character and policy, that he heartily desired peace in America, and America to be at peace with all the world. (Applause.)
The Chairman said it was a great comfort and pleasure to him to meet so many of his fellow-countrymen, and to perceive, as he did, such unanimity of sentiment on the melancholy subject which had brought them together.
The meeting then dispersed.