[From the London Morning Post, April 27, 1865.]
The startling intelligence which has reached us from America will excite but one sentiment in the minds of all, no matter what their political predilections. Northerner and southerner, European and American, slaveholder and abolitionist, must equally concur in reprobating the dastardly crime which has just been consummated. The President of the United States of America has, in the moment of what he at least considered to be victory, and at the very instant when he had reason to believe that the gigantic enterprise to which he devoted himself was on the point of being crowned with success, fallen by the hand of an assassin. The event is so astounding that it is with difficulty we can bring ourselves to realize its occurrence, much less to estimate its consequences. It is but a few short days since the great and crowning events of the civil war took place, since Richmond was evacuated and the army of Virginia laid down its arms, and since Mr. Lincoln, boasting once more to be not only de jure but de facto President of the entire American republic, proclaimed it to the civilized world, and appointed a day of general thanksgiving to inaugurate the commencement of a new and happier era. On Sunday, the 9th of the present month, General Lee capitulated; on the following day Mr. Lincoln congratulated his fellow citizens on the happy issue of the arduous struggle in which they had been so long engaged, and besought their co-operation in that no less arduous work of reconstruction to which he purposed devoting the second period of his official career, and on the Friday following he was brutally murdered. In the annals of history there are to be found but too many instances in which the chief magistrate of a state has fallen by the assassin’s hand, but we doubt if there is one which, by its surrounding circumstances, will retain a deeper hold on the memory of posterity than the murder of the American President. What Mr. Lincoln might have been, and what he might have accomplished, must always remain matters of speculation; but that he should have been arrested midway in his career, and that the wishes of a great nation should be frustrated by the will of a rabid fanatic, points a moral of the futility of all human projects, which, however trite, is not uninstructive. At the very time when most persons would have concurred in approving the policy of the northern States in again electing Mr. Lincoln to the presidential office, and would have gladly seen him endeavor to reconstruct the edifice which has been so cruelly shaken, he is suddenly carried from the scene. “The king is dead. God save the king.” As it is in monarchies, so it is in republics. The same mail that tells us of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln informs us of the accession of his successor. * * * * *
The circumstances under which the murder of Mr. Lincoln took place may be gathered from an official report published by Mr. Stanton on the morning after the commission of the crime; and it is not the least remarkable circumstance attendant on the extraordinary event that at the same time that Mr. Lincoln was shot down in a theatre Mr. Seward, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, should be stabbed in the sick bed to which he had for some days been confined by a recent accident. On the evening of Good Friday Mr. Lincoln, accompanied by his wife, another lady, and a Major Rathburn, visited the theatre, and at about half-past nine o’clock a man suddenly entered the box in which the President was seated, and before any one was made aware of his intention discharged a pistol at the President’s head. The shot took fatal effect, the ball penetrating the back of the head, and probably lodging in the brain. After effecting his object the assassin is said to have leaped from the box on to the stage, and then to have escaped. While this scene was being enacted at the theatre another assassin succeeded in obtaining an entrance to Mr. Seward’s house under the pretence of pressing business, and inflicted on the Secretary [Page 378] wounds which it was believed would prove fatal. Mr. Seward’s son, who was in an adjoining room, having hastened to his father’s assistance, was struck down by the murderer, and is reported to have since died. In this instance, as in that of the assassination of the President, the ruffian succeeded in effecting his escape. Mr. Lincoln remained insensible until his death, which took place the following morning at half-past seven o’clock. At eleven o’clock Andrew Johnson took the oath of office, and was duly installed as President of the United States.
The first sentiment, after that horror, which will be excited in the minds of most persons, will be one of surprise that such crimes as those we have recorded should have been committed. The late President had for an enemy every man who took up arms or was ready to take up arms for the southern cause. But they were open enemies, and, as the whole history of the civil war has shown, they were chivalrous enemies. We should not have believed it possible, nor can we believe it now, that in the entire mass of the southern population a single man would be found who would have committed the crime which has aroused the indignation of the entire world. We do not mean to say that a southerner may not be a murderer just as an Englishman may be, but merely that we fail to discover the motives which would actuate a southerner to this particular crime. Mr. Lincoln could not be held individually accountable for the cruel war which has made so many regions of the confederacy desolate, and none who took the trouble of considering the matter would fail to perceive that that war would, in all probability, have equally run its course if another individual of the same political opinions had been elected President four years ago, or if Mr. Lincoln had died at any period subsequent to his accession to office. The assassination of Butler in New Orleans would have been perfectly intelligible; but that of Mr. Lincoln in Washington, at the very moment when the war had to all appearances come to an end, is apparently motiveless. The circumstance, however, that an attempt, and probably a successful one, was made to murder Mr. Seward at the same time, shows that the double crime was the result of a carefully organized scheme. We must await the arrival of the next mail to be made apprised, as we hope we shall be, of the capture of the assassins, and then perhaps we may learn the circumstances under which they were led to commit so terrible a crime.