[From the London Morning Star, May 2, 1865.]
[Extract]
abraham lincoln.
In the moment of victory Abraham Lincoln has been stricken to death. Not on the battle-field, where so many noble patriots have laid down their lives for freedom, not by the unseen shaft of disease before which the greatest and noblest must sooner or later fall, but brutally murdered by an assassin of the slave power while he sat beside his wife enjoying a much-needed relaxation from the heavy cares of state. Noble, generous, forgiving, his only thoughts since the capture of Richmond have been of mercy. At a meeting of the Cabinet on the morning of his death he spoke very kindly of Lee and others of the confederates, and while his thoughts were thus all of forgiveness, the miscreant stole behind him and shot him through the brain. Unconscious from the moment he received the fatal wound, the great and noble-hearted patriot breathed his last on the following morning. Nothing else was needed to sanctify the name and memory of Abraham Lincoln to the people of the United States, and to all lovers of freedom throughout the world, than this his martyr death. Raised from the ranks of the common people to take upon himself the responsibility of the most gigantic struggle the world has ever witnessed between the forces of freedom and slavery, he guided the destinies of his country with unwavering hand through all the terrors and dangers of the conflict, and placed her so high and safe among the nations of the world that the dastards of despotism dare no longer question the strength and majesty of freedom. With a firm faith in his God, his country, and his principles of freedom for ail men, whatever their color and condition, he has stood unmoved amid the shock of armies and the clamors of faction; he quailed not when defeat in the field seemed to herald the triumph of the foe; he boasted not of victory, nor sought to arrogate to himself the honors of the great deeds which have resounded through the world; but, gentle and modest as he was great and good, he took the chaplet from his own brow to place it on the lowly graves of the soldiers whose blood has been so liberally poured forth to consecrate the soil of America for freedom. He dies and makes no sign, but the impress of his noble character and aims will be borne by his country while time endures. He dies, but his country lives; freedom has triumphed; the broken chains at the feet of the slaves are the mute witnesses of his victory. It was on the evening of the 14th of April, the day which saw the federal flag raised once more on Fort Sumter amid the hoarse reverberation of cannon and [Page 388] the cheers of liberated slaves, that the President received his death-blow. The wretched conspirators who sought to destroy their country that slavery might triumph over its ruins panted for Lincoln’s life since the day he was first elected to guide the destinies of the republic. When in the act of passing from his home in Illinois to assume the reins of office, he was apprised by General Scott that the barbarians of slavery had resolved to assassinate him. The plan was to raise a riot in Baltimore as he passed through that city on his way to Washington, and in the midst of the tumult Mr. Lincoln was to be slain. The messenger who brought the news of the conspiracy to Mr. Lincoln at Harrisburg was Frederick Seward, son of the statesman who now lies low beside his chief, stricken down by another desperate miscreant on the same day as the President. Mr. Lincoln, with his usual prudence, at once stopped in his triumphal progress towards the capital, and, disguised as a countryman, passed safely through Baltimore by the night train, and arrived at the White House in Washington, The speech which he made to his neighbors of Springfield when he set out on his perilous mission has a mournful interest in view of his sudden and awful death. At the railway depot on Monday, the 11th of February, 1861, a large concourse of his fellow-citizens bad assembled to bid him farewell. “My friends,” he said, “no one not in my position can appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. To the people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century; here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves upon me, which is, perhaps, greater than that which has devolved upon any man since the days of Washington. He never could have succeeded without the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine aid which sustained him. In the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support, and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain. Again I bid you all an affectionate farewell.” The touching address was given with deep emotion, and many of the auditors replied to his request for their prayers by exclaiming, “We will pray for you.” Thus this devout, simple-hearted, and courageous man went forth to his high task, not leaning on his own strength, but humbly trusting in the power of an Almighty arm. Those gentle utterances are but the key to all the speeches and proclamations which he has made during his troubled career. No one ever heard him utter a bitter word against the rebels, but many have confessed that they felt rebuked in his presence, his manner was so calm, his thoughts and words were so magnanimous, his great heart was so full of gentleness and compassion. And yet it is this man who has been held up to the southern people by the lying politicians and most mischievous journalists of the south as a kind of human demon who delighted in blood, as a man regardless of law and justice, who, when he spoke of God or humanity, spake but in mockery of the sacred name and the sacred rights of the people. The southern heart has been fired, as the phrase went, by the most furious appeals to the passions of an ignorant people against a ruler who never would have touched a single southern right or harmed a real southern man had these truculent politicians not crowned their frenzy by rebellion. Even in the midst of the late most sanguinary outburst of ferocity he has mitigated the woes of war and so tempered justice by mercy that not a single traitor has perished on the scaffold. We would that we could add that the passions of the southern demagogues were sought to be assuaged by the universal efforts of the press and the politicians of those countries where the American struggle excited an overwhelming interest. But history will proclaim, to the eternal humiliation of our country, how an influential section of the English press out-bade the journalists of the South in their slander and invective against the great man who has been so cruelly slain; how his every action was twisted and tortured into a wrong, his every noble aspiration spoken of as a desire for blood, [Page 389] his personal appearance caricatured, his lowly origin made the theme for scorn by men as base-born as he, but without the nobleness of soul which made Lincoln a prince among princes; how even that proclamation which conferred liberty upon four millions of down-trodden slaves was reviled as a base effort to incite the negroes to servile war. The men who penned those revolting slanders were probably alike ignorant and reckless of their effects, but it cannot but be a painful reflection to Englishmen that the deluded southern rebels were encouraged in their efforts to destroy a free nation for the purpose of building a slave empire on the ruins by the writings and speeches of men who could boast of free England as their country. Their virulent abuse, in all probability, never reached him whom it was designed to wound, and even if the miserable writers had been factious Americans instead of degenerate Englishmen, Lincoln would have had nothing but a smile for their malignant efforts. Nor had these unworthy effusions any effect upon the great body of the people of England. They saw at once the sterling integrity and appreciated the high purpose of the American ruler; they took the universal testimony of the people of the country over which he ruled in preference to the partisan abuse of the pro-slavery organs, so that long before the emancipation proclamation was issued the efforts and intentions of Abraham Lincoln were thoroughly understood by the commons of Great Britain. When, however, the moment had arrived for Lincoln calling a race to freedom, and the news was received in this country that, so far as the fiat of the President of the United States in the execution of his constitutional authority during a state of war could strike the fetters from the slave and purge the commonwealth from its foul stain, the order had gone forth, and the slaves had a legal title to their freedom, nothing could thereafter shake the faith of the people in the liberator. Many touching proofs of the sincerity of these convictions were afforded during the struggle. In every public meeting of our countrymen, when the name of President Lincoln was mentioned it was received with a burst of ringing cheers. Perhaps the most notable occasion was when Henry Ward Beecher addressed the inhabitants of London in Exeter Hall. It was at a time when the pro-slavery press was most rampant, when for days they had been heaping upon the head of Mr. Ward Beecher, one of the pioneer abolitionists of the north, and upon Mr. Lincoln, as the leader of the abolitionist party, all the vials of their abuse, and when, if ever, it might have been supposed that the cause of right must be overborne by the power of slander and misrepresentation. No sooner, however, was the name of Lincoln mentioned by Mr. Beecher in the course of his speech than enthusiastic cheers, which seemed as if they would never stop, burst forth from the vast assemblage. It was the same everywhere throughout the country; and the American people now amongst us, stunned and overwhelmed as they are by the news, may believe that their feeling of an irreparable loss is shared in by the vast masses of the English people. For, in truth, a man like Abraham Lincoln is claimed by humanity as her own. He was in name and in heart an American citizen, and his great work had been appointed for him in that new continent where two great battles have already been won for human freedom; but he soon showed by his actions and the magnanimity of his character that he belonged to that illustrious band whose work is for the human race, and whose name and fame shall never die out amongst men. In his hands was placed a most sacred trust. In the United States the right of the majority to govern, and perfect freedom to all to take part in the business of government, was the basis of the Constitution. It had never been questioned until the southern leaders, defeated at the ballot-box, sought to achieve by the sword what they failed to achieve at the polling-booth. The question was the extension or the non-extension of slavery, and the ultimate issue was the triumph or failure of free institutions. We need not recall how triumphantly the enemies of freedom pointed their finger in scorn at what they called the failure of the [Page 390] experiment of free institutions. The very uprising of the southern slave power was held to he the end of the republic. They never dreamed that the obscure man of the people, who had been raised to the highest post of honor which it was possible for a citizen to fill, would grasp the helm with so vigorous a grasp, and so pilot the ship of state among the fearful breakers as to bring her safe to port with colors flying and not a spar lost. Alas! that the firm hand should now be nerveless, the bold heart cold and lifeless, and that the cup of joy should be so rudely dashed from the lips of the great people whom he had so faithfully served in the crisis of their destiny!
The assassination seems unquestionably to have been the result of a conspiracy to which various southern sympathizers were parties. The villain whose hand struck down President Lincoln is stated to be a person, named Wilkes Booth, a brother of Edwin Booth, the actor, and in his trunk was found a letter which showed that the horrid deed was to have been perpetrated on the 4th of March, when Mr. Lincoln’s second term of office began. It has, therefore, been no sudden inspiration of frenzy caused by the fall of Richmond, but the deliberate calculation of cold-blooded miscreants. The intention was not consummated sooner because some expected instructions, or aid, or encouragement, had not been received from Richmond. We cannot believe that the designs of the conspirators were known to and approved by the head s of the southern government, but it is not at all impossible that some leading secessionists may have aided in the conspiracy and encouraged its execution. It was known that the earlier attempt, when Mr. Lincoln was about to take office, was known to and approved by many persons of influence and standing, and more than one influential fanatic in the course of the war has openly offered rewards for the heads of northern abolitionists. The murder was at length effected in the most cruel and barbarous manner. Seated in the theatre at Washington beside his wife and another lady, and attended by only one officer, a stranger suddenly made his appearance at the door of the box, and stated that he had despatches from General Grant. That general had been advertised to be present on the same evening, but he and his wife had gone to Burlington on a visit. The simple state of the republican President permitted the stranger easily to get access to his victim, who, it would seem, never turned his head—his thoughts probably far away on those fields of battle where so many have died that the republic might live. The assassin instantly raised his pistol and shot the President in the back of the head, the bullet lodging in the brain. We have as yet no details of the scene of consternation in the theatre, the anguish of Mrs. Lincoln, and the despair of the people when they saw one so beloved so basely smitten; but there needs no description. It is easy to imagine it all—all except the unutterable anguish of the woman who has been the support and solace of the President during many weary months of anxiety and suffering. To his wife Mr. Lincoln was tenderly attached. His first action after receiving the notice of his election by the Chicago convention of 1860 as the candidate of the Republican party was to leave his political friends with whom he had been waiting for the news, and proceed home saying, “There’s a little woman down at our house would like to hear this. I will go and tell her.” The barbarians were not content with this one noble victim. About the same time another, and even more callous, southern fiend proceeded to the residence of Mr. Seward, and, under pretence of carrying medicine to the sick-chamber, managed to get access to the chamber where the Secretary of State lay suffering from his recent accident. Mr. Frederick Seward, the son of the Secretary, attempted to prevent him, but was cruelly wounded and has since died. A male attendant was stabbed through the lungs, and then the miscreant sprang forward to the bed and stabbed with many wounds the statesman who lay helpless. When the cries of the nurse and of a young daughter who was by her father’s bedside brought Major Seward, another son, to his father’s apartment, the assassin [Page 391] likewise fell upon him and severely wounded him. Most foul deed that ever pen recorded or demon perpetrated! A sick man lying helpless on his couch of pain thus barbarously assailed, a son eager to save a father’s life thus foully slain! It illustrates in a yet more awful manner the innate barbarism of that system of society based on slavery which can breed criminals of so deep a dye. It is now some years since the writer met Mr. Frederick Seward in New York—an amiable, accomplished, intelligent gentleman, whose conversation showed him to possess a keen intellect and a cultivated mind. The conversation turned upon the sudden death of friends—of those who had sailed from home and been lost at sea, or who had been suddenly cut off by some great calamity. Did the shadow of his own premature and tragic end even then cast a shadow over his spirit? How many of his companions and friends have during these few years passed away amid the din and fury of the battle-field! and now, when peace seemed ready to come, and with her gentle touch restore all things, he tools snatched away to join the company of the martyrs of the anti-slavery war. The official report of Mr. Stanton, which will be found elsewhere, expressly states that these deeds of horror were the result of a conspiracy among the rebels, and the greatness of the enormities must now prove to the world that the attempt to set fire to New York, and to destroy in one horrible holocaust the women and children, the aged and infirm, of a populous city, was no hallucination of the federal government, but a grim reality of desperadoes-—the spawn of the slave power. These are specimens of that chivalry of the South over which some English men and women have been heretofore shedding maudlin tears. It is a chivalry which can murder a gentle and noble man in presence of his wife; which can stab a father with furious blows on his sick-bed in presence of a little daughter who ministers to his wants, and which can ruthlessly sacrifice two sons as they strive to save a father’s life.
* * * * * * *
(Here follows an account of the life and public services of Mr. Lincoln, concluding as follows:)
The election of Mr. Lincoln was hailed with delight by the people of the northern States, little dreaming that their right to elect him would have to be sustained in so fearful a manner; and when the time came for him to proceed to Washington to execute the functions of President, the whole country watched his progress with intense satisfaction. As he passed eastward he had to make speeches at almost every town of any note, and many of the expressions which then fell from his lips were sufficiently remarkable. When passing through Indiana he thus spoke of State rights: “By the way, in what consists the special sacredness of a State? If a State and a county, in a given case, should be equal in extent of territory and equal in number of inhabitants, in what, as a matter of principle, is the State better than the county? On what principle may a State, being not more than one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionately larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary manner? What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district of country, with its people, by merely calling it a State?” In New Jersey, he made use of a characteristic expression, which has been frequently quoted since: “I shall do all that may be in my power to promote a peaceful settlement of all our difficulties. The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am; none who will do more to preserve it; but it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly.” How firmly, the South, the North, we and all men now know. When raising a flag in Philadelphia, he asked whether the Union could be saved upon the Declaration of Independence, and in answering his own question uttered words which sound prophetical after the occurrence which has so troubled the country: “If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on [Page 392] this spot than surrender it;” and his last words on the occasion were, “I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.” He has stood by these principles during his life, and he had completed the most triumphant defence of these principles when called on to die; but, dying, he bequeathes a new life to the nation; and, being dead, he yet speaketh.
Mr. Lincoln’s policy was to woo the south to submission to the constitutionally expressed will of the people by every argument which would be supposed to have weight with American citizens. His inaugural address was a pleading with them to give up their mad design to break up the nation, and it was thus he conjured them to think well upon the fatal step they were about to take: “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature.” His appeal was vain. The men to whom it was addressed, for a long series of years, had been educating themselves into the monstrous delusion that slavery was a divine institution; that it was the natural basis for society; that a slave empire could be established so powerful that abolitionism would forever be abashed, and southern interests reign supreme. The politicians clamored for war, the editors wrote up war, the clergy preached up a war for slavery, until the poor deluded common people rushed blindly into the conflict. The North had no choice; Mr. Lincoln, as the President, had no choice but to enforce the laws, and to use whatever powers the Constitution gave him for the suppression of the rebellion. This is not the place to recount the varied fortunes of the field. In the west the national arms were almost uniformly, successful; in the east the forces of the Union failed to capture Richmond until weary years of effort had been wasted, and several successive generals tried and removed. But the elasticity of free institutions permitted of these changes of commanders, and the patriotism of the people supported the President in whatever appointments he deemed best for the furtherance of the cause, until by his happy selection of Grant, who had proved victorious in the west, and Grant’s no less admirable appointments of Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and others, the power of the South has been completely crushed. President Lincoln, at first, incurred much odium among many sincere friends of the slave in this country, and was taunted by the supporters of the slave confederacy because he did not from the outset inaugurate an anti-slavery war. But his true position began to be appreciated. Some of the border slave States remained loyal, and he could not at once attack slavery without encroaching upon the right of these loyal people to regulate their own affairs. The northern democrats, moreover, polled more than one million of votes, while the purely abolitionist element among his own supporters was comparatively small. Had he at once raised an anti-slavery banner, in all likelihood he would have retarded in place of advancing the cause. He repressed all attempts prematurely to proclaim emancipation, until perfectly satisfied in his own mind that he had the constitutional power during a state of war to do so, and that the proclamation would tend to lessen the power of the rebels and more speedily bring peace to his torn and bleeding country. The policy has been the saving of the Union. The slaves crowded the federal lines in order to gain their freedom, and eagerly availed themselves of the privilege to list under the federal banners to aid in the freedom of their friends and brethren of the negro race. The emancipation proclamation of Abraham Lincoln Was a grand and sublime act; and when, in announcing his policy to Congress, he declared that they who were at the head of affairs in those times could not escape history, he truly shadowed forth that all who had in any way contributed to that crowning act of justice would occupy in history a most conspicuous and [Page 393] enviable place. The cause of the Union has prospered from the day the proclamation was issued, until at length the greatest army of the rebels has surrendered to the great soldier whom President Lincoln’s sagacity selected as the fit man to lead the armies of the republic.
The personal appearance of Mr. Lincoln has often been described. He was six feet four in height, and of that thin, wiry build, which is somewhat characteristic of Americans. But all observers unite in describing his countenance as singularly pleasing, and the eye mild and gentle. One English observer, not particularly prepossessed in his favor, describes his countenance as peculiarly soft, with an almost feminine expression of melancholy. While all observers unite in thus describing the late President, those who knew him more intimately are equally of one opinion as to his disposition being as kind, courteous, and gentle as his mild expression denoted. He was never heard to say a bitter word against the rebels, but invariably in his public proclamations and by his acts, he sought to win them back to that fealty without undue shedding of blood. But with all this gentleness, he was inexorably firm. Men of all parties have gone to him to attempt to move him from some of his positions; but while listening courteously to their statements, he never failed to indicate that what he had himself resolved, after careful consideration, he should abide by until he saw that it was unsuited to the circumstances of his country. He had an overflowing and ready humor. This trait in his character has given many shafts to the venomous slanderers of the great man who has been so suddenly removed from his proud position; but it is scarcely necessary to say that all the bon-mots attributed to the President are not genuine. One slander which has been often repeated by his enemies it may be as well to contradict here, once for all. It has been asserted and reasserted, and is now apparently deemed to be beyond the reach of cavil, that Mr. Lincoln, when riding over the field of Gettysburg, called for a comic song to drive away serious thoughts. The statement is a gratuitous and baseless calumny, invented by those who would as readily destroy a reputation as the southern assassins would wreak their vengeance upon a helpless victim. These have, indeed, accomplished the death of a noble-hearted patriot; but while they have killed the body, they cannot touch his deathless fame; they cannot mar his glorious work; they cannot rob him of his immortal reward.