[From the London Times, April 27, 1865.]
The American news which we publish this morning will be received, throughout Europe, with sorrow as sincere and profound as it awoke even in the United States themselves. Mr. Lincoln has fallen at the hands of an assassin, and Mr. Seward has too probably shared his fate. While the President was sitting quietly with his wife and some friends in a private box at a Washington theatre on Friday week, he was shot by a man who entered the box under a treacherous pretence of public business; and, almost at the same hour, an accomplice of the assassin, with similar treachery, forced himself into Mr. Seward’s sick-room and stabbed the Secretary of State four or five times in the face and throat. The President died the next morning. Mr. Seward, when the mail left, lay almost beyond hope of recovery; and his son, who acted as his secretary, in attempting to withstand the murderer of his father, was wounded to his death. Deeds of such atrocity cover their perpetrators with everlasting infamy, and discredit the cause they are presumably meant to serve. We trust it will appear that the crimes of Wilkes Booth and his accomplice were conceived and executed in concert with no one but themselves. The South, broken and defeated, could receive no possible benefit from the removal of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward; [Page 380] the too probable effect of the crime is an accession of madness and anger, rendering all schemes of reconstruction impossible. On the other hand, the waving of a knife before the affrighted audience at the theatre, and the “Sic semper tyrannis” pronounced by the assassin, indicate the vanity of men willing to immortalize themselves, like Eratostratus, though the world should perish. Unjust as we believe it to be, the confederate cause will not escape the dishonor cast upon it by the wanton murders of Mr. Lincoln and the Secretary. The admiration won by the long and gallant defence of Richmond will be lessened; the memory of Lee’s lofty bearing and Jackson’s deep religious feeling will be obscured by the atrocities committed in the name and on behalf of the South. Arson in New York; theft, under the pretence of war, in Vermont, and assassination in the capital, dim the lustre of a four years’ resistance to superior forces, and of many a well-fought field in Virginia.
The critical condition of affairs in America; the position of the southern States at the feet of their victorious antagonists; the gigantic task of reconstruction which must be undertaken by the political leaders of the North; all tend to exalt our estimate of the loss which the States have suffered in the murder of their President. But it would be unjust not to acknowledge that Mr. Lincoln Was a man who could not, under any circumstances, have been easily replaced. Starting from a humble position to one of the greatest eminence, and adopted by the Republican party as a makeshift, simply because Mr. Seward and their other prominent leaders were obnoxious to different sections of the party, it was natural that his career should be watched with jealous suspicion. The office cast upon him was great, its duties most onerous, and the obscurity of his past career afforded no guarantee of his ability to discharge them. His shortcomings, moreover, were on the surface. The education of a man whose early years had been spent in earning bread by manual labor had necessarily been defective, and faults of manner and errors of taste repelled the observer at the outset. In spite of these drawbacks Mr. Lincoln slowly won for himself the respect and confidence of all. His perfect honesty speedily became apparent, and, what is perhaps more to his credit, amid the many unstudied speeches which he was called upon from time to time to deliver, imbued though they were with the rough humor of his early associates, he was in none of them betrayed into any intemperance of language towards his opponents or towards neutrals. His utterances were apparently careless, but his tongue was always under command. The quality of Mr. Lincoln’s administration which served, however, more than any other to enlist the sympathy of bystanders, was its conservative progress. He felt his way gradually to his conclusions; and those who will compare the different stages of his career one with another will find that his mind was growing throughout the course of it. The naïveté with which he once suggested to the negroes that they should take themselves off to Central America because their presence in the States was inconvenient to the white population, soon disappeared. The gradual change of his language and of his policy was most remarkable. Englishmen learnt to respect a man who showed the best characteristics of their race in his respect for what was good in the past, acting in unison with a recognition of what was made necessary by the events of passing history. But the growth of Mr. Lincoln’s mind was subject to a singular modification. It would seem that he felt himself of late a mere instrument engaged in working out a great cause, which he could partly recognize, but which he was powerless to control. In the mixed strength and weakness of his character he presented a remarkable contrast to Mr. Seward, who was his coadjutor for more than four years, and who must, we fear, be reckoned his fellow victim. The Secretary of State, long before his elevation to office, was a prominent citizen of New York. More than a quarter of a century ago he was the governor of that State, and for twelve years he represented it in the Senate. In the Empire City and at Washington he had attained a culture which the Illinois lawyer [Page 381] never acquired. But the experience of the politician had, perhaps, weakened the independence of Mr. Seward’s character, and he never inspired the same confidence as his chief, because it was not known by what influences his course might not be modified.
What may be the actual destiny of the United States deprived of the guiding hand of Mr. Lincoln and of the experience of Mr. Seward no one would venture to foretell. * * * * The fate of a nation hangs in the balance, and we wait with anxiety to see which way it will turn.