[From the Renfrewshire Independent, Paisley, Saturday, April 29, 1865.]
the assassination of president lincoln.—the confederate cut-throats.
The “chivalry” of the American slave States has found a frightful vindication in the assassination of President Lincoln, and the attempted assassination of Mr. Secretary Seward. This crime—the most atrocious political outrage of modern times—is but a fitting close to the revolt of the southern slaveholders—the horoes of the lash, the bowie-knife, and the revolver. When General Lee had surrendered, and had washed his hands of the filthy business of defending the right to lash black men and outrage black women, it is not an unexpected result that the confederates should have chosen to put in force a matured plan of assassination, and have attempted to win back by the dagger what they had lost by the sword. In the south, where assassination has been an habitual practice, the murder of “Honest Abe Lincoln” will be received with applause, and will renew confidence in a lost cause. When the brute Brooks of South Carolina attempted to assassinate Senator Sumner at Washington, instead of being execrated for his ruffianism, he became a hero in his own State, and was especially honored by the “ladies” of the south, who have a real admiration for ruffianism, especially when practiced on such helpless people as negro men and women. On this side the Atlantic the execrable dead already finds abundance of apologists in the commercial scoundrelism that has been engaged in blockade-running and building privateers. The public organs devoted to the interest of our commercial speculators, and the whole class of Jews and hucksters who desire the perpetuation of slavery, take care to express no exultation, but they at the same time show the want of that indignation which every honest heart must feel. There is, Heaven be praised, a class undemoralized by the ledger and the yard-stick, and to them the infamous tragedy is a sincere regret. Those Englishmen who in reality abhor slavery have had reason to regard President Lincoln as in some measure the scourge of the curse, raised up to crush it, not by the merciless slaughter of all who dared to defend it, but by a combination of military and political measures that have finally trampled out the accursed system. Recognizing in the federal President an instrument of Providence appointed to fill one of the most merciful missions ever committed to man, liberal and intelligent men have watched with an anxious dread every step of the avenger. How wisely, how humanely, and how effectually he has fulfilled his beneficent duty, his bitterest enemies have at last been obliged to declare. No paper has more ferociously vituperated Honest Abe than the London Times, and but a few days since, and when no warning of the President’s death had reached that journal, it passed an eulogium upon him such as no man of our day and generation dare lay claim to. The London Times has declared that during the trying ordeal of his presidency—an ordeal unsurpassed for danger and difficulty, as his death has proved it to be—Abraham Lincoln had done nothing he had any means to feel ashamed of. The warmest admirer of President Lincoln, and the hottest partisan of his administration, could have said nothing further in laudation, and we shall not attempt to add a higher compliment. That the abominable [Page 416] and odious language used towards the President by a large section of our own press was false and calumnious could find no fuller refutation than the Times has written; but it is to be feared the brutal words of low-bred scribblers may have produced effects the recantation of the Times will not suffice to efface. That the republican party of the States should have had the sagacity to pick out of a private station a man so rarely gifted for the work he has had to do is a wonderful tribute to the sagacity of the American people. And the election of Mr. Lincoln has no less clearly proved the intense dislike of a large section of our mercantile and aristocratic classes to the progress of such liberal institutions as flourish in America. Because Abraham Lincoln had begun life as a rail-splitter, had educated himself, and, we may add, did not consider it proper to own human cattle, the Tory papers, written to please the upper-class flunkies, and the unprincipled journals that serve the interest of the upstart commercial gentility of Glasgow and other commercial communities, described the President as a vulgar, low-bred fellow, a brute, buffoon, tyrant, and baboon. Such language can only fall back upon those who so undeservedly have made use of it; but the liberal class, and especially the working men belonging to it, should never forget the ebullition of rage which has been directed against a plain man of the people like Honest Abe, because he had it in his power to dictate terms to “a real gentleman” like Jeff. Davis, who had aristocratic notions about keeping negroes under the lash. The language which has been used by a portion of the public press of this country to support the cause of slavery in the confederacy, and vituperate those who have attempted to suppress it, has been a scandal the most abominable that has befallen us for many a year, and we must confess that it is passing strange no voice has been raised against it, even in our own town, among a population so sensitive to political questions of import. But, indeed, the ignorance and prejudice shown upon the American question by the same class of working men who have in past times been in some measure regarded as political oracles leads to the suspicion that political zeal is dying out, and that a generation of idlers and fools are supplanting the same race whose intelligent views and energetic action won in times past for the middle classes such large concessions from the upper. While we thus lament over the untimely death of good honest Abraham Lincoln, and, worse still, grieve over the vile spirit of tyranny and oppression so rampant among ourselves, we do not think the federal cause will now suffer much from the loss of its ablest leader. The struggle between freedom and slavery was closed by the capture of Richmond and Lee. The confederates still in the field might safely be left to one of the armies now in pursuit of them. The remnant of troops still led by Joe Johnston are being pursued by Sherman’s army, Grant’s troops, and Hancock’s division. If they should escape from the Carolinas, Thomas, who is in Alabama, will fall upon their rear; and if Davis and an escort of runaways reach the Mississippi and escape into Texas, it is more than can be expected. Some of our Tory papers believe that the confederates will escape to the Rocky mountains—a sad plight, it must be confessed, for the heroes who were to burn Washington and New York; but if they do, it will be but a scattered remnant who will find a fraternal refuge among the savage Indians and outcast thieves of the far west. While the armed hordes of the confederacy will thus be speedily accounted for, the new federal President, Andy Johnson, will find means to pacify the South in a way which may prove to the assassins of Lincoln that in him they have lost their best friend. Educated among “southern gentlemen,” and habituated to the paradise of a slave State, Johnson, it is believed, will turn out to be a man after the southern heart. Belonging to the slave State of Tennessee, the new President, it is rumored, has imbibed the savagery so characteristic of southern chivalry, and has already been advocating the gallows pretty freely. Abraham Lincoln was not the man to desire his death to be avenged in any way, but it is feared Andy Johnson will take upon himself [Page 417] what he may consider to be a public duty with some zeal for the work. Now that Robert Lee has left behind him the patrons of the assassin Booth, not much regret will be expressed among the humane and intelligent of this country if Jeff. Davis and his whole gang expiate on the gallows the crime they have been guilty of in instigating a rebellion without better reason for it than the preservation of southern rights in human cattle. If it be still denied that slavery was the mainspring of the revolt, we have but to point to the demands of the southern leaders to save the confederacy by making soldiers of the negroes, and to the fact that up to the last hour the slaveholders would not part with their black chattels. There is not, however, a shred of argument to support the southern revolt, and it is but fitting that those who inspired it for the most foul purpose should now suffer for the guilt of all the desolation that has been caused. In Andy Johnson vengeance may have a terrible minister, but let us remember that the crimes committed against the negro race for half a century have likewise to be cast into the scale. As for the pacification of the South, that will be an easy matter. Some two hundred thousand black troops quartered upon their old masters, and officered by a few Butlers and Blenkers, will solve the difficulty readily enough. It may perchance happen that under such a regime the white men may occasionally get their throats cut, and the white women may find their old servants rather unpleasant masters; but if murder and outrage occur, it will only be a continuance of southern customs, with the difference that black instead of white men will be in the ascendant. We write with an indignation of the fiendish crime committed that we expect will appeal to not a few of our readers; and to these we especially recommend the propriety of some immediate public expression of sympathy with the families of President Lincoln and Secretary Seward. The contemptible silence Paisley has observed during the whole course of the American conflict goes far to blot out the recollection of the public and liberal spirit our town once had a reputation for; but the present emergency offers an opportunity for asserting our sympathy with the triumph of emancipation on the American continent, and the admiration we had tor the honest old man whose life has been so ruthlessly sacrificed in the struggle.
In furthering this purpose we will readily aid in any way, give publicity to letters, or make public such suggestions as may be communicated to us, and we only hope the proposal may meet with an immediate and fitting response.