[From the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald and West Coast Advertiser, Saturday, April 29 1865.]
in memoriam-abraham lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln is dead. The news has sent a thrill of horror through the country, for his death was the result of none of the ordinary causes which remove men from the scene of their labors, but he was foully and cowardly assassinated. In the hour of their triumph the northern States have been deprived of their trusted ruler—the genial, warm-hearted, kindly, honest man—the man, above all public men in the North, who did his duty from a sense of what he owed to his country; who prosecuted the war without vindictiveness, without vaunting, without threats of extermination, and without the smallest grain of self-glorification; who conducted his intercourse with other countries with rare sagacity and moderation; and who, but a few days before his death, now that the hard fighting he hoped was over, indicated in his own homely, kindly way, the best use which could be made of their recent great victories, and that was by showing mercy to their erring brethren. It is no matter for wonder that when intelligence was received of the great crime, New York was draped in black. In this country the act everywhere is viewed with deep abhorrence, and whatever the difference of views regarding the war, there is but one universal feeling of regret for the victim, and strong commiseration for a country deprived of its chief magistrate at the most critical crisis of its history. What, then, must be the public feeling in the industrious towns of New England, in the cities on the seaboard, all over the western States, and in the armies? Craftsmen and clerks, fishermen along the shores, toilers in the rich fields of the west, wanderers in the prairies—the working world of the States, were allowed but bare time to cast aside their holiday attire put on to hold high festival for the downfall of Richmond. The news would reach them when still surrounded with much of the confusion and trappings of a merry-making time. It would come with the shock of a death immediately on a marriage; the enactment of a fearful tragedy after a farce. Would it be inhuman if the enraged feelings of the nation should find utterance in a call for vengeance? God grant there may not! That in this sad hour of trial the innocent may not be called upon to suffer for the guilty. But none, under the circumstances, need be surprised if they should. We remember Lucknow, and deemed the atrocities committed by Nina Sahib and his myrmidons as only too mercifully punished when the captured were blown from the cannon’s mouth.
Abraham Lincoln has died with his work incompleted; but he has done enough to place his name next to that of Washington on the broad roll of his country’s great men. Without any special training for government, he will stand second to none for having conducted the affairs of his country, both at home and abroad, with great firmness and sagacity. He was reputed a humorist, but his jokes were neither rude nor ill-natured; and although for the most part of his life he had followed manual employments, he so conducted himself in his personal intercourse with all classes and with all men whom curiosity or business brought to the seat of government, that he gained for himself general respect, if not admiration. He acted with extreme caution, and it would be difficult to point to a single act in his presidential career which was either mistimed or a mistake. He never vituperated the South; and after four years of protracted struggle to force their return to the Union, if he has not gained their confidence, he has commanded their respect. His name will ever be associated with the freedom of the slave, and the abolition of the cursed slave system in the States of America. Like our own Sir Robert Peel and protective duties, he was slow in perceiving and acting upon the policy of emancipation as necessary to the triumph [Page 362] of the northern arms and the future well-being of his country. But when he did take hold of the principle, with the firmness inherent in his character, unhesitatingly he made it the chief ground on which he sought his late re-election to office, and the one point he was determined to insist upon in any reconstruction of the Union in which he was to play a part. Although he was aware that an opposite policy might rally round him the democratic party of the North, and possibly change somewhat the sentiment of the South, and make them less difficult to manage when once the war is over, he solemnly accepted the nobler alternative. It was he who exalted the issue of the war. He changed it from a war waged to enforce the return of the seceded States into the Union to one which, while accomplishing the end first contemplated, secured the emancipation of the negro race. The blacks call him the “liberator,” and as this, as well as the nation’s martyr, his name will descend in the annals of his country’s history.
It is needless to speculate on the effect which his death will have upon the war. His assassination is more than a crime—it is a great mistake. Apart altogether from the influence which the deed will have upon the public opinion of Europe, it will have an evil influence, we fear, upon the future of the South. It will not delay for a day the further prosecution of the war—Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan are still alive to press the advantages already gained. But the most humane and sagacious man in the cabinet has been taken away, and taken away when planning how best and most mercifully he could assuage the animosities of a four years’ conflict, and reconstruct the Union on a broad and firm basis. The reins of government are in other and quite different hands—men, we fear, less mercifully disposed to the instigators and fomentors of the rebellion.