[From the London Morning Star, April 27, 1865.]
The appalling tragedy which has just been perpetrated at Washington is absolutely without historical precedent. Not in the records of the fiercest European convulsion, in the darkest hour of partisan hatreds, have we an example of an assassin plot at once so foul and so senseless, so horrible and so successful, as that to which Abraham Lincoln has already fallen a victim, and from which William H. Seward can hardly escape. Only in such instances as the murder of William of Orange, of Henri Quatre, or of Capodistria, have we any deed approaching in hideous ferocity to that which has just robbed the United States of one of the greatest of their Presidents. But from the fanatic’s hateful point of view there was at least something to be said for men like Balthazar Gerard and Ravaillac. They at least might have believed that they saw embodied in their victims the whole living principle and motive power of that religious freedom which they detested. They might have supposed that with the man would die the great hopes and the great cause he inspired and guided. So, too, of Orsini. That unfortunate and guilty being believed, at least, that in Napoleon the Third there stood an embodied and concentrated system. But Abraham Lincoln was no dictator and no autocrat. He represented simply the resolution and the resources of a great people. The miserable excuse which fanaticism might attempt to plead for other political assassins has no application to the wretch whose felon hand dealt death to the pure and noble magistrate of a free nation. One would gladly, for the poor sake of common humanity, have caught at the idea that the crime was but the work of some maniacal partisan. But the mere nature of the deeds, without any additional evidence whatever, bids defiance to such an idea. While the one murderer was slaying the President of the republic, the other was making his even more dastardly attempt upon the life of the sick and prostrate Secretary. It does not need even the disclosures which have now, too late for any good purpose, reached official quarters to prove that two madmen cannot become simultaneously inspired with the same monstrous project and impelled at the one moment to do their several parts of the one bloody business. The chivalry of the South has had much European compliment of late. It has been discovered to be the fount and origin of all the A [Page 386] most noble and knightly qualities which the world heretofore had principally known through the medium of mediæval romance. Let it not be forgotten that southern brains lately planned the conflagration of a peaceful city. It never can be forgotten while history is read that the hands of southern partisans have been reddened by the foulest assassin plot the world has ever known, that they have been treacherously dipped in the blood of one of the best citizens and purest patriots to whom the land of Washington gave birth.
For Abraham Lincoln one cry of universal regret will be raised all over the civilized earth. We do not believe that even the fiercest partisans of the confederacy in this country will entertain any sentiment at such a time but one of grief and horror. To us Abraham Lincoln has always seemed the finest character produced by the American war, on either side of the struggle. He was great not merely by the force of genius—and only the word genius will describe the power of intellect by which he guided himself and his country through such a crisis—but by the simple, natural strength and grandeur of his character. Talleyrand once said of a great American statesman that without experience he “divined” his way through any crisis. Mr. Lincoln thus divined his way through the perilous, exhausting, and unprecedented difficulties which might well have broken the strength and binded the prescience of the best trained professional statesman. He seemed to arrive by instinct—by the instinct of a noble, unselfish, and manly nature—at the very ends which the highest of political genius, the longest of political experience, could have done no more than reach. He bore himself fearlessly in danger, calmly in difficulty, modestly in success. The world was at last beginning to know how good, and, in the best sense, how great a man he was, It had long indeed learned that he was as devoid of vanity as of fear, but it had only just come to know what magnanimity and mercy the hour of triumph would prove that he possessed. Reluctant enemies were just beginning to break into eulogy over his wise and noble clemency when the dastard hand of a vile murderer destroyed his noble and valuable life. We in England have something to feel ashamed of when we meditate upon the true greatness of the man so ruthlessly slain. Too many Englishmen lent themselves to the vulgar and ignoble cry which was raised against him. English writers degraded themselves to the level of the coarsest caricaturists when they had to tell of Abraham Lincoln. They stooped to criticise a foreign patriot as a menial might comment on the bearing of a hero. They sneered at his manners, as if Cromwell was a Chesterfield; they accused him of ugliness, as if Mirabeau was a beauty; they made coarse pleasantry of his figure, as if Peel was a posture-master; they were facetious about his dress, as if Cavour was a D’Orsay; they were indignant about his jokes, as if Palmerston never jested. We do not remember any instance since the wildest days of British fury against the “Corsican Ogre,” in which a foreign statesman was ever so dealt with in English writings as Mr. Lincoln. And when we make the comparison we cannot but remember that while Napoleon was our unscrupulous enemy, Lincoln was our steady friend. Assailed by the coarsest attacks on this side the ocean, tried by the sorest temptations on that, Abraham Lincoln calmly and steadfastly maintained a policy of peace with England, and never did a deed, never wrote or spoke a word, which was unjust or unfriendly to the British nation. Had such a man died by the hand of disease in the hour of his triumph the world must have mourned for his loss. That he has fallen by the coward hand of a vile assassin exasperates and imbitters the grief beyond any power of language to express.
Had Lincoln been a vain man he might almost have ambitioned such a death. The weapon of the murderer has made sure for him an immortal place in history. Disappointment, failure, political change, popular caprice, the efforts of rivals, the malice of enemies, can touch him no more. He lived long enough to accomplish his great patriotic work, and then he became its martyr. It would be idle [Page 387] to speculate as yet upon the effect which his cruel death will produce upon the political fortunes of his country; hut the destinies of that country will be cared for. Its hopes are too well sustained to faint and fall even over the grave of so great a patriot and so wise a leader as Abraham Lincoln. There are still clear and vigorous intellects left to conduct what remains of Lincoln’s work to a triumphant conclusion; nor must we allow one day’s unhappy misconduct to make us forget the undoubted abilities and patriotic purpose of the man so suddenly and strangely called to fill Lincoln’s place. Dramatic justice has, indeed, been marvellously wreaked thus far upon the criminal pride of the South. A negro regiment was the first to enter Richmond, and now one of the poor whites, the “white trash” of a southern State, is called to receive from the South its final submission. We trust and feel assured that even in this hour of just indignation and natural excitement the North may still bear itself with that magnanimous clemency which thus far has illumined its triumph. But it may be that the conquered South has yet to learn that it too must mourn over the bloody grave to which Abraham Lincoln has been consigned by a southern assassin’s hand.