[From the London Daily Telegraph, April 27, 1865.]
abraham lincoln.
One universal feeling of horror and grief will thrill through the breasts of Englishmen this morning, if we do not mistake our countrymen, as they read in our columns the sad news which has come to us across the Atlantic. Abraham Lincoln has fallen by the assassin’s hand; fallen as Julius Cæsar fell on those fatal “Ides of March,” but by the hand of a baser Brutus; fallen as, to our human eyes and fallible judgment, he little deserved to fall—shot through the head with a pistol fired by a wretched conspirator, as he sat in a private box at Ford’s theatre, Washington, on the evening of the 14th instant. The wound, it was at once seen, was mortal, and the President expired soon after sunrise on the following morning; his colleague, Mr. Seward, having, about the same time and hour, sustained a similar attack from the dagger of the same or a fellow-assassin.
Such is the sum and substance of the melancholy news which is told in another column, with additional victims and details of butchery; and we have elsewhere attempted to give an estimate of the probable effect of this sad event on the war and on the politics of America. It is our duty, however, to offer here an outline of the career and public character of the eminent man who has thus been suddenly cut off when scarcely past his prime, and at the outset of a second period of rule, having fallen, as even the stanchest southerner must admit, [Page 396] like Epaminondas of old, and like Wolfe in modern times, in the very hour of victory.
* * * * * *
(Here follows an account of the life and services of Mr. Lincoln, concluding with the following:)
The rest of the President’s life, if we were to write it, would really be little less than the history of the fearful and fatal war which has laid waste America, for the last four years. The chief event in it, perhaps, is the re-election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidential chair last summer. At that time, as will be remembered, the leaders of the abolition party seemed bent on withdrawing from him their support. He was, however, so firmly rooted in the affections of the mass of the electors, who identified him with the Union cause, that it was deemed unwise to bring forward a rival republican candidate. Had that party become divided, as seemed probable at one time, General McClellan would certainly have been returned. Thanks to the forbearance and foresight of the abolitionists, Mr. Lincoln was elected by a triumphant majority, with full power to control the destinies of those States at least which had elected him for a new term of four years.
“Man proposes, but God disposes.” Within a few short months the assassin’s pistol has set aside the wishes of the northern people, thrown transatlantic politics into the most sad confusion, and caused all New York to array itself in robes of black.
The face of “Honest Abe” has been made familiar to most English readers by the aid of photography; but the following sketch of his person, from the pen of one who knew him well, is so perfect, that we may be excused for repeating it here. “Old Abe is a gaunt giant, more than six feet high, strong and long-limbed. He walks slowly, and like many thoughtful men—Napoleon and Wordsworth for example—he keeps his head inclined forward and downwards. His hair is black and wiry; his eyes are dark-gray; his smile is frank, sincere, and winning. Like most American gentlemen, he is loose and careless in dress, turns down his flapping white collars, and wears habitually what we should call evening dress. His head is massive, his brow full and wide, his nose large and fleshy, his mouth coarse and full; his eyes are sunken, his face is bronzed and thin, and drawn down into strong corded lines, which disclose the machinery that moves his broad and formidable jaw.”
Honest, straightforward, practical, energetic, and indifferent to censure so long as he was conscious of his own integrity, Abraham Lincoln seems to have been one of those men whose latent talents are called forth by great emergencies, and hence his sudden death is a national loss. Under a rough and even forbidding exterior he concealed a great and good heart, and it deserves to be recorded to his credit that, throughout this long and painful struggle, he never once signed the death-warrant of a political enemy, though often urged to do so. It is perhaps too early as yet to pronounce sentence definitively on his character; for that we must appeal from the bar of cotemporary criticism to the verdict of posterity; and there is little doubt that future generations will accord a very high position to him who, as President of the United States, has just fallen by the same cruel and horrible fate which half a century ago robbed us of our own Premier, Spencer Perceval.
No fouler crime stands chronicled in all history than the murder of Abraham Lincoln. The sorry pleas of state necessity or political interest that have been advanced time out of mind to palliate assassination cannot even be heard with toleration in such a case as this, for the act is one that outrages humanity and shocks the common conscience of the world. It is accursed and supremely infamous; it is most cowardly, most cruel. Every war has its horrors, and the great fight between the North and the South has been no exception to the rule; but there never was anything more atrocious than this—never anything more [Page 397] base than the slaughter of a man who, during the years of great excitement, had scarcely made a single personal enemy. In the agony and crisis that preceded Robespierre’s reign of terror, Danton said, “The Revolution, like-Saturn, is beginning to devour its own children!” Abraham Lincoln was the child—in no invidious sense, we may even say the puppet—of the passions of his time, and now he has become their victim. A fine spirit of popular enthusiasm made him Chief Magistrate of the greatest republic ever known; the ferocity and the madness of a few desperadoes have abruptly ended a career which already loomed so largely. A wonderful life was Lincoln’s—a life quite as startling and surprising as his death; but, at any rate, the worst part of his work seemed over. The resistance of the South had been crushed. A sturdy, sensible western man, with long limbs and a longer head, Mr. Lincoln had worked his way in the world without any dishonorable subterfuges or mean devices. Clear, direct, simple, and straightforward, he had already, during his brief term of office, outlived many suspicions, jealousies, misconstructions, and dislikes. He bore his honors well, and was settling down into a quiet simple dignity of manner, and a kindly moderation of thought and temper. Terrible had been the trial through which he had victoriously passed. He was emphatically one of the people, but his homespun virtues seemed to justify the people’s choice. At any rate, he had diligently, faithfully, and not unskilfully, labored according to such light as was given him; and now, as he seemed to touch the goal, his course is abruptly checked. To-day, all party feeling, all political jealousies, must be hushed and suspended; to-day, no man is a sympathizer with North or South; we are all mourners over the fate of an honest citizen.
The war was practically over. When the news came that Lee had surrendered, when people like Butler were crying for vengeance, President Lincoln stepped forward and made a speech that was eminently conciliatory. His last public oration was also his best; it was just, manly, sage, and charitable. We have now the authority of Mr. Stanton for saying that in council his tone was precisely the same; and there is something which should touch all honest hearts in that one sentence, “He spoke very kindly of Lee.” This was in the morning; in the evening of Friday, April 14, he was at a theatre in Washington. He had been to Richmond; had authoritatively marched into Jefferson Davis’s house; had received the salutes of negro regiments in the capital of the confederacy; but, so far from allowing this singular turn in the whirligig of fate to excite him, he grew more moderate; he had obviously made up his mind to act as pacificator. He sat in a private box at Ford’s theatre, with his wife, another lady, and Major Rathburn. It was easy enough to approach him; that, indeed, had never been very difficult. The Jacques Clement or Ravaillac of the occasion had not to thrust his way through any guards, for Lincoln had always lived in the open air, fearlessly and frankly. At half-past nine o’clock the door of the box was opened, and before the President could turn round to meet the intruder with his broad genial smile, a pistol was clapped to the back of his head. The shot went through his brain. The assassin, drawing a huge knife and brandishing it, leaped out from the box to the stage, yelled “Sic semper tyrannis!” and fled from the theatre. Abraham Lincoln was never again conscious. His last words had been said before he repaired to the theatre, and they were words of friendliness and conciliation. We do not know that he even spoke once after the bullet pierced his brain; but he lingered on through the night, dying hard, as became a man of his tough, indomitable temper. Whilst he was thus agonizing, another murderer had obtained admission to the sick-room of Secretary Seward, and had stabbed the sufferer in his bed; then, confronted by his son, had stabbed him too, and made his escape. It was to have been a night of wild, hellish butchery; for Stanton’s life also had been threatened, and it is supposed that Ulysses Grant, who was likewise to have attended at Ford’s theatre, was down in the list of the doomed. On the morning of Saturday, the 15th, President [Page 398] Lincoln died; Andrew Johnson succeeded him at the White House; and the assassin was arrested. He proved to be one Wilkes Booth, brother of Edwin Booth, an actor of some repute. The news is so sudden and so startling that its full import can hardly be realized at once. That shot in a private box—the wild stir and alarm of the audience—the horror of the actors, as the assassin jumped upon the stage and mocked their mimic drama by his own awful crime—these things picture themselves as a dim, confused, terrible vision, whose outlines can scarcely be traced even by the steadiest eye and the calmest hand. The deed seems all the more frightful because it was so easily committed; because no soldiery with drawn swords and glittering helmets guarded the approach to Lincoln’s box; because any citizen could approach him, just as any citizen the day before could have walked, scarcely questioned, into his official residence. This splendid reliance upon the people has hitherto been safe; but every land has its felons, and the miscreant Booth has perchance murdered that mutual confidence between ruler and ruled which was the essence of republicanism.
Abraham Lincoln’s life was not particularly happy. He was a sagacious, toilsome, dogged, patient man; he rose by his energy and his shrewdness from a very humble position to the presidential chair; but the presidential chair itself was not a luxurious resting-place, and even the strong Kentuckian frame of the man was sorely tried. Mr. Tennyson speaks of the fierce light which beats upon a throne; fiercer yet, even more broad, open, dazzling, and glaring, was that which played so terribly around the President. It has lit up many noble points in his character, to which, as the years roll on and as party passions fade away, full justice will assuredly be done; but even viewed in this utter publicity, this sheer nakednsss of life, his character stands singularly clear of all that was mean or base. It was easy to caricature his ungainly form, and it was often necessary to dwell upon his mental limitations and defects; his jests were sometimes in bad taste, his language exaggerated and heedless; yet upon everything that he said or did there was the stamp of strong individual manhood. In truth, those who knew him best were convinced that his life was really sad; that his jokes were but the efforts of a jaded, melancholy nature to relieve its sense of weariness; that, knowing he had no time to cry, he laughed as often as he could. Be this said to his honor—whatever cruel things have been done by his subordinates, Abraham Lincoln himself never sent a man to the scaffold. The journalists of his own country have not spared him; yet, after all, the sum of their accusations was also the basis of his glory. Abraham Lincoln, who had been a “rail-splitter” and then a “village lawyer,” contrived by shrewd mother-wit and robust integrity of character to win the esteem of the stout men of the west—a nobler type of Americanism than the motley tribes of New York; whilst at last he became the foremost man in the greatest republic of the world at the hour of its supremest need. His acts are on record—they fill a large volume; and whoever may study them as a part of history, not as material for party polemics, they will prove, upon the whole, singularly sagacious and astute. It has often been our lot to blame them—often been our lot to question the wisdom of the policy which he pursued; nor do we retract what we have said, even now that we have to review it so solemnly and sadly. But from vulgar corruption, from factious hatred, from meanness, jealousy, uncharitableness, this ruler was nobly free. The strange grim face, that was yet illuminated so often by a gleam of honest humor or a glance of genuine kindliness, has been quietly covered by the sere-cloth; the almost gigantic frame, lifeless and limp, has been confined and palled. He had given the republic all he had—his time, his peace, his reputation, his children. One son, his eldest, he had sent to the front with General Grant; another he lost while the war was raging; and yet the office seekers would not give him an hour’s rest, but almost tortured him into madness by their importunities. Throughout the dreariest time of national reverses and calamity, he never despaired. Almost solemn now are those well [Page 399] remembered familiar phrases, “I have put my foot down,” and “We must keep pegging away.” They were but rough translations of a sentiment which, expressed in more knightly phrase, we should regard as heroical. And at last came what seemed to be the fruition of his labors, the reward of his patience and his courage. He, the man of Kentucky and Illinois, entered Richmond as a conqueror; but he launched no decree of proscription; for the fight appeared over, and it was not in the man’s large heart to bear malice against a beaten foe. “He spoke very kindly of Lee,” said Stanton; and on the night of that memorable council, where he pleaded for peace and for mercy, a villain killed him. Not for Lincoln himself can the end be considered as unhappy. To the extent of his power he has done his duty, with singleness of heart, with honesty of purpose; and if ever man needed rest, he needed it. That rest he has obtained, and, with it, the reward that follows honest service. There is a wonderful old song of Shirley the dramatist—a song of which Charles IT is said to have been strangely enamored—which tells us that “the glories of our birth and state are shadows, not substantial things,” and which preaches the sublime equality, the sacred fraternity, of the tomb. In the last verse of that famed lyric we read: “Upon death’s purple altar now, see where the victor-victim bleeds!” The victor-victim of democracy was Abraham Lincoln, twice President of the United States.