power the leading empire upon the globe. The crushing out of this rebellion, it was well understood, placed us upon the solid, granite foundation of a pure Christian democracy, opening before us almost dazzling vistas of honor, prosperity, and greatness.

TRAGEDY AT WASHINGTON.-ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. THE CONSPIRACY.-THE SPIRIT OF SLAVERY AND REBELLION.-EFFECT ON THE NATION.-SUSPENSION OF HOSTILITIES BETWEEN SHERMAN AND JOHNSTON.-TERMS OF AGREEMENT.-THEIR REJECTION BY THE GOVERNMENT.-SURRENDER OF JOHNSTON.-FLIGHT OF JEFFERSON DAVIS.-PURSUIT AND CAPTURE.--DISPERSION OF REBEL TROOPS.-DISBANDMENT OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY AND NAVY.-RECONSTRUCTION.

In the midst of these unparalleled triumphs, and while all the bells of the land were ringing with joy, a calamity fell upon us which overwhelmed the country in consternation and woe. On Friday evening, April 14th, President Lincoln attended Ford's Theatre, in Washington. He was sitting quietly in his box, listening to the drama, when a man entered the door of the lobby leading to the box, closing the door behind him. Drawing near to the President, he drew from his pocket a small pistol, and shot him in the back of the head. As the President fell senseless and mortally wounded, and the shriek of his wife, who was seated at his side, pierced every ear, the assassin leaped from the box, a perpendicular height of nine feet, and as he rushed across the stage bareheaded, brandished a dagger, exclaiming, "Sic semper tyrannis," and disappeared behind the side-scenes. There was a moment of silent consternation. Then ensued a scene of confusion which it is in vain to attempt to describe.

The dying President was taken into a house near by, and placed upon a bed. What a scene did that room present! The chief of a mighty nation lay there senseless, drenched in blood, his brains oozing from his wound. Sumner and Farwell and Colfax and Stanton and many others were there, pallid with grief and consternation. The surgeon, General Barnes, solemnly examined the wound. There was silence as of the grave. The life or death of the nation seemed dependent on the result. General Barnes looked up sadly and said, "The wound is mortal."

“Oh no! general, no! no!" cried out Secretary Stanton, and, sinking into a chair, he covered his face, and wept like a child. Senator Sumner tenderly holds the hand of the unconscious martyr. Though all unused to weep, he sobs as though his great heart would break. In his anguish his head falls upon the blood-stained pillow, and his black locks blend with those of the dying victim, which care and toil had rendered gray, and which blood had crimsoned. What a scene! Sumner, who had lingered through months of agony, having himself been stricken down by the

bludgeon of slavery, now sobbing and fainting in anguish over the prostrate form of his friend, whom slavery has slain. This vile rebellion, after deluging the land in blood, has culminated in a crime which appalls all nations.

Noble Abraham, true descendant of the Father of the Faithful, honest in every trust, humble as a child, tender-hearted as a woman, who could not bear to injure even his most envenomed foes, who in the hour of triumph was saddened lest the feelings of his adversaries should be wounded by their defeat, with "charity for all, malice towards none," endowed with "common-sense" intelligence never surpassed, and with powers of intellect which enabled him to grapple with the most gigantic opponents in debate, developing abilities as a statesman, which won the gratitude of his country and the admiration of the world, and with graces of amiability which drew to him all generous hearts; dies by the bullet of the assassin!

There was a wide-spread conspiracy for the death of all the leading officers of the Government and of the army. The President, VicePresident Johnson, Secretary Seward, Secretary Stanton, and others were marked for assassination. One of the assassins, at the moment the President was struck down, crept stealthily to the chamber of the Secretary of State, and plunged his dagger again and again into the neck of his helpless victim. The son of the Secretary and an attendant rushed to the rescue. Both were severely wounded by the desperate assassin, as with blooddripping dagger he cut his way by them and escaped. The other men marked for death providentially escaped. The murderer of the President proved to be a play-actor by the name of John Wilkes Booth. For many days he eluded the vigilance of the police, and was finally shot in the endeavor to capture him. The assassin who sought the life of Secretary Seward proved to be a young man from Florida, by the name of Lewis Payne Powell. To the joy of the nation, Secretary Seward recovered. Through all the embarrassments of the war he had conducted our foreign diplomatic relations with skill which the more it is studied shines with increasing lustre. His assassin, with three accomplices, was taken and hung. Others who were aiders in the crime were imprisoned.

In this atrocious act, the Nation saw but the development of the same spirit which the demon of slavery, treason, and rebellion had exhibited from the beginning. Since the first gun was fired at Sumter, the rebellion has rioted over the carnage which has filled hundreds of thousands of graves with the gory bodies of our sons. It has uttered no voice of sympathy, as the wail of the widow and the orphan has been wafted over the land. It has plunged the bayonet into the bosoms of our soldiers, lying wounded and bleeding after the battle. It has cut off the limbs of our loved ones, boiled them to loosen the flesh, and from the bones carved trinkets for its women; and with barbarity which would disgrace Comanche Indians, made drinking-cups of the skulls of patriot martyrs. The rebellion, in wide-spread conspiracy, has endeavored to wrap in midnight conflagration hotels crowded with women and children, and to envelop in fiery billows a city containing a million of inhabitants. With deliber

ate purpose of cruelty, it has shut up our poor captives where they had no shelter from the blistering sun of summer, or from the freezing blasts of winter. It would not allow them, with their own labor, to construct huts from the large forests which surrounded them. It has refused any thing like a sufficient supply of water, food, or clothing to those held as prisoners, and has even robbed them of the rations and the garments which the United States Government sent to save them from freezing and starvation.

It has endeavored thus by torture to compel the Union prisoners of war to enlist beneath the banner of treason. And when our sons, true as the seraph Abdiel to their patriot sires, have chosen unspeakable misery and death, to dishonor, they have laughed derisively to see them die, devoured by vermin, and reduced even to idiotcy in their woe.

It was this demoniac spirit which now culminated in the murder of the President of the United States and the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State. Let no one say that this was but an individual act; that this was but the deed of one or two assassins. It was the spirit of the rebellion. It was the legitimate fruit of that baleful tree. It was in character with every development of the rebellion from the beginning until the end. It was the same fiend-like malignity which marked the whole career of these bold, bad men.

They who will burn at the stake and hang men, women, and children, their own neighbors, because they will not join them in their traitorous cause; who can bayonet helpless boys, fainting and dying upon the battlefield; who can shoot unarmed prisoners; who can call to their aid the bayonet and the scalping-knife of the savage; who can make trinkets of the bones and drinking-cups of the skulls of their enemies; who can apply the midnight torch to thronged hotels, where maidens are sleeping in their purity, and children in their innocence; who can burn and freeze and starve to death sixty thousand, ay, sixty thousand, as they have actually done, of our noble young men, who were helpless in their hands;-it is in vain for these to say:

"We are not responsible for the acts of the assassin."

They are responsible. It was the venom of secession which distilled its poison into the souls of the assassins. It was the energy of the rebellion which nerved their bloody arms. Rebellion created them. They were rebellion's pliant tools.

If the spirit of the rebellion had dared to brave the scorn of the world, it would have exulted over the crime, as it shouted for joy over the bloody blows which the same spirit rained down upon the head of Senator Sumner, voting the assassin honors and rewards.

Even in the North, those in sympathy with the rebellion were unable to conceal their first emotions of joy. Women, dead to all womanly nature, were heard to exclaim, "Thank God for the news!" And men, distilling venom more deadly than ever was ejected from reptile sting or fang, were seen rubbing their hands with delight, and saying, "Let us ring our bells, and wave our banners, and fire our heaviest guns, for very

joy."

For four long years the rebels had been declaring, in every utterance of vituperation, that the cause of the Union was the cause of hell; that Abraham Lincoln was a reptile, and that any one would do both God and man a service who would crush him like a viper. At length the assassin, thus roused, nerved himself for the deed. Appalled by the cry of indignation which burst from every honest breast, the demon of rebellion shrank back and exclaimed, "It was not I who did it."

Foul spirit thou didst do it. And both God and man will hold thee responsible for the deed. It was Davis and Lee and Hood and Johnston and Beauregard who fired that pistol. They shot the deadly bullet into the brain of our beloved President. The wretch who pulled the trigger was their agent; he could not have existed but for them. It was Toombs and Wigfall and Pickens and Wise who struck the dagger into the throat of the Secretary of State. But for their foul treason, their words of encouragement, through long, long years, the assassin's pitiless heart could never have been fired for the deed.

The Nation bitterly mourned its loss. But was the Republic lost? No! The event did but sublimely demonstrate to the world that there is no government on earth so stable as a pure republic, founded on the affections of the masses of the people. It needed but this final test to prove to all the crowned heads of Europe that our Presidential Chair stands upon a foundation which can endure shocks which would blow every kingly throne high into the air. The pallid faces and moistened eyes of the Nation declared grief only, not affright. The foundations of the Government were never stronger. The resolution of the Nation, and of its faithful servant, the army, to destroy every root and branch of the rebellion, was never so determined as then. Not a department in the Government shook in the wind. Not a nerve of governmental action was palsied. Our majestic ship of state, though with flag at half-mast, went careering triumphantly on, unimpeded, over the waves.

We had still our victorious army left, its ranks crowded with patriots. We had Grant left, with his imperial, grasping, military mind, rivalling Napoleon I. in the grandeur of his combinations. We had Sherman left, with his keen, nervous, tireless energies, performing exploits before which the achievements of the age of chivalry fade away. We had Sheridan left, with his flashing sabre, in the light of whose gleams the scimetar of Richard the Lion-hearted loses its lustre. And we had Thomas left, as fearless in courage as the Bedouin of the Desert, and as indomitable as Ararat. No! the Republic was not endangered. We wept with grief, and also with indignation, which girded our souls with new strength. As we turned our eyes to Washington, we saw that Stanton was still there, to hurl with nervous arm the thunderbolts of war. Welles was there, the patient, indomitable Welles, who in four short years lifted up our navy from nothing, to be the first maritime power on the globe; and in the thunders of those walls of iron, we heard the cheering voices of Farragut and Porter and Dupont and Lee.

Chase was there, with his imperial mind, his clear vision, his inflexible love of impartial justice. And Sumner and Fessenden and Wilson and