Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

LETTER FROM HENRI MARTIN:

TRANSLATED FROM THE PARIS “SIÈCLE."

SL

LAVERY, before expiring, has gathered up the remnants of its strength and rage to strike a coward blow at its conquerer..

The satanic pride of that perverted society could not resign itself to defeat: it did not care to fall with honor, as all causes fall which are destined to rise again: it dies as it has lived, violating all laws, divine and human.

In this we have the spirit, and perhaps the work, of that famous secret association, "The Golden Circle," which, after preparing the great rebellion for twenty years, and spreading its accomplices throughout the West and North, around the seat of the presidency, gave the signal for this impious war on the day when the public conscience finally snatched from the slaveholders the Government of the United States.

The day on which the excellent man whom they have just made a martyr was raised to power, they appealed to force, to realize what treason had prepared.

They have failed. They did not succeed in overthrowing Lincoln from power by war: they have done so by assassination.

The plot appears to have been well arranged. By striking down with the President his two principal ministers, one of whom they reached, and the General-in-chief, who was saved by an

accidental occurrence, the murderers expected to disorganize the Government of the Republic, and give fresh life to the rebellion.

Their hopes will be frustrated. These sanguinary fanatics, whose cause has fallen not so much by the material superiority as the moral power of democracy, have become incapable of understanding the effects of the free institutions which their fathers gloriously aided in establishing. A fresh illustration will be seen of what those institutions can produce.

The indignation of the people will not exhaust itself in a momentary outburst; it will concentrate and embody itself in the unanimous, persevering, invincible action of the universal will: whoever may be the agents, the instruments of the work, that work, we may rest assured, will be finished. The event will show that it did not depend upon the life of one man, or of several men.

The work will be completed after Lincoln, as if finished by him; but Lincoln will remain the austere and sacred personification of a great epoch, the most faithful expression of democracy.

This simple and upright man, prudent and strong, elevated step by step from the artisan's bench to the command of a great nation, and always, without parade and without effort, at the height of his position; executing without precipitation, without flourish, and with invincible good sense, the most colossal acts; giving to the world this decisive example of the civil power in a republic; directing a gigantic war, without free institutions being for an instant compromised or threatened by military usurpation; dying, finally, at the moment in which, after conquering, he was intent on pacification, — and may God grant, that the atrocious madmen who killed him have not killed clemency with him, and determined, instead of the peace he wished, pacification by force! this man will stand out, in the traditions of his country and the

world, as an incarnation of the people, and of modern democracy itself.

The great work of emancipation had to be sealed, therefore, with the blood of the just, even as it was inaugurated with the blood of the just. The tragic history of the abolition of slavery, which opened with the gibbet of John Brown, will close with the assassination of Lincoln.

And now let him rest by the side of Washington, as the second founder of the great Republic. European democracy is present in spirit at his funeral, as it voted in its heart for his re-election, and applauded the victory in the midst of which he passes away. It will wish with one accord to associate itself with the monument that America will raise to him upon the capital of prostrate sla

very.

HENRI MARTIN.

42

APPENDIX.

« AnteriorContinuar »