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sought to throw the protection of the laws of war-were at least acquainted with the horrible plot, and lent it their sanction, if not their aid. But it seems to have originated mainly, if not exclusively, with the man who played the leading part in its execution. Booth was a son of the most distinguished actor of that name, and inherited something of his passionate and peculiar nature. He had been, from the outbreak of the rebellion, one of its most fanatical devotees; and, as its strength and prospects of success began to grow less and less, his mind was absorbed in desperate schemes for reviving its fortunes and securing its triumph. Papers which he left behind him. show that he had deliberately dedicated himself to this service, long before the surrender of Lee and the virtual overthrow of the rebel cause; and what was then a desire to aid the rebellion, became, after this was hopeless, a desperate determination to avenge its downfall. He plotted the murder of Mr. Lincoln, and of the leading members of the Government, with the utmost care and deliberation, selecting for his assistants men better fitted to be tools than confederates, and assuming himself entire charge of the enterprise. The meetings of the conspirators were held at the house of one Mrs. Surratt, in Washington; and detailed arrangements had been made, with her assistance, for effecting an escape. Booth accordingly, after shooting the President, and escaping across the eastern branch of the Potomac River, found temporary shelter and aid among the rebel sympathizers of Lower Maryland. His movements, however, were greatly embarrassed and retarded by the fracture of his leg, caused by his fall as he leaped upon the stage after committing the murder; and the agents whom the Government had sent in pursuit soon came upon his track, and on the night of the 26th of April found him, with one of his accomplices, a lad named Harold, who had also been the companion of his flight, in the barn of a farmer named Garrett, near Port Royal, on the south side of the Rappahannock, and about ninety miles from Washington. Harold surrendered. Booth refusing to do so, and

menacing his captors with fire-arms, was shot by a sergeant of the troop, named Corbett. Several persons, implicated more or less directly in the plot, were afterwards apprehended, and tried before a military commission in the City of Washington. Mrs. Surratt, Harold, a man named Atzerott, who was to have killed Vice-President Johnson, and Payne, the assailant of Secretary Seward, were executed on the 6th of July, and several others were sentenced to imprisonment for life or a term of years, for their share in the conspiracy. As these events had nothing to do with the Administration of Mr. Lincoln, it does not fall within the scope of this work to narrate them in greater detail.

As might naturally be expected, the horrid crime aroused the most intense indignation throughout the country. No man, in either section, ventured to become its apologist; and public sentiment, overlooking every thing that was irregular and inconclusive in the proceedings of the military commission by whose sentence the parties accused of complicity in the murder were convicted and hung, applauded the execution, and gave it the sanction of a general and emphatic approval.

The murder of the President gave still another evidence of the stability of our institutions, and of the capacity of our people to meet any possible emergency in the conduct of their affairs. It occasioned not the slightest pause in the stately march of the Government. The Constitution had provided that, in the event of the President's death, the functions of his office should devolve upon the VicePresident. Accordingly, at ten o'clock on the morning of President Lincoln's decease, Andrew Johnson took the oath of office, and entered upon the discharge of his duties as President of the United States. Not a word was uttered, nor a hand lifted, against his accession; and thus, with the silent and cordial acquiescence of the great body of the people, a crisis was passed which, in other countries and in other times, would have shaken governments to their foundation; and the world saw with astonishment and admiration, that, in war as in peace, in

the most trying crises of a nation's fate as well as in the ordinary course of public affairs, a Government "of the people, and for the people," was the strongest and the safest the world had ever known.

It forms no part of the object of this work to deal in eulogy of President Lincoln and his Administration. Its purpose will have been attained if it places his acts and words in such a form, that those who read them may judge for themselves of the merits and defects of the policy he pursued. It was his destiny to guide the nation through the stormiest period of its existence. No one of his predecessors, not even Washington, encountered difficulties of equal magnitude, or was called to perform duties of equal responsibility. He was first elected by a minority of the popular vote, and his election was regarded by a majority of the people as the immediate occasion, if not the cause, of civil war; yet upon him devolved the necessity of carrying on that war, and of combining and wielding the energies of the nation for its successful prosecution. The task, under all the circumstances of the case, was one of the most gigantic that ever fell to the lot of the head of any nation ;-the success by which it was crowned vindicates triumphantly the manner in which it was performed.

From the outset, Mr. Lincoln's reliance was upon the spirit and patriotism of the people. He had no overweening estimate of his own sagacity; he was quite sensible of his lack of that practical knowledge of men and affairs which experience of both alone can give; but he had faith in the devotion of the people to the principles of Republican government, in their attachment to the Constitution and the Union, and in that intuitive sagacity of a great community which always transcends the most cunning devices of individual men, and, in a great and perilous crisis, more nearly resembles inspiration than the mere deductions of the human intellect. At the very outset of his Administration, President Lincoln cast himself, without reserve and without fear, upon this reliance. It has been urged against him as a reproach that he did not

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assume to lead and control public sentiment, but was content to be the exponent and the executor of its will. Possibly an opposite course might have succeeded, but possibly, also, it might have ended in disastrous and fatal failure. One thing is certain: the policy which he did pursue did not fail. The rebellion did not succeed; the authority of the Government was not overthrown; no new government, resting on slavery as its corner-stone, has been established upon this continent, nor has any for eign nation been provoked or permitted to throw its sword into the scale against us. On the contrary, the policy pursued by Mr. Lincoln has been completely and permanently successful-and that fact is conclusive as to its substantial wisdom.

In one respect President Lincoln achieved a wonderful success. He maintained, through the terrible trials of his Administration, a reputation, with the great body of the people, for unsullied integrity of purpose and of conduct, which even Washington did not surpass, and which no President since Washington has equalled. He had command of an army greater than that of any living monarch ; he wielded authority less restricted than that conferred by any other constitutional government; he disbursed sums of money equal to the exchequer of any nation in the world; yet no man, of any party, believes him in any instance to have aimed at his own aggrandizement, to have been actuated by personal ambition, or to have consulted any other interest than the welfare of his country, and the perpetuity of its Republican form of government. This of itself is a success which may well challenge universal admiration, for it is one which is the indispensable condition of all other forms of success. No man whose public integrity was open to suspicion, no matter what might have been his abilities or his experience, could possibly have retained enough of public confidence to carry the country through such a contest as that from which we have just emerged. No President, suspected of seeking his own aggrandizement at the expense of his country's liberties, could ever have received such enor

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