But still another consolation is in the power of justice returning to our hands. If we were going to be too lenient; if, to a lax and vicious good-humor, we were sacrificing the law and honor of God, we have learned that indulgence is not equity, and leniency is not love. Not revenge should be our object; for, spite of the text that ascribes it to him, I do not believe it is God's! Nor can we compass the absolute justice which God alone can measure out. But, for the protection of society, for the reformation of the criminal, for the guarding and nursing of the national life, we must watch every motion, and strain every nerve. Such atrocities of crime as can be traced should have condign sentence. Those who are responsible for the starving, in Southern pens and prisons, of our captured soldiers, should have due penalty. We cannot mete out the fair desert to all who have committed treason. We cannot hang a community. But the wicked leadership, the official malice, should feel our express displeasure, in the solemn sentence of the law. Let us convert what we can, disfranchise what has sinned basely, and banish with the mark of Cain what can never belong to us! We are gathering power to do this. The wild beast, which we have fought so long in the wilderness and the woods, we are getting under. Quickly as possible let us set up everywhere the civil and criminal courts! What the national stomach cannot assimilate it must vomit; and not keep it in the system, an indigestible and poisonous lump. The last consolation is, that God can sanctify to us our supreme earthly ruler's death. He would not have permitted his life to be taken, had he not done his work. He has finished it, how well and nobly! Perhaps he would have been too gentle with evil-doers in the time to come. "Sic semper tyrannis," shouted the tragic actor, after discharging his pistol, as he brandished his blade. A strange motto for a slave state ! For a murderer, as he slew the softest-hearted of men, a marvellous cry! Sic semper tyrannis! What! for him, Abraham Lincoln, the mildest among all he was set over, mild as May, into whose soul, from others' opposition or ridicule, no resentment could get; who never knew, in the way of authority or manner, how to get up to the dignity of his office; whose fault, if he had one, was, that he was not sufficiently stern with the vileness he could not comprehend; a man of the people, who waited before he struck at crime; a waiter on the people, who also waited on the Lord, and harkened for the harmony, yet to the coming of God's and the people's voice, he, among whose last accents were words of kindness to the rebellious South, HE a tyrant! The speaker on the stage was playing indeed, though in a ferocious way. He feigned or fearfully mistook the side tyranny was on. Davis and Benjamin and Wigfall and Mason and Slidell not the tyrants? Nay, if such as they have not fallen by any privy blow, the reason is not that they are not tyrants, but we not assassins. Ah! could the agents and plotters of this ghastly crime have themselves only waited a little while, the measureless toils of our beloved one, more our servant than captain, might have worn him out. They need not have been so eager to anticipate the fate for him, toward which he was so rapidly consuming his own strength. But be it our consolation, that the chariot of the Lord goes forward. He that takes hold of the spokes of its wheels, shall not stop it. What were the gentlest lips, that ever spoke, parted to say? "He that falls on this stone shall be broken; but on whom it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." Truly "the wrath of man shall praise him," and "the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance." The "blessed martyr," that bore himself so meekly in the greatest station on earth, has gone to his harp and crown in heaven. After toil, To mortals rest is sweet. |