Lincoln’s death was received throughout the South generally as the death of an enemy. Well do they know now that it could have been said of them then, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The sorrow throughout the North was as in the midst of Egypt’s ancient woe. It was as if “There was not a house where there was not one dead.”
As was once said of a great martyr of liberty, slain three centuries before, so it could be said of Lincoln, “He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. While he lived he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.”
Periodicals that had ridiculed him from his first appearance in their view, and that had caused many of their readers to believe him little better than a clown in the arena of affairs, or than a court fool before the nations, dropped their defaming caricatures of him, and gave him nearer justice.
One of the most belittling and besmirching periodicals of England against Lincoln was the “London Punch.” The war-president of the United States was, largely from this source of authority, the jest of all Europe.
But the issue following the assassination of Lincoln contained a great picture. It was symbolical of England laying a wreath of flowers upon Lincoln’s coffin. The picture was drawn by Tenniel and with it was a most penitent poem by Tom Taylor, who was author of the play, “Our American Cousin,” which Lincoln was attending when assassinated. Five of the expressive stanzas are as follows:
“So he grew up, a destined work to do,
And lived to do it; four long suffering years,
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report lived through,
And then he heard the hisses changed to cheers;