“The second favor I ask from God, is that my dear son, Robert, when I am gone, will be one of those who lift up that flag of Liberty which will cover my tomb, and carry it with honor and fidelity, to the end of his life, as his father did, surrounded by the millions who will be called with him to fight and die for the defence and honor of our country.”
Never had I heard such sublime words. Never had I seen a human face so solemn and so prophet-like as the face of the President, when uttering these things. Every sentence had come to me as a hymn from heaven, reverberated by the echoes of the mountains of Pisgah and Calvary. I was beside myself. Bathed in tears, I tried to say something, but I could not utter a word.
I knew the hour to leave had come, I asked from the President permission to fall on my knees, and pray with him that his life might be spared; and he knelt with me. But I prayed more with my tears and sobs than with my words.
Then I pressed his hand on my lips and bathed it with my tears, and with a heart filled with an unspeakable desolation, I bade him Adieu! It was for the last time!
For the hour was fast approaching when he was to fall by the hand of a Jesuit assassin, for his nation’s sake.
Chapter LXI.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN A TRUE MAN OF GOD, AND A TRUE DISCIPLE OF THE GOSPEL—HIS ASSASSINATION BY BOOTH—THE TOOL OF THE PRIESTS—MARY SURRATT’S HOUSE—THE RENDEZVOUS AND DWELLING PLACE OF THE PRIESTS—JOHN SURRATT SECRETED BY THE PRIESTS AFTER THE MURDER OF LINCOLN—THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN KNOWN AND PUBLISHED IN THE TOWN THREE HOURS BEFORE ITS OCCURRENCE.
Every time I met President Lincoln, I wondered how such elevation of thought and such childish simplicity could be found in the same man. After my interviews with him, many times, I said to myself: “How can this rail-splitter have so easily raised himself to the highest range of human thought and philosophy?”
The secret of this was, that Lincoln had spent a great part of his life at the school of Christ, and that he had meditated his sublime teachings to an extent unsuspected by the world. I found in him, the most perfect type of Christianity I ever met.
Professedly, he was neither a strict Presbyterian, nor a Baptist, or a Methodist; but he was the embodiment of all which is more perfect and Christian in them. His religion was the very essence of what God wants in man. It was from Christ himself, he had learned to love his God and his neighbor, as it was from Christ he had learned the dignity and the value of man. “Ye are all brethren, the children of God,” was his great motto.