In the tone of sadness pervading the beautiful oration there is almost the presentiment of death and that supreme resignation which sometimes takes possession of the soul on the verge of the grave. Already he had planned a proclamation of pardon,—a general amnesty, excluding none, a full and complete restoration of concord and brotherhood between the North and the South, when all at once the terrible news “Lincoln has been assassinated! Lincoln is dead!” flashed over the telegraph wires and filled the whole North with terror. As if nothing was to be wanting to make this gigantic Civil War a tragedy to both sides, the man whose very name was the embodiment of liberty and the symbol of emancipation, and who more than any other man had contributed to the great triumph, had to succumb at the moment of victory. The election of Abraham Lincoln had given the signal for the organization and outbreak of the slaveholders’ rebellion, and it was certainly a remarkable coincidence that the tolling of the church-bells in towns and cities through which Lincoln’s funeral train slowly wended its way from the capital to his Western home was heard simultaneously with the news of the collapse of that rebellion and of the final extinction of human slavery on American soil. This coincidence was almost providential, and if the great Emancipator could have chosen his own time for his death, he certainly could not have made a more appropriate and glorious choice. He became, so to speak, the hero of the great epic of the Civil War—one of the greatest the world had seen,—and his tragical death marked the conclusion of the strife. In the eyes of the fanatical advocates of the Southern cause Abraham Lincoln had always held this prominent position as the principal author of the feud dividing the North and the South, and it is therefore not surprising that some of these fanatics had formed a conspiracy to assassinate him and some of his most intimate advisers. About a week after Mr. Lincoln’s visit at Richmond this plot was to be executed.
On the fourteenth of April, 1865, an especially brilliant performance was to be given at Ford’s Theatre, Washington, and Mr. Lincoln, General Grant, and Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, were expected to be present; in fact, the Washington newspapers of that date had announced that they would be present. But at the very last moment General Grant was compelled to leave Washington and go North. Mr. Stanton, being overburdened with business and unable to find time to go to the theatre, remained at his office, and only Mr. Lincoln went, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and a few friends. His appearance was the signal for a grand ovation. He seemed to follow the presentation of the play with close attention and great interest. The third act had just commenced, when the audience was startled by the sound of a pistol-shot proceeding from the President’s box. At the same moment a man appeared in the foreground of that box, jumped upon the balustrade, and thence down to the stage, shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!” In leaping from the box, one of the man’s spurs got entangled with the flag with which Mr. Lincoln’s box was decorated. He fell and broke a leg, but immediately recovering himself and getting on his feet he had sufficient presence of mind and power of will to make his escape. He knocked down those who tried to stop him, ran through the aisles of the scenery, jumped upon a horse which was kept in readiness for him by an accomplice, and disappeared in the darkness of the night.
This man, who with lightning-like rapidity had appeared on the stage and disappeared from it, was the murderer of Abraham Lincoln; and the murder had been committed so suddenly that the great majority of the audience, even after his flight, were in profound ignorance of what had happened. It was then only that the cries of horror, the loud lamentations of Mrs. Lincoln and of the other persons in the President’s box conveyed to the awe-stricken audience the news of the tragedy which had occurred in their midst. The President, shot through the head from behind, had lost consciousness immediately, and the blood oozed slowly from the wound. However, life was not extinct, and immediately the hope arose that Mr. Lincoln’s life might be saved. He was carried into a neighboring house, and the best surgeons were called to his assistance. But alas! the murderer’s ball having passed through the cerebellum had pierced the cerebrum, and the wound was fatal beyond all hope. Mr. Lincoln died early in the morning without having regained consciousness. The North had lost its greatest citizen and the South its best friend.
While this murder was being committed at Ford’s Theatre, another assassin entered the residence of Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had been seriously injured by an accident a few days before. The assassin pretended to be the bearer of a medical prescription, and demanded to be admitted to the room of the patient. The servant refused to admit him, but was rudely pushed aside, whereupon the visitor, who evidently was familiar with the location of the rooms, burst into the one where Mr. Seward was lying ill in bed, rushed toward him, seriously wounded Mr. Seward’s son, who threw himself in his way, and thereupon engaged the invalid in a furious combat, stabbing him several times. In spite of his disability, the Secretary defended himself bravely and fought with the courage of despair, until at last the assassin, after having badly cut and disfigured his face, made his escape.
As has been stated already, the plan of the conspirators was to kill not only President Lincoln, but other prominent men, such as Andrew Johnson, the new Vice-President, Secretary Seward, Secretary Stanton, and General Grant. On several occasions the assassins had been on the point of perpetrating these murders, but always unforeseen circumstances had occurred and prevented them. At last this gala performance at Ford’s Theatre seemed to invite them to execute their plot, and they resolved to assassinate Lincoln, Grant, and Stanton at the theatre, and Seward and Johnson at their private residences. By removing these five men the assassins hoped to decapitate the republic itself and imagined that very likely during the terror and confusion which these assassinations would cause, the Southern rebels would take up arms again and capture Washington city. But only one of the five victims designated was killed—alas! it was the most illustrious one of the five—while the others escaped owing to fortuitous circumstances.
As to the murderer of Lincoln, who was identified as John Wilkes Booth, it was ascertained that he had been inspired by an implacable and sincere fanaticism. Son of a celebrated English tragedian who had lived several years in the United States, John Wilkes Booth was himself an actor of considerable ability, who had frequently played on the very stage which he was to desecrate by one of the most infamous assassinations of modern times. Young, handsome, eloquent, and audacious as he was, Booth had a certain prestige among his companions and great success with the ladies of his profession. He was an enthusiastic Democrat, became a prominent member of the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” and believed in the divine origin of the institution of slavery. He had been among the lynchers of John Brown and frequently boasted of his participation in that crime. He often expressed the wish that all such abolitionists should die on the gallows. He and some others, equally extreme in their views on the slavery question, met frequently at the house of a Mrs. Surratt, who was also fanatically devoted to the Southern cause, and concocted there the plot to murder the President and his associates.
After having performed that part of the plot which he had reserved for himself—the assassination of the President—with almost incredible boldness, Booth fled to Virginia. He had intended to continue his flight until he had reached the extreme South, and possibly Mexico, but his injury prevented him from carrying out this plan. In company with one of his accomplices he hid himself in an isolated barn on the banks of the Rappahannock, hoping that as soon as the first storm of indignation had blown over, the search for the murderer would gradually relax, if not cease altogether, and that he would then have an opportunity to escape. But in this calculation he was mistaken. A roving detachment of federal soldiers discovered him in his hiding-place, during the night of the twenty-sixth of April. His companion, realizing that all resistance would be useless, surrendered immediately. But Booth wanted to sell his life as dearly as possible. He tried to break out and escape from his pursuers, but a pistol-shot brought him down with a fatal wound in his head, from which he soon afterwards died. The assassin who had assaulted and seriously wounded Secretary Seward had, a few days before, been captured at Mrs. Surratt’s house.
The effect of Mr. Lincoln’s assassination on the people of the North was indescribable. It filled their hearts with bitterness and their minds with thoughts of revenge. It was averred that the murderer in crossing the stage of the theatre and defiantly brandishing a long knife had exclaimed: “The South is avenged!” This exclamation seemed to implicate the whole South, or at least its government, in the murderous act of Booth. The natural consequence was that the people of the North, who immediately after the surrender of Lee’s army were inclined to great leniency toward the vanquished and willing to receive them back into the Union with open arms, suddenly turned against them. The army and the government circles, and in fact the entire population of the national capital, who had learned to love Mr. Lincoln, demanded the most severe punishment for the rebels. Then began the long and tedious work of reconstruction, retarded by party spirit and retaliatory measures on both sides. It was terminated to the satisfaction of both only during the last few years, when the sons of the South fought shoulder to shoulder with the sons of the North for the deliverance of Cuba from Spanish oppression under the glorious banner of the Union. But how often during these years of contention, was the great man missed whose truly humane spirit would have contributed so much to bring the discordant elements of both sections together in fraternal harmony and mutual respect, and whose hands had penned the noblest document of the nineteenth century—the proclamation of emancipation—setting free four million slaves. Such deeds as his can never be forgotten.
The assassination did a great deal for Mr. Lincoln’s standing in history. It added the halo of martyrdom to his renown as a statesman, and it has made him a national hero, who, next to Washington—or with Washington—holds the highest place in the estimation of the American people. It is doubtful whether Abraham Lincoln, if he had not crowned his career with a martyr’s death, would have held this place. It had especially the effect of wiping out an impression which many had formed of Mr. Lincoln’s character, and which, during the first years of his presidential term, lowered him considerably in the eyes of the people. His Southern enemies and detractors made a great deal of Mr. Lincoln’s “undignified bearing,” his “lack of tact,” “his mania for telling funny stories, in and out of season,” and the Northern Democrats were only too busy repeating and circulating these stories, because they could not forgive Lincoln for having beaten their idol, Stephen Arnold Douglas.
Mr. Lincoln’s distinction was his strong originality and self-reliance. As a young man, with no adviser to guide him through the hardships and embarrassments of life, he took counsel with his own mind, which fortunately was of peculiar depth, rich in resources,—and the advice he received from this consultation, the instruction he gained by this appeal to the fund of his own knowledge and experience served him splendidly as schooling for the task which was in store for him. And joined to this self-education nature had bestowed on him some of her rarest gifts,—humor, kind, genial, and peculiarly humane, blending tears with laughter, and a mother-wit always ready to make fun of his own misfortunes and shortcomings, and to joke away any embarrassing situation in which either untoward circumstances or his own mistakes might have placed him. In addition to all this he possessed that truly American characteristic—shrewdness, which far from being an objectionable quality with him, was modified by his kindness of heart and his moral uprightness.