Recovering himself immediately, he flourished his dagger, shouted “Sic semper tyrannis” and “The South is avenged,” retreated successfully through the labyrinth of the theatre—perfectly familiar to him—to his horse in waiting below. Between the deed of blood and the escape there was not the lapse of a minute. The hour was about half-past ten. There was but one pursuer, and he from the audience, but he was outstripped.
The meaning of the pistol-shot was soon ascertained. Mr. Lincoln had been shot in the back of the head, behind the left ear, the ball traversing an oblique line to the right ear. He was rendered instantly unconscious, and never knew friends or pain again. Having been conveyed as soon as possible to a house opposite the theatre, he expired there the next morning, April fifteenth, 1865, at twenty-two minutes past seven o’clock, attended by the principal members of his Cabinet and other friends, from all of whom the heart-rending spectacle drew copious tears of sorrow. Mrs. Lincoln and her son Robert were in an adjoining apartment—the former bowed down with anguish, the latter strong enough to sustain and console her. A disconsolate widow and two sons now constituted the entire family. Soon after nine o’clock, the body was removed to the White House under military escort.
Thus ended the earthly career of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, on the threshold of his fifty-seventh year and second Presidential term.
“Sic semper tyrannis!” And this the justification for the murder of a ruler who had
“—— borne his faculties so meek, had been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off.”
“The South avenged!” And by the cold-blooded murder of the best friend that repentant rebels ever had—of one who had long withstood the pressing appeals of his warmest personal and political friends for less lenity and more rigor in dealing with traitors.
It was written in the decrees of the Immutable that he should fall by the bullet—not, indeed, on the battle-field, whose sad suggestings he had so often, and so tenderly, lovingly heeded—but in the midst of his family, while seeking relief from the cares of state—and by a murderer’s hand!—the first President to meet such a fate—thenceforth our martyr-chief!
But sorrow was tempered with mercy. He did not fall until a benignant Providence had permitted him to enjoy a foretaste, at least, of the blessings which he had been instrumental in conferring upon the land he loved so well.
The pledges of his first Inaugural Address had been amply redeemed—those pledges which so many declared impossible of fulfilment, which not a few mocked as beyond human power to accomplish. The power confided to him had been successfully used “to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government.” No United States fort at the time of his fall flaunted treason in the eyes of the land. The day of his murder the old flag had been flung to the breeze from Sumter with ceremonies befitting the joyous occasion, by the very hands that four years before had been compelled to lower it to arrogant traitors; and friends of freedom for man, irrespective of color or race, walked the streets of Charleston—a city of desolation, a skeleton of its former self—jubilant that, since God so willed it, in His own good time, Freedom was National and Slavery but a thing of the past.
When he fell, the Nation, brought by the stern necessities of direful war to the discharge of duties befitting a better manhood, passing by all projects for an emancipation of slaves, which should be merely gradual, not content even that such emancipation had been proclaimed as a measure of military necessity, had spoken in favor of such an amendment of the Constitution as should forever prohibit any claim of property in man. Though the final consummation of that great measure had not been reached when our President was removed, it was given him to feel assured that the end was not distant, was even then close at hand.