But the President was no longer Abraham Lincoln. Re-elected in the preceding autumn, in spite of Republican intrigues and the dangerous opposition of General McClellan, who was put forward by the Democrats, Lincoln had been assassinated during a performance at Ford’s Theatre, on the evening of the 14th of April, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Fort Sumter.
The loss to his country was irreparable. More than any other of its Presidents, either before or since, Abraham Lincoln embodied the real genius of the American nation, and in the hour of their agony he was the father of his people. Slowly they had learnt his strength and his wisdom; but they had hardly begun to understand the greatness of a heart which was able to love the South with a mother’s tenderness even while it was in arms against him.
The Vice-President, who stepped into his place, was a Union Democrat; he also loved the South, but less wisely than well. His rash haste in the reconstruction of the governments of the defeated States threw the nation into the hands of the group of narrowly partisan Republicans which continued to rule America with unscrupulous ability and ill-concealed self-interest[358] for sixteen years, threatening by its attitude towards the Southern people to alienate their sympathies forever from the Union.
FOOTNOTES:
[323] Burroughs, 20, 21.
[324] Literary Gazette, 7th July, 1860; qu. Bucke, 202.
[325] W. M. Rossetti, Selections from W. W., introd., and E. Rhys, Selections from W. W., introd.; W. B. Scott, Autobiog., ii., 32, 33, 268, 269.
[326] There is no fact more important to be remembered for a right understanding of the events that follow than this, that the Slave party only controlled a portion, perhaps a minority, of the Democrats.
[327] L. of G., 190; Mem. Hist. N.Y., iii., 472.