Who was the assassin of the President? Not an armed rebel, clothed with belligerent rights; not a political refugee, who had skulked into our lines for rapine and for plunder; but the citizen of a free State, who could visit and send his cards to the Vice-President with a flippant familiarity, which his aristocratic slave-holding associates presume to use,—a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, breathing treason and blaspheming God, without rebuke. He could command attention from proprietors of houses and saloons, from owners of blooded stock, from men who were called loyal, and the toleration of this killed our good President.
He was a wretch, of whom a press said, but yesterday, that he was sincere in thinking he should rid the earth of a tyrant, by slaying the President, this sincerity must place him on a level with John Brown. {Hisses and cries of The Times.} This was said yesterday, and read by thousands, and I know of no steps taken to prevent the utterance of similar insult and outrage to-morrow. For this tolerance we are responsible, and tolerance like this killed the good President. When a far-seeing military commandant ordered the suppression of published treason, there were men in high places, and men all over the land, who outraged the loyal masses by interfering to prevent the execution of that order, on the ground of disturbing the freedom of the press; but when our ministers went into Richmond they were muzzled, and the result has been that treason has been littered, the good man called an imbecile—the generous man a tyrant—the restraint of traitors has been referred to as, usurpation of power, and prisons have been called Bastiles. All this has been, and we have tolerated it. This has given aid and comfort to treason in the South, and traitors in the North, and this has killed the good President.
The measure of our responsibility is the amount of our connivance at these things. No man is free from guilt who has winked at this wrong, who has interfered to prevent the punishment of wrong-doers, who has apologies for treason, who has not done all in his power to rebuke, denounce and punish the foes of the nation, at home and abroad. We stand, to-day, as though in the presence of the nation's dead, and here, on the tomb of our chieftain, let us swear eternal enmity to treason and to traitors. Nor let us, when the assassin shall be arrested and punished—oh! let us not then think we have done our duty. I had rather the profane wretch who has done this deed were never taken, than that his execution should relieve our minds from one thought of our personal responsibility. No; rather let the wretch be a fugitive and vagabond, with the mark of Cain upon him. Let none slay him, for we ourselves are not guiltless. And as he flies from men, with hate in his eyes and hell in his heart, let every home be an asylum from which he shall be barred, and every honest, loyal heart a sanctuary where no thought of complicity with him, or sympathy for him may enter. Let us bow before God to-day in humble penitence; let us ask of Him forgiveness—Father forgive us, for we knew not what we did—that His hand be stayed, and the measure of our responsibility be canceled."
In this connection, we may with propriety, introduce the following extract from President Johnson's recent speech to the Indiana delegation:
"We are living at a time when the public mind had almost become oblivious of what treason is. The time has arrived, my countrymen, when the American people should be educated and taught what crime is, and that treason is crime, and the highest crime known to the law and the Constitution. Yes, treason against a State, treason against all the States, treason against the Government of the United States, is the highest crime that can be committed, and those engaged in it should suffer all the penalties. It is not promulgating anything that I have not heretofore said, to say that traitors must be made odious; that treason must be made odious; that traitors must be punished and imprisoned. {Applause.} They must not only be punished, but their social power must be destroyed. If not, they will still maintain an ascendency, and may again become numerous and powerful; for, in the words of a former senator of the United States, when traitors become numerous enough, treason becomes respectable. And I say that, after making treason odious, every Union man and the Government, should be remunerated out of the pockets of those who have inflicted the great suffering upon the country. {Applause.} But do not understand me as saying this in a spirit of anger; for, if I understand my own heart, the reverse is the case; and, while I say that the penalties of the law, in a stern and inflexible manner, should be executed upon conscious, intelligent, and influential traitors,—the leaders who have deceived thousands upon thousands of laboring men, who have been drawn into the rebellion; and while I say, as to leaders, punishment, I also say leniency, conciliation, and amnesty, to the thousands whom they have misled and deceived, and, in relation to this, as I have remarked, I might have adopted your speech as my own."