[The New York Tribune, August 16, 1885, under the heading "A NARROW ESCAPE OF LINCOLN," quotes an interesting "Omaha Letter, to the St. Paul Pioneer Press," as follows:
"That more than one attempt was made to assassinate Abraham Lincoln is a fact known to John W. Nichols, ex-president of the Omaha Fire Department. Mr. Nichols was one of the body-guard of President Lincoln from the Summer of 1862 until 1865. The following narrative, related to your correspondent by Mr. Nichols, is strictly true, and the incident is not generally known:
One night about the middle of August, 1864, I was doing sentinel duty at the large gate through which entrance was had to the grounds of the Soldiers' Home. The grounds are situated about a quarter of a mile off the Bladensburg road, and are reached by devious driveways. About 11 o'clock I heard a rifle shot in the direction of the city, and shortly afterwards I heard approaching hoof-beats. In two or three minutes a horse came dashing-up, and I recognized the belated President. The horse was very spirited, and belonged to Mr. Lamon, marshal of the District of Columbia. This horse was Mr. Lincoln's favorite, and when he was in the White House stables he always chose him. As horse and rider approached the gate, I noticed that the President was bareheaded. After assisting him in checking his steed, the President said to me: 'He came pretty near getting away with me, didn't he? He got the bit in his teeth before I could draw the rein.' I then asked him where his hat was, and he replied that somebody had fired a gun off down at the foot of the hill, and that his horse had become scared and jerked his hat off. I led the animal to the Executive Cottage, and the President dismounted and entered. Thinking the affair rather strange, a corporal and myself started in the direction of the place from where the sound of the rifle report had proceeded, to investigate the occurrence. When we reached the spot where the driveway intersects with the main road we found the President's hat—a plain silk hat—and upon examining it we discovered a bullet hole through the crown. The shot had been fired upwards, and it was evident that the person who fired the shot had secreted himself close to the roadside. We listened and searched the locality thoroughly, but to no avail. The next day I gave Mr. Lincoln his hat and called his attention to the bullet hole. He rather unconcernedly remarked that it was put there by some foolish gunner, and was not intended for him. He said, however, that he wanted the matter kept quiet, and admonished us to say nothing about it. We all felt confident that it was an attempt to kill him, and a well-nigh successful one, too. The affair was kept quiet, in accordance with his request. After that, the President never rode alone.">[
That this dark and wicked and bloody Rebellion, waged by the upholders and advocates of Slavery, Free Trade, and Secession, had descended so low as to culminate in murder—deliberate, cold-blooded, cowardly murder—at a time when the Southern Conspirators would apparently be the least benefitted by it, was regarded at first as evidencing their mad fatuity; and the public mind was dreadfully incensed.
The successor of the murdered President—Andrew Johnson—lost little time in offering (May the 2d) rewards, ranging from $25,000 to $100,000, for the arrest of Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson,
[The same individual at whose death, in 1885, the Secretary of the Interior, ordered the National flag of the Union—which he had swindled, betrayed, fought, spit upon, and conspired against—to be lowered at halfmast over the Interior Departmental Building, at Washington, D. C.]
[The same individual at whose death, in 1885, the Secretary of the Interior, ordered the National flag of the Union—which he had swindled, betrayed, fought, spit upon, and conspired against—to be lowered at halfmast over the Interior Departmental Building, at Washington, D. C.]
[The same individual at whose death, in 1885, the Secretary of the Interior, ordered the National flag of the Union—which he had swindled, betrayed, fought, spit upon, and conspired against—to be lowered at halfmast over the Interior Departmental Building, at Washington, D. C.]
Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, George N. Sanders, and W. C. Cleary, in a Proclamation which directly charged that they, "and other Rebels and Traitors against the Government of the United States, harbored in Canada," had "incited, concerted, and procured" the perpetration of the appalling crime.
On the 10th of May, one of them, Jacob Thompson, from his place of security, in Canada, published a letter claiming to be innocent; characterized himself as "a persecuted man;" arrayed certain suspicious facts in support of an intimation that Johnson himself was the only one man in the Republic who would be benefited by President Lincoln's death; and, as he was found "asleep" at the "unusual hour" of nine o'clock P.M., of the 14th of April, and had made haste to take the oath of office as President of the United States as soon as the breath had left the body of his predecessor, insinuated that he (Johnson) might with more reason be suspected of "complicity" in "the foul work" than the "Rebels and Traitors" charged with it, in his Proclamation; so charged, for the very purpose—Thompson insinuated—of shielding himself from discovery, and conviction!
But while, for a moment, perhaps, there flitted across the public mind a half suspicion of the possibility of what this Rebel intimated as true, yet another moment saw it dissipated. For the People remembered that between "Andrew Johnson," one of the "poor white trash" of Tennessee, and the "aristocratic Slave-owners" of the South, who headed the Rebellion, there could be neither sympathy nor cooperation—nothing, but hatred; and that this same Andrew Johnson, who, by power of an indomitable will, self-education, and natural ability, had, despite the efforts of that "aristocracy," forced himself upward, step by step, from the tailor's bench, to the successful honors of alderman and Mayor, and then still upward through both branches of his State Legislature, into the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States—and, in the latter Body, had so gallantly met, and worsted in debate, the chosen representatives of that class upon whose treasonable heads he poured forth in invective, the gathered hatred of a life-time—would probably be the very last man whom these same "aristocratic" Conspirators, "Rebels, and Traitors," would prefer as arbiter of their fate.
The popular feeling responded heartily, at this time, to the denunciations which, in his righteous indignation, he had, in the Senate, and since, heaped upon Rebellion, and especially his declaration that "Treason must be made odious!"—utterances now substantially reiterated by him more vehemently than ever, and multiplied in posters and transparencies and newspapers all over the Land. Thus the public mind rapidly grew to believe it impossible that the Rebel leaders could gain, by the substitution, in the Executive chair, of this harsh, determined, despotic nature, for the mild, kindly, merciful, even-tempered, Abraham Lincoln. With Andrew Johnson for President, the People felt that justice would fall upon the heads of the guilty, and that the Country was safe. And so it happened that, while the mere instruments of the assassination conspiracy were hurried to an ignominious death, in the lull that followed, Jefferson Davis and others of the Rebel chiefs, who had been captured and imprisoned, were allowed to go "Scott-free, without even the semblance of a trial for their Treason!"