The immediate cause of Lincoln's death was a sentence in his speech of April 11, 1865: "If universal amnesty is granted to the insurgents I cannot see how I can avoid exacting, in return, universal suffrage, or, at least, suffrage on a basis of intelligence and military service." "That means nigger citizenship," said his slayer to a witness. "Now, by God, I'll put him through!"—Life of Lincoln, by Herndon and Weik, Vol. III, p. 579.
It was a singular decree of Providence that, according to his own forebodings, Lincoln should have perished by the hand of violence, and that too on the fatal 15th of April, the anniversary of his proclamation for the seventy-five thousand volunteers to begin the dance of death. "He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword."
Let us be as thankful as we can that we are still one nation, that African slavery has ceased, and that the safeguards of liberty may be still sufficient if we are vigilant, unselfish, and brave.
The world has long respected the courage of the South; when the whole truth shall be well told it will equally respect her cause. One obvious effect of the civil war, clearly foreseen and foretold by Southern statesmen, was to Europeanize American institutions. This was a fearful price to pay even for keeping the sections under one government.
Let us hope that the present war with Spain may destroy the stock-in-trade of the speculator in past patriotism.
An unoccupied field of investigation for a future historian is the part which Great Britain played in dissension, disunion, and war between the States, the sections, and the political parties. Her purpose has been accomplished. She has annihilated our foreign ocean-carrying trade—once threatening her own supremacy—and has thereby made us a third-rate naval power, for seamen, rather than ships, make a navy.
"Will your people divide?" General Clingman was frequently asked while in England in 1860. Never once was he asked if slavery would be abolished. The form of the question, in a land where abolition took its rise, struck him forcibly. Hear its explanation: "In this connection I remember a statement made to me by the late American Minister at Paris, Mr. Mason. He spoke of having had a conversation with one whose name I do not feel at liberty to mention, but whose influence on the opinion of continental Europe is considerable, who declared to him that if the Union of our States continued at no distant day we should control the world; and, therefore, as an European, he felt it to be his duty to press anti-slavery views as the only chance to divide us. I have many reasons to know that the monarchies of Europe, threatened with downfall from revolutionary movements, seek, through such channels as they control, to make similar impressions."—Speeches and Writings of T. L. Clingman, pp. 482, 483: extract from speech in United States Senate, delivered January 16, 1860.
To prove that democracy is a failure is among the chief aims of European monarchs.
Lloyd Garrison seems to have been a sincere fanatic, but all the better may have served British policy. Listen to a group of facts about him, appearing at random in a friendly encyclopedia: "In 1833" [the year the stars fell] "he visited Great Britain, and on his return organized 'The American Anti-slavery Society.' He visited England again in 1846, 1848, and 1867, in which last year he was publicly breakfasted in St. James' Hall."