The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-18 00:00:00

irrational class which constitutes a standing proof
that a friend may often be the worst of enemies.
Having regard to the time at which the crime was
committed there was nothing which the worst enemy
of the South could do so calculated to injure it as the
assassination of President Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln
was known to be a moderate and placable man. He
appears never to have made a personal enemy; and
he himself appears to have been the personal enemy
of no man. He was for a conciliatory and amicable
policy. He was ready to forget the past and let
bygones be bygones. He was chief magistrate of the
North, and he did what he believed was his duty in
the prosecution of the war, but he did it without tem-
per and without revenge. There is reason to believe
that whatever he could have done to lighten the bur-
dens and diminish the humiliation of the South he
would hays done. All this the leaders of the Con-
federacy knew full well, and this fact is sufficient to
acquit them of any participation in the conspiracy
to murder him. For his successor, in case of death
before the expiry of his term of ()ice, he had a man
who was believed to be of a very different cast of cha-
racter. Vice-President Johnson was a man who
from the force of circumstances--we would state the
case as moderately as possible--had come to be a
bitter enemy of the South. Whether he or the South
was at fault will not alter the fact. He was be-
lieved to have injuries real or supposed to redress, and
vengeance of no mild order to wreak and to gratify.
We do not concern ourselves here with ascertaining
and deciding how far this impression was true.
That is not to the purpose in the present discussion.
It is sufficient that this was the prevalent belief.
And it is quite impossible that in the face of this
fact the Southern chiefs, who have proved them-
selves so eminently sagacious in other things, should
have committed so enormous a blunder—a blunder
involving so heinous a crime as to compass and in-
stigate the assassination of a man who wasloracti-
cally a friend, to place in his office a man who was
believed to be a deadly enemy. If the assassination
of the Northern President had taken place earlier
in the war, while the issue was yet doubtful, the
case would have been somewhat different. But
nothing short of blind infatuation and unreasoning
violence could have dreamed of such a thing at the
time when this great crime was actually accom-
plished. The South, at this extreme crisis of her
fortunes, was helpless and prostrate at the feet of
the North, and it might not unreasonably have been
expected, in the case of so impulsive and so pas-
sionate a people, that the Federals would take a
terrible revenge for the murder of their chief ma-
gistrate. No leading man of the South could, upon
any known theory of human nature and human
motives, have sanctioned such an act at such a time.
If President Johnson has, since he has attained to
power, creditably belied his former reputation, and
adopted wise, conciliatory, and moderate counsels,
it is in spite of the provocation which was given in
the murder of his predecessor. If he continue the
policy of Mr. Lincoln it is fortunate for the South,
and diametrically opposed to the course of action
which the conspiracy to murder the chief members
of the Federal Government was calculated to pro-
voke. The policy which the new President has
followed hitherto may be an illustration of how the
conduct of men is determined by the force and
pressure of circumstances. The Vice-Presidency
of the American Union is an office which is much
higher in rank than in practical importance. Most
functionaries in America have a habit of free speech.
They say whatever comes uppermost in their minds
and is most likely to please their bearers. But this
is peculiarly the case with the Vice-President. He
has little or no power, and is therefore virtually ir-
responsible. Mr. Johnson, when he was Vice-Pre-
sident, appears freely to have uttered his sentiments
about the South and the war. But when he became
President he had not only to talk but to act. It is
but fair to say that since his accession to power he •
has acted with much more discretion than he for-
merly talked. The responsibilities of office act as a
useful restraint even upon the most impulsive
natures. But even if President Johnson should
prove as temperate and reasonable as his predeces-
sor, it will be no thanks to the conspirators who
entered into a plot for accomplishing one of the
foulest crimes in history. Those conspirators must
have been persons of headlong impulsive character,
utterly incapable of reasoning, or of foreseeing and
appreciating consequences. In seeking to inflict an
injury upon the North, which could not be effected
by the crime they perpetrated, they ran the risk of
bringing irremediable ruin upon the South. So in-
fatuated were they that they could not see what was
palpable to all the world ; but the crime they have
expiated affords yet another proof of the inutility,
the wickedness, and the folly of political assassina-
tion.