The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-27 00:00:00

the shade even the tremendous catastrophe of the
fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army.
Mr. President Lincoln has been assassinated, and is
dead. Mr. Seward has been stabbed and is reported
in a hopeless state. Mr. Andrew Johnson is Pre-
sident of the United States. The blow is sudden,
horrible, and irretrievable. Never since the death
of Henry IV. by the hand of Ravaillac—never, per-
haps, since the assassination of Caesar, has a murder
been committed more momentous in its bearing upon
the times. In the very height and plentitude of his
triumph—at the moment when all his hopes seemed
fulfilled, all his labours rewarded, when the capitula-
tion of his most powerful enemy had placed within
his grasp that prize of empire for which he had so
long and so earnestly striven—Abraham Lincoln
was smitten to the earth by a dastardly assassin,
who shot him through the head from behind. The
commander of armies that the Macedonian or the
Roman might have envied, the leader in the most
gigantic struggle of the 19th century, the ruler, or
likely soon to be the ruler, of the most populous,
and, in the opinion of many, the mightiest nation in
the modern civilised world—the man who had risen
from low estate to a power as vast as was ever
wielded by a mortal, whose recent success has
astonished and bewildered the universe, is now re-
duced to some poor six feet of common clay. All
texts and sermons of the mutability of human affairs
and the instability of life pale into insignificance
before this tremendous commentary. Much as we
have condemned the attitude of the American people
during this civil war, and though we have from the
first opposed the policy and censured the acts of the
late President of the United States, we must sym-
pathise with the nation which is widowed by this
sudden bereavement. Now that he is dead the
good qualities of the unfortunate Lincoln seem to
come into the foreground. We remember his
honesty and his manliness, we do justice to his con-
sistency, we give him all praise for the spirit of
conciliation which he has shown, for his refusal to
be borne along by the sanguinary counsels of his
friends, we make some allowance for his frequent
and untimely levity, we almost excuse his obsti-
nacy in the prosecution of the war. Such, we are
persuaded, will be the sentiments of every right-
minded Englishman ; and they will be shared in by
the vast majority of the Confederate people. The
men who shot Lincoln and Seward were probably
lunatics, or men who had been crazed by their mis-
fortunes in this terrible war. There is no reason to
suppose that there was any Southern conspiracy to
take away the life of the only man in the Northern
Government who was disposed to deal leniently with
the South. The Confederates as a nation are too
magnanimous to plan or approve of such a cowardly
method of revenge. Booth, who killed Lincoln,
when he jumped upon the stage and shouted "Sic
semper tyrannis " made an unworthy use of the
proud motto of State of Virginia. The wretched
murderer has been caught, it is said, and will doubt-
less soon meet with the fate which he so richly de-
serves. But the most ignoble means may work a
stupendous result. The dagger or the bullet, in the
hand of the feeblest worm in human shape that
crawls the earth, may alter the fate of nations or
turn the tide of time. The unfortunate President,
shot as he was through the brain, went unwarned
and unprepared to his account. No portents accom-
panied the deed, no omens foretold it. No sooth-
sayer bade him beware of the fatal 14th of April.
He is gone ; the pilot is gone. His country is left
to toss in the sea of a dismal anarchy, a revolution
of which none can presume to foretel the issue. The
late Vice President, Andrew Johnson, notorious as
having so disgraced himself at the inauguration of
the 4th of March, is now, according to the consti-
tution, President of the United States until the
year 1868. It is difficult for any one in Europe to
appreciate this fact. This incapable and ignorant
person ; this blustering and bloodthirsty ruffian,
who has expressed a wish to hang the Southern
leaders "as high as Haman ;" this low devotee of
the brandy bottle, who has floated like the scum of
the cauldron to the surface of the revolution ; this
man, who, even when sober, cannot speak or write
a sentence in decent English, who is as incapable
of the feelings as he is of the manners of a
gentleman,—this Andrew Johnson is now positively
the President of the United States of America. He
has succeeded to office at the very moment when
the wisest head in America would find a problem
before it which it could hardly succeed in solving,
when the utmost prudence and discretion are needed
in the conduct of affairs, and the most delicate hand
is required to hold the reins. The most brutal and
unconciliating of Northern demagogues, he has a
task to undertake which can only be carried through
by the very qualities which he does not possess.
His accession puts an entirely new aspect on the
American question. It was just possible that the
South might have yielded to Lincoln ; it is out of
the question that it should submit to such a fellow
as Johnson.