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

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE LONDON PRESS ON THE ASSASSINATION
OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

TIMES.—The American news which we publish
this morning will be received throughout Europe
with sorrow as sincere and profound as it awoke
even in the United States themselves. Mr. Lincoln
has fallen at the hands of an assassin, and Mr.
Seward has too probably shared his fate. While
the President was sitting quietly with his wife and
some friends in a private box at a Washington
theatre on Friday week, he was shot by a man who
entered the box under a treacherous pretence of
public business ; and almost at the same hour an
accomplice of the assassin with similar treachery
forced himself into Mr. Seward's sick room, and
stabbed the Secretary of State four or five times in
the face and throat. The President died the next
morning ; Mr. Seward, when the mail left, lay
almost beyond hope of recovery, and his son, who
acted as his secretary, in attempting to withstand
the murderer of his father, was wounded to his
death. Deeds of such atrocity cover their perpe-
tratorswith everlasting infamy, and discredit the cause
they are presumably meant to serve. We trust it
will appear that the crimes of Wilkes Booth and his
accomplice were conceived and executed in concert
with no one but themselves. The South, broken
and defeated, could receive no possible benefit from
the removal of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward ; the
too probable effect of the crime is an accession of
madness and anger, rendering all schemes of recon-
struction impossible. On the other hand, the
waving of a knife before the affrighted audience at
a theatre, and the " Sic semper tyrannis," pro-
nounced by the assassin, indicate the vanity of men
willing to immortalise themselves, like Eratostra-
tus, though the world should perish. Unjust as
we believe it to be, the Confederate cause will not
escape the dishonour cast upon it by the wanton
murders of Mr. Lincoln and the Secretary. The
admiration won by the long and gallant defence of
Richmond will be lessened; the memory of
Lee's lofty bearing and Jackson's deep religious
feeling will be obscured by the atrocities com-
mitted in the name and on behalf of the South.
Arson in New York, theft under the pretence of war
in Vermont, and assassination in the capital dim
the lustre df a four years' resistance to superior forces
and of many a well-fought field in Virginia. The
critical condition of affairs in America, the position
of the Southern States at the feet of their victorious
antagonists, the gigantic task of reconstruction
which must be undertaken by the political leaders of
the North, and, above all, the unpromising cha-
racter of the man whom an accident has made the
ruler of the Union for the next four years, tend to
exalt our estimate of the loss which the States have
suffered in the murder of their President ; but it
would be unjust not to acknowledge that Mr. Lin-
coln was a man who could not under any circum-
stances have been easily replaced. Starting from a
humble position to one of the greatest eminence,
and adopted by the Republican party as a make-
shift, simply because Mr. Seward and their other
prominent leaders were obnoxious to different sec-
tions of the party, it was natural that his career
should be watched with jealous suspicion. The
office cast upon him was great, its duties most
onerous, and the obscurity of his past career afforded
no guarantee of his ability to discharge them. His
shortcomings, moreover, were on the surface. The
education of a man whose early years had been
spent in earning bread by manual labour had
necessarily been defective, and faults of manner and
errors of taste repelled the observer at the outset.
In spite of these drawbacks, Mr. Lincoln slowly
won for himself the respect and confidence of all.
His perfect honesty speedily became apparent, and,
what is, perhaps, more to his credit, amid the many
unstudied speeches which he was called upon from
time to time to deliver, imbued though they were
with the rough humour of his early associates,
he was in none of them betrayed into any in-
temperance of language towards his opponents
or towards neutrals. His utterances were appa-
rently careless, but his tongue was always under
command. The quality of Mr. Lincoln's ad-
ministration, which served, however, more than
any other to enlist the sympathy of bystanders was
its conservative progress. He felt his way gradually
to his conclusions, and those who will compare the
different stages of his career one with another will
find that his mind was growing throughout the
course of it. The naïveté with which he once sug-
gested to the negroes that they should take them-
selves off to Central America, because their presence
in the States was inconvenient to the white popula-
tion, soon disappeared. The gradual change of his
language and of his policy was most remarkable.
Englishmen learnt to respect a man who showed the
best characteristics of their race in his respect for
what is good in the past, acting in unison with a re-
cognition of what was made necessary by the events
of passing history. But the growth of Mr. Lincoln's
mind was subject to a singular modification. It
would seem that he felt himself a mere instrument
engaged in working out a great cause, which he
could partly recognise, but which he was powerless
to control. In the mixed strength and weakness
of his character he presented a remarkable contrast
to Mr. Seward, who was his coadjutor for more than
four years, and who must, we fear, be reckoned his
fellow victim. The Secretary of State, long More
his elevation to office, was a prominent citizen of
New York. More than a quarter of a century ago
he was the Governor of that State, and f0r.12 years
he represented it in the Senate. In the Empire City
and at Washington he had attained a culture which
the Illinois lawyer never acquired. But the expe-
rience of the politician had perhaps weakened the
independence of Mr. Seward's character, and he
never inspired the same confidence as his chief, be-
cause it was not known by what influences his
course might not be modified. What may be the
actual destiny of the United States deprived of the
guiding hand of Mr. Lincoln and of the experience
of Mr. Seward no one would venture to foretell. In
compliance with the provisions of the constitution,
Mr. Andrew Johnson has assumed the Presidency
for the rest of Itlr. Lincoln's term. At the time when
the last mail left New York the States had not reco-
vered from the feeling of horror and astonishment
created by the news of Mr. Lincoln's assassination

but the possibility of Mr. Johnson's succeeding to
the Presidency had been discussed when such an

event was thought highly improbable, and it was
earnestly deprecated by all parties. The indecorous
exhibition upon the occasion of the inauguration of
Mr. Johnson as Vice-President•was of a piece with

his previous career, and, indeed, the memory of his
conduct as Governor of Tennessee must fill every
American with the gloomiest forebodings. On the
other hand, anything like a violent interruption of
the succession is a thing which an American citizen
Nvith his almost idolatrous veneration for the Con-

gt itution would shrink froth instinctively. The best
saution of the difficulty would be a voluntary re-
6gn.ation by Mr. Johnson of an office which no
one ever seriously intended him to fill, and if his

own sense of decency does not suggest this course

It may be hoped that such a pressure of public
*opinion will be brought to bear upon him that he
'may be le,rl to adopt it. His instant assumption of
the Presidezmy was probably deemed necessary,
and, under such exciting circumstances, little can
be gathered from the few words uttered by Mr.

Johnson when the oath of office was administered

to him. Such as they are, they point to a resolution
to execute the duties of the post, but the influences

by which the incoming President is surrounded

cannot be favourable to his retention of office.

C-eneral Grant and General Sherman are both in or

ne, ar Washington, the one the Commander-in-Chief
an C 1 captor of Richmond, the other the man who

firs t demonstrated the hollowness of the Confederate
resources. Neither they nor Mr. Stanton, the Se-
ceetavy of War, can wish to see the work on which

they' have been engaged so long, and on which so
much life and treasure has been spent, wasted
because, it has fallen to a hand which is incompetent

to carry it through. The task which lies before the
President and his Cabinet is the most considerable
that has tmgaged the attention of statesmen for
tieveral genorations. It was doubtful whether Mr.
Lincoln could have accomplished it • it is morally
certain that Mr. Johnson cannot. The fate of a
nation hangs in the balance, and we wait with
.anxiety to see which way it will turn.
HERALD.--The startling news which was yester-
day received frorn. 4raerica is such as to throw into ,

POST.—The startling intelligence which has
reached us from America will excite but one senti-
ment in the minds of all, no matter what their
political predilections. Northerner and Southerner,
European and America, slaveholder and abolitionist,
must equally concur in reprobating the dastardly
crime which has just been consummated. The Pre-
sident of the United States of America has, in the
moment of what he at least considered to be victory,
and at the very instant when he had reason to be-
lieve that the gigantic enterprise to which he de-
voted himself was on the point of being crowned
with success, fallen by the hand of an assassin.
The event is so astounding that it is with difficulty
we can bring ourselves to realise its occurrence,
much less to estimate its consequences. It is but a
few short days since the great and crowning events
of the civil war took place, since Richmond was
evacuated and the army of Virginia laid down its
arms, and since Mr. Lincoln, boasting once more to
be not only de jure but de facto President of the
entire American Republic, proclaimed it to the civi-
- used world, and appointed a day of general thanks-
giving to inaugurate the commencement of a new and
happier era. On Sunday, the 9th of the present
month, General Lee capitulated ; on the following
day Mr. Lincoln congratulated his fellow-citizens on
the happy issue of the arduous struggle in which they
had been so long engaged, and besought their co-ope-
ration in that no less arduous work of reconstruction
to which he purposed devoting the second period of
his official career, and on the Friday following he
was brutally murdered. In. the annals of history
there are to be found but too many instances in
which the chief magistrate of a State has fallen by
the assassin's hand, but we doubt if there is one
which, by its surrounding circumstances, will retain
a deeper hold on the memory of posterity than the
murder of the American President. What Mr.
Lincoln might have been, and what he might have
accomplished, must always remain matters of spe-
culation ; but that he should have been arrested
midway in his career, and that the wishes of a great
nation should be frustrated by the will of a rabid
fanatic, points a moral of the futility of all human
projects, which, however trite, is not uninstructive.
At the very time when most persons would have
concurred in approving the policy of the Northern
States in again electing Mr. Lincoln to the Presi-
dential office, and would have gladly seen him en-
deavour to reconstruct the edifice which has been so
cruelly shaken, he is suddenly carried from the
scene. " The king is dead. God save the king."
As it is in monarchies, so it is in republics. The
same mail that tells us of the assassination of Mr.
Lincoln informs us of the accession of his successor.
It is said that every tragic picture if carefully
examined has its ludicrous side, and it must have
been not a little humiliating to the American nation
that when the body of their late chief magistrate
was still warm, the drunken rowdy, whom in a
moment of inadvertence they elected to a sinecure
office, should have been solemnly invested with all
the attributes of the supreme executive power.
STAR.—ThG appalling tragedywhich has just been
perpetrated at Washington is absolutely without
historical precedent. Not in the records of the
fiercest European convulsion, in the darkest hour
of partisan hatreds, have we an example of an as-
sassin plot at once so foul and so senseless, so hor-
rible and so successful, as that to which Abraham
Lincoln has already fallen a victim, and from which
William Seward can hardly escape. Only in such
instances as the murder of William of Orange,
of Henri Quatre, or of Capodistria, have
we any deed approaching in hideous ferocity
to that which has just robbed the United States
of one of the greatest of their Presidents. But
from the fanatic's hateful point of view there
was at least something to be said for • men
like Balthazar Gerard and Ravaillac. They
at least might have believed that they saw embodied
in their victims the whole living principle and mo-
tive power of that religious freedom which they de-
tested. They might have supposed that with the
man would die the great hopes and the great cause
he inspired and guided. So, too, of Orsini. That
unfortunate and guilty being believed, at least, that
in Napoleon the Third there stood an embodied
and concentrated system. But Abraham Lincoln
was no dictator and no autocrat. He represented
simply the resolution and the resources of a great
people. The miserable excuse which fanaticism
might attempt to plead for other political assassins
has no application to the wretch whose felon hand
dealt death to the pure and noble magistrate of a
free nation. One would gladly, for the poor sake
of common humanity, have caught at the idea that
the crime was but the work of some maniacal parti-
san. But the mere nature of the deeds, without
any additional evidence whatever, bids defiance to
such an idea. While the one murderer was slaying
the President of the Republic the other was making
his even more dastardly attempt upon the life of the
sick and prostrate Secretary. It does not need even
the disclosures which have now? too late for any

good purpose reached official quarters to prove
that two madmen; cannot become simultaneously im-
pelled with the same monstrous project and
at one moment to do their several parts
of the one bloody 'business. The chivalry of the
South has had much European compliment of late:
It has been discovered to be the fount and origin of
all the most noble and knightly qualities which the
world heretofore had principally known through the
medium of mediaeval romance. Let it not be for-
gotten that Southern brains lately planned the con-
flagration of a peaceful city. It never can be ,
for-
gotten while history is read that the hands of
Southern partisans have been reddened by the,
foulest assassin plot the world has ever known, that.
they have been treacherously dipped in the blood
of one of the best citizens and purest patriots
to whom the land of Washington gave birth. Fli),r,
Abraham Lincoln one cry of universal regret
be raised all over the civilised earth.
ADVERTISER.—We know not that ever the inha-
bitants of London were more surprised or shocked
than they were by the lamentable intelligence which
reached London yesterday morning from America:
The telegraphic announcement that the President.
of the United States had been assassinated, and that
an attempt had also been made on the life of Mr.
Seward, which, it was feared, would terminate
fatally, came upon us with an absolutely paralysing
effect. People can scarcely realise the fact; and
yet it came not as a rumour, but with an air of
authenticity which left no room for even the faintest
hope that it might prove incorrect. Later in the
day some of the incidents connected with the fright"
ful catastrophe reached us in subsequent telegram'
It appears that on the 14th inst. the President h.,00
been at Ford's Theatre, Washington, with his vole
and other friends, and that the assassin, under the
pretext of being the bearer of despatches from Gen.
Grant, succeeded in getting admission to the box in
which President Lincoln was sitting. He then de-
liberately shot the President with a one-barrelled
pistol. The wound was inflicted on the back of gr.
Lincoln's head. The assassin then leaped from the
box to the stage, and flourishing a dagger exclaimed,
" Sic senzper tyrannis." In a moment more, before
any one had the presence of mind to arrest him, he
escaped at the back entrance to the stage. But he
was afterwards captured. His name is Booth. n
appears, from a letter found in his trunk, that the
horrible crime was resolved upon on the 4th of
March, though circumstances occurred to prevent
its perpetration then. An attempt was also made to
assassinate Mr. Seward and his two sons, for the
particulars of which, so far as they are known, we
refer to our telegraphic intelligence. No one 03_11
form the slightest conception of what the event
consequences of this terrible tragedy will be. That
they will be of the gravest kind no one can doubt.
The Washington Government, as Mr. Lincoln hi,te-
self confessed after the capture of Richmond and tote
surrender of Lee, would have had difficulties enough
to overcome before there could have been a recoil'
striiction of the States and a restoration of order;
but now all will be chaos—political, social, commer-
ciali chaos. We see nothing before America but
" confusion worse confounded." The prospect is 6°
sombre that it may well appal the stoutest hear"
and unnerve the strongest mind.
TELEGRAPH.—No fouler crime stands chronicled
in all history than the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
The sorry pleas of state necessity or political into'
rest that have been advanced time out of mind
„7,
palliate assassination cannot even be heard with
toleration in such a case as this, for the act is 0110
that outrages humanity and shocks the comlne-
„
conscience of the world. It is accursed and
supre-
mely infamous ; it is most cowardly, most cru
Every war has its horrors, and the great fight he
tween the North and South has been no exceptiti
to the rule ; but there never was anything in.,_°'"
atrocious than this—never anything more base ta's
the slaughter of a man who, during years of grey
g
excitement, had scarcely made a single personal
enemy. In the agony and crisis that preeed;
Robespierre's Reign of Terror, Danton said, ",,,
Revolution, like Saturn, is beginning to devour its
own children !" Abraham Lincoln was the child'
in no invidious sense, we may even say the pdP.E.:
_of the passions of his time, and now he has
come their victim. A fine spirit of popular enthu-
siasm made him chief magistrate of the greatest Re-
public ever known ; the ferocity and the mad cagier
e
which already loomed so largely. A wonderfilla
_, life
was Lincoln's—a life quite as startling and surer
ing as his death ; but, at any rate, the worst par'
th
his work seemed over. The resistance of the S"
had been crushed. A sturdy, sensible western
man, with long limbs and a longer head, Mr' Lin-
coln had worked his way in the world without all
dishonourable subterfuges or mean devices. Clear,
direct, simple, and straightforward, he had already,
during his brief term of office, outlived many OP
picions, jealousies, misconstructions, and dislikeS•
He bore his honours well, and was settling dowll
into a quiet simple dignity of manner, and a kindly
moderation of thought and temper. Terrible has
been the trial tlirough which he had victoriously
passed. He was emphatically one of the people, but
his home-spun virtues seemed to justify the people
choice. At any rate, he had diligently, faithfulbri
and not unskilfully, laboured according to such light
as was given him ; and now, as he seemed to touch
the goal, his course is abruptly checked. To-day, all
party feeling, all political jealousies, must be hushed
and suspended ; to-day no man is a sympathiser
with North or South ; we are all mourners over the
fate of an honest citizen.