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

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE LONDON PRESS ON THE ASSASSINATION
. OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

TI3IES.—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 of 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 naivete 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 before
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 for 12 years
he represented it in the Semite. 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 Mr. 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
with his almost idolatrous veneration for the Con-

stitution would shrink from instinctively. The best
solution of the difficulty would be a voluntary re-
signation 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 led to adopt it. His instant assumption of
the Presidency 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.
General Grant and General Sherman are both in or

near Washington, the one the Commander-in-Chief
and captor of Richmond, the other the man who

first demonstrated the hollowness of the 'Confederate

resources. Neither they nor Mr. Stanton, the Se-
cretary 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

hat has engaged the attention of statesmen for

several generations. 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 from America is such as to throw into

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 Cresar, 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 the 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.
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-
lised 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.-Thr: 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

J. ....
has 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 in-
spired with the same monstrous project and im-
pelled 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:
gottcn while history is read that the hands et
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. For
Abraham Lincoln one cry of universal regret 'w
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
reached London yesterday morning from Americai
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 I‘-u•
Seward, which, it was feared, would terminate
fatally, came upon us with an absolutely- paralysinci
effect. People can scarcely realise the fact; an
yet it came not as a rumour, but with an air et
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 telegrams'
It appears that on the 14th inst. the President had
been at Ford's Theatre, Washington, with his vile
and other friends, and that the assassin, under the
pretext of being the bearer of despatches from Gel!'
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 Yr'
Lincoln's head. The assassin then leaped from the
box to the stage, and flourishing a dagger exclainsoh
" Sic semper tyrannis." In a moment more, before
n
any one had the presence of mind to arrest Mini m"
escaped at the back entrance to the stage. But I;t2
was afterwards captured. His name is Booth. It
appears, from a letter found in his trunk, that .1
horrible crime was resolved upon on the 4th e
March, though circumstances occurred to prevent
its perpetration then. An attempt was also made ;v.
assassinate Mr. Seward and his two sons, for' ta:
particulars of which, so far as they are known,
refer to our telegraphic intelligence. No one es,
form the slightest conception of what the eventual
consequences of this terrible tragedy will be. Tiet.
they will be of the gravest kind no one can de. ftlw
The 'Washington Government, as Mr. Lincoln Jug;
self confessed after the capture of Richmond and 11,
surrender of Lee, would have had difficulties ell°lls
to overcome before there could have been a recon-
struction of the States and a restoration of order
but now all will be chaos—political, social, conunier;
cial chaos. We see nothing before America L'lloo
" confusion worse confounded." The prospect
sombre that it many well appal the stoutest Ile"'"'
and unnerve the strongest mind.
clod
TELEGRAPH.—No fouler crime stands chront ,
in all history than the murder of Abraham Lin__ee„-"":
The sorry pleas of state necessity or politicaltrto
rest that have been advanced time out of mini' tb
palliate assassination cannot even be heard 01
toleration in such a case as this, for the act is 00
„0
that outrages humanity and shocks the connnu,
conscience of the world. It is accursed and 0121.4
mely infamous ; it is most cowardly, most erle:
Every war has 'its horrors,' and' the great fight b ll'
tween the North and South has been no exceptwre
to the rule ; but there never was anything ne4o
atrocious than this—never asything more base tu gt
the slaughter of a man who, during years of gr.%),
excitement, had scarcely made a single person
enemy. In the agony and crisis that pre,e,eroo
Robespierre's Reign of Terror, Danton said, 'lO
Revolution, like Saturn, is beginning to devourL,
own children !" Abraham Lincoln was the ehil" t
in no invidious sense, we may even say the pule,
—of the passions of his time, and now he hasqiu.
come their victim. A fine spirit of popular envice,
siasm made him chief magistrate of the greatest
public ever known ; the ferocity and the mad Cleo
which already loomed so largely. A wonderfw,is.
was Lincoln's—a life quite as startling and surPt
ing as his death ; but, at any rate, the worst Part
his work seemed over. The resistance of the to
had been crushed. A sturdy, sensible Niresrin.
man, with long limbs and a longer head, Mr. '-any
coin had worked his way in the world without
ar,
dishonourable subterfuges or mean devices. elep
direct, simple, and straightforward, he had already'
during his brief term of office, outlived mau17,05,
picions, jealousies, misconstructions, and disn,-.0
He bore his honours well, and was settling a°,l"pi
into a quiet simple dignity of manner, and a Icints":o
moderation of thought and temper. Terrible Pr,
been the trial through which he had victoriollsu'i
passed. He was emphatically one of the people, ;0
his home-spun virtues seemed to justify the peoiji,
choice. At any rate, he had diligently, faithfu.ol t
and not unskilfully, laboured according to such hc'h
as was given him ; and now, as he seemed to tour
the goal, his course is abruptly checked. To-day; lea
party feeling, all political jealousies, must be bias
is° et
and suspended ; to-day no man is a synilotb
with North or South ; we are all mourners over
fate of an honest citizen.