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Robert E. Lee Portrait
has been taught by the war. None
of us are the same. The views of every man have been modified. The course of
some organs of public opinion--of the New York Tribune, for instance —is
wonderful and incredible to contemplate. There have been times when
was thought by some to be a positive hindrance to the war, a nightmare in the
Cabinet. The Senate, with questionable friendship to the country, upon one
occasion is understood to have asked his removal. But the President could ill
spare so calm a counselor and so adroit a statesman. That they often differed is
beyond dispute, but the President knew the sagacity and experience of the
Secretary, and the Secretary said the President was the best man he ever knew.
Such was the confidence and
mutual respect of the relation between them that the country will regard
SEWARD'S continuance in the
Cabinet as a sign of the perpetuity of the spirit of
President LINCOLN'S policy. Meanwhile, that he and his son, the able and
courteous Assistant Secretary, lie grievously smitten by the blow that wrings
the heart of the nation, a tender solicitude will wait upon their recovery.
WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD has too faithfully and conspicuously served human liberty
not to have earned a blow from the assassin hand of
slavery. The younger
generation of American citizens who, in their first manhood, followed his
bugle-call into the ranks of those who strove against the infamous power whose
dying throes have struck life from the President and joy from a triumphing
nation, will not forget how valiant and beneficent his service has been, nor
suffer the name so identified with the truest political instruction of this
country to be long obscured by the clouds of calumny.
GREAT PAN IS DEAD.
THE New York Tribune, in a late
issue, after reprinting the infamous rebel offer of a reward of a million of
dollars for the
assassination of Mr. LINCOLN,
Mr. JOHNSON, and
Mr. SEWARD, says
: " Such facts and the corresponding editorials of the rebel journals
countenance the popular presumption that the late murderous outrages in
Washington were incidents of a comprehensive plot whereto the rebel leaders were
privy. The burglarious raid on St. Albans, the attempts simultaneously to fire
our great hotels, and other acts wholly out of the pale of civilized warfare,
tend to strengthen this conviction."
In the next column the Editor
speaks of the men who plotted the raid and the arson as "certain distinguished
Americans" of the other "party to our civil war."
Does not the editor of the
Tribune see that nothing can more profoundly demoralize the public mind than to
call the men who plot arson and massacre " distinguished Americans ?"
GEORGE WASHINGTON were distinguished Americans. Has the editor no
other epithets for
GEORGE N. SANDERS and JACOB THOMPSON and CLEMENT C. CLAY? Is
there no such thing as crime? Are there no criminals? Is the
assassin of the
President a man impelled by "the conflict of ideas" to a mistaken act? Is there
no treason ? Are there no traitors? Does the editor of the Tribune really
suppose that because it is not the wish nor the duty of the American people to
visit the penalty of treason upon every man at the South who has been in
rebellion, it is therefore the duty of wise and honest men to invite
DAVIS and WIGFALL into the Senate of the United States, or
ROBERT E. LEE,
JOE JOHNSTON into the army?
The Editor of the Tribune may bow
down to the ground and grovel before "eminent Confederates;" but it is not from
them that the pacification of the South is to proceed. The first step in peace
is to emancipate the people of the South from their servile dependence upon the
class of " gentlemen" which has first deluded and then ruined them. How can it
be done if we affect that respect which no honest man can feel ? If there is one
suffering Union man in Alabama who has been outlawed and hunted and starved, who
has lain all day cowering in swamps and woods, and at night has stolen out and
crept for food to the faithful slaves upon the plantations—who has seen his
house destroyed, his children murdered, his wife dishonored—who has endured
every extremity of suffering, and still believed in God and the flag of his
country—and who now, following
WILSON's liberating march, has come safely to our
lines at Mobile—if there be one such man, who knows that his cruel agony and the
waste and desolation of his land have come from " the leaders" of his section,
and sees that when they are worsted in battle it is the Editor of the New York
Tribune who hastens to fall prostrate before the meanest of them and salute them
as "distinguished Americans" and "eminent Confederates," it is easy to believe
that such a man should be overwhelmed with dismay as he contemplates the
hopeless postponement of pacification which such a spectacle reveals.
Exactly that base subservience to
the arrogance of a slaveholding class which has enabled that class to seduce and
betray the people of their States is reproduced in the tone of the editor of the
Tribune when speaking of it. Is JEFFERSON DAVIS a distinguished American?"
Is he any more so than AARON BURR
and BENEDICT ARNOLD? No men despise such fawning more than those it is intended
to propitiate. It is not by such men as JACOB THOMPSON and CLEMENT C. CLAY and
HUNTER and BENJAMIN and
SEMMES, it is by men unknown and poor, by men who have
seen what comes of following the counsels of the " leaders," by men who have
been tried by blood and fire in this sharp war that peace is to come out of the
South. The men whom the editor of the Tribune calls by names that justly belong
only to our best and dearest are the assassins of the nation and of human
liberty. They would have wrought upon the nation the same crime that was done
upon the President. They would have murdered the country in its own innocent
blood. Not from them conies regeneration and peace. Let them fly.
But from the long-abused, the
blinded, the down-trodden, the forgotten, the despised—from the real people of
the South, whom riches and ease and luxury and cultivation and idleness and, all
worldly gifts and graces sitting in high places, drugged with sophistries, and
seduced with blandishments, and threatened with terrors, and besotted with
prejudice, and degraded with ignorance, and ground into slavery—these, all of
them, white and black as God made them, are the seed of the new South, long
pressed into the ground, and now about to sprout and grow and blossom jubilantly
with peace and prosperity. Old things have passed away. The Editor of the
Tribune is still flattering the priests whose power has gone. Great Pan is dead.
Why should one of the earliest Christians swing incense before him ?
flag floats again on
Sumter ! Four years ago it was the hope,
the prayer, the vow of the American
people. Today the vow is fulfilled. The hand of him who defended it against the
assault of treason, of him who saluted it sadly as he marched his little band
away, now, with all the strength of an aroused and regenerated nation supporting
him, raises it once more to its place, and the stars that have still shone on
undimmed in our hearts now shine tranquilly in triumph, and salute the earth and
sky with the benediction of peace.
To be called to be the orator of
a nation upon such a day was an honor which might have oppressed any man. To
have spoken for the nation at such a moment, worthily, adequately, grandly, is
the glory of one man. It will not be questioned that Mr. BEECHER did so. His
oration is of the noblest spirit and the loftiest eloquence. It is in the
highest degree picturesque and powerful. Certainly it was peculiarly fit that a
man, fully inspired by the eternal truth that has achieved the victory, should
hail, in the name of equal liberty, the opening of the era which is to secure
Even amidst the wail of our
sorrow its voice will be heard and its tone will satisfy. Even in our heart's
grief we can feel the solemn thrill of triumph that the flag which fell in
weakness is raised in glory and power.
THE FOLLY OF CRIME.
EVERY stupendous crime is an
enormous blunder. The blow that has shocked the nation exasperates it, and in
killing ABRAHAM LINCOLN the rebels have murdered their best friend. His death
can not change the event of the war. It has only united the loyal people of the
country more closely than ever, and disposed them to a less lenient policy
toward the rebellion. Whatever the intention or hope of the murder, whether it
were the result of a matured plot or the act of a band of ruffians, whether it
were dictated by the rebel chiefs or offered to their cause as a voluntary
assistance by the hand that struck the blow, the effect is the same—a more
intense and inflexible vow of the nation that the rebellion shall be suppressed
and its cause exterminated.
There is no crime so abhorrent to
the world as the assassination of a public man. Even when he is unworthy, the
method of his death at once ameliorates the impression of his life. But when he
is a good and wise man, when he is spotless and beloved, the infamy is too
monstrous for words. There is but one assassin whom history mentions with
toleration and even applause, and that is CHARLOTTE CORDAY. But her act was a
mistake. It ended the life of a monster, but it did not help the people, and she
who might have lived to succor and save some victim of MARAT, became, after his
death, MARAT'S victim. All other assassins, too, have more harmed their cause
than helped it. Their pleas of justification are always confounded by the event.
That plea, where it has any dignity whatever, is the riddance of the world of a
bad or dangerous man whose life can not be legally taken. It is to punish a
despot—to bring low a tyrant. But the heart recoils whatever the excuse, the
instinct of mankind curses the assassin.
In our own grievous affliction
there is one lesson which those who directly address public opinion would do
well to consider. Party malignity in the Free States during the war has not
scrupled to defame the character of Mr.
LINCOLN. He has been denounced as
a despot, as a usurper, as a man who arbitrarily annulled the Constitution, as a
magistrate under whose administration all the securities of liberty, property,
and even life, were deliberately disregarded and imperiled. Political hostility
has been inflamed into hate by the assertion that he was responsible for the
war, and that he had opened all the yawning graves and tumbled the bloody
victims in. This has been done directly and indirectly, openly and cunningly. In
a time of necessarily profound and painful excitement, to carry a party point,
the political opponents of Mr. LINCOLN have said or insinuated or implied that
he had superseded the laws and had made himself an autocrat. If any dangerous
plot has been exposed, these organs of public opinion had sneered at it as an
invention of the Administration. If theatres and hotels full of men, women, and
children were to be wantonly fired, the friends of the Administration were
accused of cooking up an excitement. If bloody riots and massacres occurred,
they were extenuated, and called " risings of the people," as if in justifiable
vengeance, and as if the oppression of the Government had brought them upon
This appeal has been made in
various ways and in different degrees. A great convention intimated that there
was danger that the elections would be overborne by Administration bayonets.
Judge COMSTOCK, formerly of the Court of Appeals in this State, addressing a
Union Square, declared that if a candidate for the Presidency should be
defrauded of his election by military interference he would be borne into the
White House by the hands of the people. Of the Administration thus accused of
the basest conceivable crimes
ABRAHAM LINCOLN was the head. If there were a
military despotism in the country, as was declared, he was the despot. If there
were a tyranny, he was the tyrant.
Is it surprising that somebody
should have believed all this, that somebody should have said, if there is a
tyranny it can not be very criminal to slay the tyrant, and that working himself
up to the due frenzy he should strike the blow? When it was struck, when those
kind eyes that never looked sternly upon a human being closed forever, and the
assassin sprang forward and cried, Sic semper tyrannis, was it not a ghastly
commentary upon those who had not scrupled to teach that he was a tyrant who had
annulled the law?
The lesson is terrible. Let us
hope that even party-spirit may be tempered by this result of its natural
A SUGGESTION FOR A MONUMENT.
IT is very possible that the
great affection of the people of the United States for their late President will
lead to a general desire to erect some national monument to his memory. Should
this be so, there is one suggestion which will doubtless occur to many besides
ourselves. It is that no mere marble column or memorial pile shall be reared,
but that the heart-offerings of the people shall be devoted to the erection of a
military hospital, to be called the LINCOLN HOSPITAL, for soldiers and
sailors--a retreat for the wounded and permanently invalid veterans of the war.
When, in the happier days that are coming, the wards shall be relieved of the
lingering monuments of the contest, the foundation would remain for the public
benefit. The soldiers and sailors had no more tender and faithful friend than
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. He never forgot them ; nor did he fail always to pay to them in
his public addresses the homage which his heart constantly cherished. To a man
of his broad and generous humanity no monument could be so appropriate as a
OUR SUCCESSES IN NORTH CAROLINA.
GENERAL STONEMAN captured Salisbury, North Carolina, on the 12th inst.,
securing 1165 prisoners, 19 pieces of artillery, 1000 small-arms, and eight
Stands of colors. The plunder found there was enormous,
embracing 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition, 1000 shells, 60,000 pounds of powder,
75,000 suits of clothing, 35,000 army blankets, with large quantities of bacon,
salt, sugar, rice, wheat, and 7000 bales of cotton. All that was not immediately
available was destroyed.
Stoneman's raid in East Tennessee and North Carolina
has been one of the most important and destructive of the war. He has burned
half a hundred important bridges, destroyed about 100 miles of track, captured
trains, burned depots, and played the mischief generally with secesh property.
The next day after the capture of
Sherman occupied Raleigh, with but little resistance. Governor Vance
was taken by our cavalry on the same day. It is said that he was deputed by
Johnston to surrender the State, but the power was afterward withdrawn. It is
reported that Jeff Davis had joined Johnston at Hillsborough, and was still
Mobile was captured by the
national forces on the 12th of April.
On the 20th of March the
Sixteenth Corps, under General A. J. Smith, left Dauphin on twenty transports,
accompanied by gun-boats, and proceeded up an arm of Mobile Bay to the mouth of
Fish River, where the troops were landed at Dauley's Mills. The Thirteenth
Corps, under General Granger, left Fort Morgan, and on the 21st of March went
into camp on the left of Smith, resting its left wing on Mobile Bay. Three days
afterward this corps was followed by General Knipe with 6000 cavalry. On the
25th the Federal line was pushed forward so as to extend from Alabama City on
the bay to Deer Park. The first point of attack was Spanish Fort, which is
directly opposite Mobile, and is the latest built and strongest of the defenses
of that city. It guards the eastern channel of the bay. On the 27th the
bombardment commenced. In the mean time the
Monitors and gunboats were laboring
hard to overcome the obstructions. They had succeeded so far that the Monitors
Milwaukee, Winnebago, Kickapoo, and the Monitor ram Osage moved in line to
attack at 3 P.M. An hour afterward a
torpedo exploded. under the Milwaukee, and
she immediately filled and sunk in eleven feet of water. There were no
casualties. There was steady firing all night and the next day. At about 2
o'clock P.M. on the 29th a torpedo struck the port bow of the Osage and
exploded, tearing away the plating and timbers, killing two men and wounding
We give on
page 268 an engraving
illustrating the nature of the
torpedoes found in the Bay. Those given in the
sketch are those with the mushroom-shaped anchor. The slightest pressure causes
On the 8th of April an
extraordinary force was brought to bear upon Spanish Fort. Twenty-two Parrott
guns were got within half a mile of the work, while other powerful batteries
were still nearer. Two gun-boats joined in the tremendous cannonade. The result
was that the fort surrendered a little after midnight. Fort Alexandria followed,
and the guns of these two were turned against Forts Tracy and Huger, in the
harbor, at the mouth of the
Blakely and Appalachee rivers. But these had already
been abandoned. The Monitors then went busily to work removing torpedoes, and
ran up to within shelling distance of the city.
Shortly after the capture of
Spanish Fort, intelligence of the capture and the fall of Richmond was read to
the troops, in connection with orders to attack
Fort Blakely. Several batteries
of artillery, and large quantities of ammunition were taken with the fort,
besides 2400 prisoners. Our loss in the whole affair was much less than 2000
killed and wounded, and none missing.
Seven hundred prisoners were
taken with Spanish Fort. Mobile was occupied by the national forces on the 12th.
In the mean time General Wilson, with a formidable force of cavalry, had swept
through the State of Alabama. He left Eastport about the 20th of March, and
advanced in two columns, each of which, at about the same time, fought Forrest's
cavalry, one at Marion and the other at Plantersville, which were respectively
situated about 20 miles northwest and northeast of Selma. On the after-noon of
April 2 Selma was captured, with 22 guns, and all the immense Government works,
arsenals, rolling-mills, and foundries at that place were destroyed. It is
probable that Montgomery was also captured, but later than the capture of Selma
we have no details.
MOURNING IN RICHMOND.
Roger A. Pryor stated in
Petersburg that he believed
Mr. Lincoln indispensable to the restoration of
peace, and regretted his death more than any military mishap of the south. He
and the Mayor placed themselves at the head of a movement for a town meeting to
deplore the loss on both private and public grounds.
General Robert E. Lee at
first refused to hear the details of the murder. A Mr. Suite and another
gentleman waited upon him on Sunday night with the particulars. He said that
when he dispossessed himself of the command of the rebel forces he kept in mind
President Lincoln's benignity, and surrendered as much to the latter's goodness
Grant's artillery. The General said that he regretted
Mr. Lincoln's death
as much as any man in the North, and believed him to be the epitome of
magnanimity and good faith.
A man was arrested on the 18th in
Baltimore who is supposed to have been the assassin of
Secretary Seward. He was
recognized as such by the negro servant and Miss Fanny Seward.
THE REBEL RAM "STONEWALL."
The rebel ram Stonewall left Lisbon, Portugal, on the
28th of March, having been ordered away by the Portuguese
authorities. The national steamers Niagara and
Sacramento were forbidden to leave until twenty-four
hours should have elapsed. These two vessels, about four
hours after the Stonewall
left, weighed anchor and moved
toward the bar. The commander of the Belem Tower
then fired upon them, considerably injuring the Niagara.
The captains stated that they were only changing their
anchorage-ground, and our consul at Lisbon has demanded
that the Governor of Belem Tower should be removed,
which demand has been conceded.
0. Dark Corridor leading from the Dress Circle to Box.—H. Entrance to
Corridor. I. The bar used by
Booth to prevent
entrance from without.—J. Dress Circle.—K. The Parquette.—L. The
Foot-lights.—M. The Stage.—F.
door to the President's Box.--G. Closed door.--N. Place where Booth vaulted over
to the Stage below