A most genial and friendly letter to the Easy Chair, dated simply
"Home," and speaking tenderly of the late President, reminds us that our
loss is a blow to every home in the country. This peculiar personal
affection for Mr. Lincoln was so evident that every orator spoke of it,
and with an emotion that attends a private sorrow. No tribute could be
so pathetic and so suggestive of the character of the man who had more
deeply endeared himself to the heart and fixed himself in the confidence
of the American people than any man in our history. Among the
inscriptions that were displayed during the days of mourning in the city
there was one hung upon a shop that was touching in its very baldness:
"Alas! alas! our father Abraham is dead." That was the feeling in all
true hearts and homes. It was a feeling which no Caesar, no Charlemagne,
no Napoleon ever inspired. The Netherlands wept with a sorrow as sore
for the Prince of Orange, France bewailed with romantic grief the death
of Henry IV. But the people of England and France were comparatively
few, and the relation between the victims and the mourners was that of
prince and subjects. Our leader was one of the poorest of the people. He
was great in their greatness. They felt with him and for him as one of
themselves, and in his fall, more truly than Rome in that of Caesar, we
all fell down.
The month of April, 1865, was curiously eventful in the annals of this
country. General Grant moved upon the enemy's works, and Petersburg and
Richmond fell. He pursued and fought the retreating army, and the rebel
commander-in-chief surrendered. In the very jubilee of a national joy
the President was murdered. While yet his body was borne across the
country by the reverent hands of a nation, his murderer was tracked,
brought to bay, shot, and buried in a nameless spot to protect his
corpse from wild popular fury. In the midst of the tragical days General
Sherman, whom, only last month, the Easy Chair was celebrating as so
skilful and resistless a soldier, instead of summoning Johnston to a
surrender upon the terms granted to Lee, allowed himself to sign
recognition of the rebel government and to open a future political
discord, while he was yet able to prescribe the simple surrender of an
army. The shock of disappointment and regret was universal. The
authorities unanimously disapproved his convention. The
Lieutenant-General went immediately to the front, and the month that had
opened with President Lincoln trusted and beloved, with Davis defended
by Lee and his army in the rebel capital, and Sherman confronted by
Johnston, and Mobile holding out, closed with the rebel capital in
possession of the government, Lee a paroled prisoner, his army
disbanded, Davis a skulking fugitive, Johnston and his army paroled
prisoners, Mobile captured, President Lincoln dead, President Johnson
at the head of the government, and the assassin dead and buried.
Through such a succession of great events this country had never as
rapidly passed. It swept the scale of emotion. From the height of joy
triumphant it sank to the very depths of sorrow, from confidence and
pride in a military leader it passed to humiliating amazement, yet not
for a moment paused in its work or shook in its purpose, and was never
so calm, so strong, so grand, as in that tumult of emotion.
Every man who has been proud of his country hitherto has now profounder
cause for pride. Our system has been tried in every way; it rises
purified from the fire. No one man is essential to her, however deeply
beloved, however generously trusted. The history of the war from May,
1861, to May, 1865, proves that she cannot be hopelessly bereaved. The
sceptics who have sneered, the timid who have feared, the shrewd who
have doubted, must now see that the principles of popular government
have been amply vindicated. We have only clearly to understand and
fearlessly to trust these principles, and the future, like the past, is
secure.
In the earlier days of the war a sagacious foreign observer, resident in
the country, said that he feared we were making a mistake perilous to
the American principle. The suspension of the habeas corpus he thought a
very dangerous political, however necessary a military, experiment it
might be. But he was answered by another European, who had been a
political pupil of Cavour's, that, unlike such an act in other
countries, it was here done by the people themselves, and they must be
trusted in it, or else the whole American experiment failed. Such power
must be used, he said; the crucial test is the way in which it is used.
If the people cannot use it in a way which shall be permanently
harmless, then they are not capable of self-government. Oh, wise young
judge! In the whole world no heart will be more sincerely glad, no face
more bright with joy, or sadder with sorrow, at the strange April news
from America than yours!
What a May day! Stricken as all hearts are, what a May day! Budding and
blooming on every hand, on every hill-side and meadow and wood, flushing
and glittering with the lavish beauty of the spring softly gliding over
grieving hearts, and with her royal touch healing our varied sorrow,
came the Queen of May, for whom the people sighed and the land yearned,
came the well-beloved, the long-desired, palms in her hand and doves
flying before her; and the name of that May-day Queen was Peace.