alike by conquerors and conquered, to guide and aid the Nation in the
difficult task of reconstruction, and of the new departure, looming up
before it, with newer and broader and better political issues upon which
all Patriot might safely divide, while all the old issues of
States-rights, Secession, Free-Trade, and Slavery, and all the mental
and moral leprosy growing out of them, should lie buried far out of
sight as dead-and-gone relics of the cruel and devastating War which
they alone had brought on! Abraham Lincoln never spoke again. The
early beams of the tomorrow's sun touched, but failed to warm, the
lifeless remain of the great War-President and Liberator, as they were
borne, in mournful silence, back to the White House, mute and ghastly
witness of the sheer desperation of those who, although armed Rebellion,
in the open field, by the fair and legitimate modes of Military warfare,
had ceased, were determined still to keep up that cowardly "fire in the
rear" which had been promised to the Rebel leaders by their Northern
henchmen and sympathizers.

The assassination of President Lincoln was but a part of the plot of
Booth and his murderous Rebel-sympathizing fellow conspirators. It was
their purpose also to kill Grant, and Seward, and other prominent
members of the Cabinet, simultaneously, in the wild hope that anarchy
might follow, and Treason find its opportunity. In this they almost
miraculously failed, although Seward was badly wounded by one of the
assassins.

That the Rebel authorities were cognizant of, and encouraged, this
dastardly plot, cannot be distinctly proven. But, while they naturally
would be likely, especially in the face of the storm of public
exasperation which it raised throughout the Union, to disavow all