That this dark and wicked and bloody Rebellion, waged by the upholders
and advocates of Slavery, Free Trade, and Secession, had descended so
low as to culminate in murder--deliberate, cold-blooded, cowardly
murder--at a time when the Southern Conspirators would apparently be the
least benefitted by it, was regarded at first as evidencing their mad
fatuity; and the public mind was dreadfully incensed.

The successor of the murdered President-Andrew Johnson-lost little time
in offering (May the 2d) rewards, ranging from $25,000 to $100,000, for
the arrest of Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson,

[The same individual at whose death, in 1885, the Secretary of the
Interior, ordered the National flag of the Union--which he had
swindled, betrayed, fought, spit upon, and conspired against--to be
lowered at halfmast over the Interior Departmental Building, at
Washington, D. C.]

Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, George N. Sanders, and W. C. Cleary,
in a Proclamation which directly charged that they, "and other Rebels
and Traitors against the Government of the United States, harbored in
Canada," had "incited, concerted, and procured" the perpetration of the
appalling crime.

On the 10th of May, one of them, Jacob Thompson, from his place of
security, in Canada, published a letter claiming to be innocent;
characterized himself as "a persecuted man;" arrayed certain suspicious
facts in support of an intimation that Johnson himself was the only one
man in the Republic who would be benefited by President Lincoln's death;
and, as he was found "asleep" at the "unusual hour" of nine o'clock
P.M., of the 14th of April, and had made haste to take the oath of