SORROW OF THE WORLD

The day that Lincoln died unique in history. - National joy turned to universal grief. - "God reigns and the government at Washington still lives." - A revolution in the policies of the nation wrought in a day. - Unseemly rejoicing by the radicals. -Lincoln's plans of reconciliation supplanted by a bitter suspicion of the South. - Jefferson Davis arraigned as an accomplice in the assassination. The punishment of Booth and his plotters. The awful fate which pursued the President's companions in the theater box. The widow's mind broken by the blow. Lincoln's estate. The funeral day, April 19, 1865, observed all over the country. — The body lying in state at the Capitol. — The sixteen-hundred-mile journey to Springfield began April 21. A million Americans looked upon the

face of their dead chieftain. - The arrival of the remains in Springfield, May 3. The burial at Oak Ridge, May 4.

THE Saturday that Lincoln died stands alone in history. There never was another day like it. A victorious people awoke to continue their week of rejoicing. All the North was gayly decked. In an hour the land was engulfed by a tidal wave of grief and rage.

It was no mere show, no ceremonial tribute of a nation to its chief. On the contrary, millions mourned the loss, not of an official but of a friend. Men met in the streets, in the stores and in the shops,

with tears in their eyes, and their throats aching with emotion. Sorrow filled the homes. Services in the churches on Easter Sunday were robbed of their usual joyousness.

No other death ever touched so many hearts. People rebelled against the cruelty of their bereavement, and a bitter spirit of revenge toward the South burned in their breasts. Stanton feared that wild rumors might cause panic and disorder in New York, and while Lincoln was dying he arranged for a public meeting to be held in Wall Street in the early morning. Garfield, then a member of Congress, was among those sent to calm the public of the metropolis, and, standing by the statue of Washington on the steps of the Sub-treasury, he thrilled the thousands who crowded the street with the eloquent assurance that "God reigns and the government at Washington still lives."

Nevertheless, a revolution really had taken place. Benjamin Disraeli, in his speech on Lincoln in the British House of Commons, declared that "assassination never has changed the history of the world." It is true, however, that in the flash of Booth's pistol shot, the policies of the government had been completely reversed. The hands of the radicals, which Lincoln had restrained for four years, were free at last. The reign of the bayonet and the carpet-bagger,

the ku-klux, the shot-gun, and the "bloody shirt" was inaugurated in the South, and the country entered upon a decade of angry turmoil.

Stanton left the death chamber to order the arrest of Jacob Thompson, the Confederate emissary, with whom the President had refused to interfere the day before. Extreme men in high places hailed the accession of Vice-president Johnson to the Presidency as "a godsend to the country." The new President delighted them by declaring "treason must be made infamous, and traitors must be punished." Senator Wade of Ohio, the President of the Senate, exclaimed, "By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running the government."

A caucus of Republican senators was held within a few hours of Lincoln's death, and plans were laid for overturning his projects for the reconstruction of the South. Grant himself was swept into the current of retaliation. "Extreme rigor will have to be observed," he said in a severe military despatch, "whilst assassination remains the order of the day with the rebels."

Stanton proclaimed an offer of one hundred thousand dollars for the arrest of Jefferson Davis as an accomplice in the murder of Lincoln, and for two years the President of the fallen Confederacy was held in prison on that and other charges without trial.

Happily history acquits him and all responsible men of any knowledge of or sympathy with the assassina

tion.

Booth was hunted down and shot, while four persons convicted of conspiring with him, including a woman, Mrs. Surratt, were hanged. A physician, who set the broken leg of the assassin, and two other men were sentenced to banishment for life on Dry Tortugas, one of the Florida keys, and the man who bored the hole in the theater box was condemned to pass six years on that remote and lonely island.

The future held in store for the innocent companions of Lincoln on the night of the assassination a fate not less terrible than that which befell the guilty companions of the assassin. The widow's always frail nervous organization was wrecked by the shock. She raved throughout the dreadful night that followed, and throwing herself upon the corpse in the morning, it was with difficulty that she was persuaded to leave. As she was led to the White House carriage which had stood at the door through the long hours, she cast a glance at the theater and cried in bitterness, "Oh, that horrible house!"

The only mitigation of her misfortune lay in the small competence which her husband left her and her children. Aside from the real estate, which he owned when he went to Washington and which he still held

at his death, he died possessed of a personal estate valued at more than one hundred thousand dollars. Since he never was a money maker and was obliged to borrow in order to pay his expenses in his first months in the White House, he must have been fortunate in the choice of a wise financial adviser, thus to have accumulated amid absorbing cares a personal property, equaling in value the total of the salary he received as President.

Mrs. Lincoln went to live in England and France, but she found no refuge, even in far-away lands, from the relentless specter which pursued her. The picture of the frightful scene in the theater was imprinted forever on her broken mind. She continually dwelt on it in her thought and conversation. For some time she was in a private asylum near Chicago, while her later years were passed in a sister's home at Springfield.

The young couple who were her guests in the box, married, but the wife was slain by the crazed husband.

Lincoln's was the kindest fate of all. His body was removed from the modest dwelling of the tailor to the Green Room of the White House, where it was enthroned on a splendid catafalque. There it lay in state, resting beneath the roof where, living, he had found only toil and care. A peace, not of this world, was in the upturned face, in striking con