the cessation of enlistments and for stopping the operation of the draft, with other orders looking to the reduction and eventual disbandment of the armies.

Military restrictions upon trade and commerce between the warring sections were removed as fast as was consistent with local requirements. The whole nation awoke to the glad certainty that Peace had come, and that it had come to stay, and that it had so come as to be worth the having. It had come by the forcible and complete restoration of the authority of the United States over every part and parcel of its territory and population. It had come without treaty, or condition, or compromise. All questions of future citizenship, whether of rebels recently in arms or of black men recently in bondage, were left in the unfettered control of Congress and the President. There were such questions, truly, and they presented momentous problems for statesmen to consider, but the manner of the closing of the war stripped all such problems of artificial complications and left them in shape and condition for swift and sure solution. Mr. Lincoln's views upon the subject of universal suffrage were already well known, and he took specific opportunities for leaving them on record. His desire and hope was that the colored men should become citizens in all respects, without even covert reference to the tint of their skins. He did not remain long enough to see his wishes gratified, but there was no doubt in his mind as to the policy to be pursued by the government. He well knew that the processes required for making good citizens, of even white material, demanded time and opportunity and patient wisdom for the production of tolerable results, and he believed that the requirements of the enfranchised race were measurably the same. They too would need both time and opportunity and patience and intelligent help. The supervision of all that work was to be put into other hands than his, and already he had done what he could.

CHAPTER LVI.

PEACE.

A Rejoicing People-Vanity and Revenge conspire to Commit MurderThe Assassination--The Mourning of a Mighty Multitude-Voices from Distant Lands-The Teachings of a Great Life.

THE idea, at times the dread, of Mr. Lincoln's possible assassination had floated vaguely in the minds of his friends from the very hour of his election. It was again and again suggested to him in many ways, but he invariably refused to give it a serious consideration.

Threats were so freely made, as the war went on, and those around him were so reasonably alarmed, that he was almost compelled to justify with argument his utter indifference. Men would need motives, he thought and said, for the doing of such a deed. "If they kill me, the next man will be just as bad for them; and in a country like this, where our habits are simple, and must be, assassination is always possible, and will come if they are determined upon it."

He came and went, attended or unattended, as the case might be, with careless freedom, not giving the matter any further consideration.

With the collapse of the rebellion and the return of peace, it seemed as if all supposable rational motive for assailing the President's life had vanished, and with it all peril of his assassination.

No words can paint the joy of the nation over the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army. The bells in all the steeples rang like mad; the cannon boomed; the people met in the churches to praise God; men who did not know

each other stopped in busy streets to shake hands, and turned away with streaming eyes; mothers and widows quieted their aching hearts in the thought that their sons and husbands had not died in vain; something of charitable warmth was swelling and reaching out towards the ruined and stricken South. It was an hour of the return of peace on earth and good-will to men, and any previous suggestion of possible murder was forgotten.

Rational motives had indeed all passed away; but men had failed to take account of two of the viler and meaner passions whereby Hell is represented in the hearts of human beings,Revenge and Vanity. A combination of these in the minds of several men led to a conspiracy for the murder of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Seward, General Grant, and, perhaps, some others. It was a very deliberate affair, although miserably planned and imperfectly executed.

The Vice-President escaped unassailed; Mr. Seward received wounds from which he soon recovered; and the only part of the conspiracy which fully attained its purpose was that which was put into the base hands of mere vanity in the person of an unsuccessful actor named Booth. This man was not a Southerner; he was not a soldier; he was but a fair representative of the meaner, because better educated, Northern "copperhead."

The Confederacy was but recently dead and had not yet been buried. The new order of things was not yet under way. The President was toiling, day and night, in the settlement of numberless important questions. He was not so strong as formerly, and a breath of recreation was more than ever needful. He was invited by the manager of Ford's Theater, in Washington, to witness the performance of a play known as “Our American Cousin," on the evening of the 14th of April. He assented, for he was somewhat fond of the drama. He had made Shakspeare a study to such an extent that he could sit, throughout the most perfect presentation of Falstaff, without

one smile upon his face, absorbed in the delineation of human nature by the master, through the actor.

In the present case he was not eager, knowing nothing of the play; but he yielded to the wifely urgency of Mrs. Lincoln. General Grant was to have been of the party, but had other engagements more imperative which called him out of the city. Mr. Lincoln passed the day as usual. He made an appointment to meet Hon. George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, and Judge Charles P. Daly, of New York, the next morning. He never wasted much time in dressing, and when Mrs. Lincoln came for him he was ready to go with her. They passed on their way to take with them Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, daughter and stepson of Senator Harris, of New York. It was twenty minutes before nine o'clock when they entered the crowded theater, and the throng rose and cheered enthusiastically as they passed on to the "state box" reserved for them.

The murder of the President could have been accomplished more safely and easily at almost any other time and place, but the gratification of diseased vanity and morbid hate required publicity.

John Wilkes Booth, the actor who had selected this for his last tragedy, made his preparations for escape with some care and cunning, as if unaware that the earth contained no cave dark enough to afterwards conceal him. He provided himself with a good horse, in waiting at the rear of the theater, on which to ride away. He entered, looked in upon the stage as if with professional curiosity, and then worked his way around into the outer passage leading towards the box occupied by the President.

One of the President's "messengers" was at the end of an inner passage, leading to the box-door, for the purpose of preventing undue intrusions. To him Booth presented a card, stating that Mr. Lincoln had sent for him. On that lie he was permitted to pass. After overcoming this slight barrier there remained no hindrance to the commission of the murder, for

the President sat quietly in an arm-chair, entirely absorbed in the play.

Booth had a two-edged dagger and a single-barreled Derringer pistol, carrying a heavy ball. With the latter he took full aim at the back of the head so near him and pulled the trigger. The bullet entered the brain, so weary with long toil for others but the President hardly stirred in his chair. The report of the pistol rang through the house, but for several heart-beats no man seems to have guessed what it meant.

Major Rathbone was the first to comprehend the matter, and he instantly closed with Booth, but was thrown off with a wound in his arm from the dagger.

Freeing himself from the grasp of Rathbone, Booth sprang to the front of the box and leaped upon the stage below. It was but a step down, but his spurs caught in the American flag with which the box was draped, and he half fell. Regaining his feet, he faced the audience for a moment, dagger in hand, spouting theatrically the State motto of Virginia, " Sic semper tyrannis," and added, "The South is avenged!"

He was familiar with the exits of the stage. It was easy to dash aside the few bewildered actors and actresses in his way. Only one man, a gentleman named Stewart, was quick-witted enough to spring upon the stage and follow him, and he was too late in doing so. The assassin reached his horse and rode away, escaping for the hour, only to be hunted down and shot in a burning barn in Maryland, some twelve days after the murder.

It was all the work of a few seconds. The fact that the President had been shot fell upon the audience with awful power. Women screamed incoherently or fainted away. Men stood white-faced with dismay and wrath, or blasphemed, or swore revenge. All was uproar and confusion.

The leading actress, Laura Keene, stepped to the front of the stage and begged the audience to be calm. Then she entered the President's box with the water Miss Harris had been calling for, and with stimulants. Mrs. Lincoln was at once and