ers was never certainly known.

It is startling to contemplate the fearful responsibility which Booth
assumed when he fired that shot. So far from benefiting the South, he
did it incalculable harm, for the North was thoroughly aroused by the
deed. Thousands and thousands flocked to see the dead President as he
lay in state at the Capitol, and in the larger cities in which his
funeral procession paused on its way to his home in Springfield. The
whole country was in mourning, as for its father; business was
practically suspended, and the people seemed stunned by the great
calamity. That so gentle a man should have been murdered wakened, deep
down in the heart of the North, a fierce resentment; the feelings of
kindliness for a vanquished foe were, for the moment, swept away in
anger; and the North turned upon the South with stern face and shining
eyes. The wild and foolish assassin brought down upon the heads of his
own people such a wrath as the great conflict had not awakened. We shall
see how bitter was the retribution.

Not then so fully as now was Lincoln's greatness understood. He has come
to personify for us the triumphs and glories, the sadness and the
pathos, of the great struggle which he guided. His final martyrdom seems
almost a fitting crown for his achievements. It has, without doubt, done
much to secure him the exalted niche which he occupies in the hearts of
the American people, whom, in a way, he died to save. Had he lived
through the troubled period of Reconstruction which followed, he might
have emerged with a fame less clear and shining; and yet the hand which
guided the country through four years of Civil War, was without doubt
the one best fitted to save it from the misery and disgrace which lay in
store for it. But speculations as to what might have been are vain and
idle. What was, we know; and above the clouds of conflict, Lincoln's
figure looms, serene and venerable. Two of his own utterances reveal him
as the words of no other man can--his address on the battlefield of
Gettysburg, and his address at his second inauguration--but two months
after he was laid to rest, James Russell Lowell, at the services in
commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard College,
paid him one of the most eloquent tributes ever paid any man, concluding
with the words:

"Great captains, with their guns and drums;
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and