ooked into the open
hell of Andersonville, upon the deliberate, systematic starvation of
helpless prisoners; we heard of Libby Prison underlaid with gunpowder,
for the purpose of destroying thousands of Union prisoners in case of the
occupation of Richmond by our army; we saw hundreds of prisoners
massacred in cold blood at Fort Pillow, and the midnight sack of Lawrence
and the murder of its principal citizens. The flames of our merchant
vessels, seized by pirates, lighted every sea; we heard of officers of
the rebel army and navy stealing into our cities, firing hotels filled
with sleeping occupants, and laying obstructions on the track of rail
cars, for the purpose of killing and mangling their passengers. Yet in
spite of these revelations of the utterly barbarous character of slavery
and its direful effect upon all connected with it, we were on the very
point of trusting to its most criminal defenders the task of
reestablishing the state governments of the South, leaving the real Union
men, white as well as black, at the mercy of those who have made hatred a
religion and murder a sacrament. The nation needed one more terrible
lesson. It has it in the murder of its beloved chief magistrate and the
attempted assassination of its honored prime minister, the two men of all
others prepared to go farthest to smooth the way of defeated rebellion
back to allegiance.

Even now the lesson of these terrible events seems but half learned. In
the public utterances I hear much of punishing and hanging leading
traitors, fierce demands for vengeance, and threats of the summary
chastisement of domestic sympathizers with treason, but comparatively
little is said of the accursed cause, the prolific mother of
abominations, slavery. The government is exhorted to remember that it
does not bear the sword in vain, the Old Testament is ransacked for texts
of Oriental hatred and examples of the revenges of a semi-barbarous
nation; but, as respects the four millions of unmistakably loyal people
of the South, the patient, the long-suffering, kind-hearted victims of
oppressions, only here and there a voice pleads for their endowment with
the same rights of citizenship which are to be accorded to the rank and
file of disbanded rebels. The golden rule of the Sermon on the Mount is
not applied to them. Much is said of executing justice upon rebels;
little of justice to loyal black men. Hanging a few ringleaders of
treason, it seems to be s