at a plan to murder President Lincoln should have been approved at
Richmond is nothing strange; and though such approval would have been
supremely foolish, what but supreme folly is the chief characteristic of
the whole Southern movement? If the seal of Richmond's approval was
placed on a plan formed in Canada, something more than the murder of Mr.
Lincoln was intended. It must have been meant to kill every man who
could legally take his place, either as President or as President _pro
tempore_. The only persons who had any title to step into the Presidency
on Mr. Lincoln's death were Mr. Johnson, who became President on the
15th of April, and Mr. Foster, one of the Connecticut Senators, who is
President of the Senate. There was no Speaker of the House of
Representatives; so that one of the officers designated temporarily to
act as President, on the occurrence of a vacancy, had no existence at
the time of Mr. Lincoln's death, has none at this time, and can have
none until Congress shall have met, and the House of Representatives
have chosen its presiding officer. It does not appear that any attempt
was made on the life of Mr. Foster, though Mr. Johnson was on the list
of those doomed by the assassins; and the savage attack made on Mr.
Seward shows what those assassins were capable of. But had all the
members of the Administration been struck down at the same time, it is
not at all probable that "anarchy" would have been the effect, though to
produce that must have been the object aimed at by the conspirators.
Anarchy is not so easily brought about as persons of an anarchical turn
of mind suppose. The training we have gone through since the close of
1860 has fitted us to bear many rude assaults on order without our
becoming disorderly. Our conviction is, that, if every man who held high
office at Washington had been killed on the 14th of April, things would
have gone pretty much as we have seen them go, and that thus the
American people would have vindicated their right to be considered a
self-governing race. It would not be a very flattering thought, that the
peace of the country is at the command of any dozen of hardened ruffians
who should have the capacity to form an assassination plot, the
discretion to keep silent respecting their purpose, and the boldness and
the skill requisite to carry it out to its most minute details: for the
neglect of one of those details might be fatal to the whole project.
Society does not ex