ght at a _gala_ performance of a popular English comedy called
"Our American Cousin." Booth obtained access to the Presidential box and
shot his victim behind the ear, causing instant loss of consciousness,
which was followed within a few hours by death. The assassin leapt from
the box on to the stage shouting: "_Sic semper Tyrannis!_" and, though
he broke his leg in the process, succeeded, presumably by the aid of a
confederate among the theatre officials, in getting away. He was later
hunted down, took refuge in a bar, which was set on fire, and was shot
in attempting to escape.

The murder of Lincoln was the work of a handful of crazy fools. Already
the South, in spite of its natural prejudices, was beginning to
understand that he was its best friend. Yet on the South the retribution
was to fall. It is curious to recall the words which Lincoln himself had
used in repudiating on behalf of the Republican Party the folly of old
John Brown, words which are curiously apposite to his own fate and its
consequences.

"That affair, in its philosophy," he had said, "corresponds to the many
attempts related in history at the assassination of kings and emperors.
An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies
himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the
attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini's
attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry
were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast
blame on Old England in the one case and on New England in the other
does not disprove the sameness of the two things." It may be added that
the "philosophy" of Booth was also "precisely the same" as that of
Orsini and Brown, and that the "eagerness to cast blame" on the
conquered South was equally unjustifiable and equally inevitable.

The anger of the North was terrible, and was intensified by the
recollection of the late President's pleas for lenity and a
forgetfulness of the past. "This is their reply to magnanimity!" was the
almost universal cry. The wild idea that the responsible heads of the
Confederacy were privy to the deed found a wide credence which would
have been impossible in cooler blood. The justifiable but unrestrained
indignation which Booth's crime provoked must be counted as the first of
the factors which made possible the tragic blunders of the
Reconstruction.

Another factor was the personality of the new Presid