hey
would save a little money and go back to Springfield and he would
practice law again. To his wife this unnatural joy was portentous--she
remembered that he had been like this just before little Willie died. In
the evening they went to Ford's Theatre. Stanton tried to dissuade them
because the secret service had heard rumors of assassination. Because
Stanton insisted on a guard Major Rathbone was along. At 9 o'clock the
party entered the President's box--the President was very happy--at
10:20 a shot was heard--Major Rathbone sprang to grapple with the
assassin and was slashed with a dagger. The assassin fell as he sprang
from the box to the stage, where he brandished his bloody dagger, yelled
with terrible theatricalism, "_sic semper tyrannis_," and stalking
lamely from the platform disappeared in the darkness and rode away. The
President was unconscious from the first, and as they bore him from the
theatre a lodger from a house across the street said "Take him up to my
room," where he lay unconscious until next morning when he ceased to
breathe; and Stanton at his bedside said, "Now he belongs to the Ages."

Someone had recognized the assassin as John Wilkes Booth, an actor, a
fanatic in the Southern cause. And in killing Lincoln he did his people
of the South the greatest possible harm.

The North had been decorated with celebration of victory; now it was
bowed and dazed with grief and rage. Those that had abused him and
maligned him and opposed him now came to understand him as in a new
light they saw him transfigured by his great sacrifices.

They reverently folded the body in the flag and carried it first to the
White House and then to the Capitol where it lay in state; and then they
began that long journey back to Springfield over the very route he had
come on his way to the Capital in 1861. Everywhere in cities and in
towns great crowds gathered, heedless of night or rain or storm, and
even as the train sped over the open country at night little groups of
farmers could be seen by the roadside in the dim light watching for the
train and waving their lanterns in a sad farewell.

Whatever anger and resentment the North may have felt, the weeping
thousands who looked upon the face of Lincoln as it was borne homeward
saw only forgiveness and peace.

But his beautiful dream of amnesty was not to be realized. Mutual
forgiveness and reconciliation were ideals too high for many of his
contemporaries at that time,