This morning
Sherman's great army bow their heads in mournful silence over the startling
news of the assassination. While we write we remember how we were made glad
when the news was read to us "Richmond has fallen!" "Lee has surrendered!"
Yes, we were made glad, for we knew then that the rebellion was dead, that the
war would soon end, and wild, loud and long were the shouts that rang through
the forests of North Carolina, in honor of those glorious events. But now we
find the army possessed of a different feeling: all seem down-cast and sad; a
veil of gloom hangs like a midnight curtain. And why this gloom? Why do the
tall dark pines seem to wail so mournfully as, tossed by the wind, they sway
hither and fro? Why this sorrow when the harbinger of peace seems so nigh? Ah,
our chief, our ruler, our friend, the Union's friend, the world's friend,
humanity's truest friend on earth, has been stricken down in the hour of his
greatest triumph by the cowardly hand of the assassin. We loved the good, the
noble, the merciful LINCOLN, who had led the millions of the western world
through so terrible a war with the end so nigh. But the great mission designed
for him by the Creator he has accomplished-the freedom of a chained race. May
we ever remember that Abraham Lincoln died a martyr to freedom, a martyr to
law, a martyr to right; and above all let us remember that the minions of
slavery slew him; slew him because he was the world's champion for the rights
of man; because he loved his country, and had a heart that went out to the
lonely cottage homes where the disconsolate widow and fatherless child sat weeping
for the loved and lost who had been swept away by war's dark wave; slew him
because he defied the world;
"While the thunders of War did rattle,
And the Soldiers fought the battle;"
slew him because his
democracy would not embrace the slaveholder's aristocracy; because his
democracy was too broad; because it breathed a spirit of love and compassion
towards earth's chained millions, and a spirit of hatred towards pampered
royalty and cruel tyranny. Although he is dead; although his name, spotless and
pure, has gone to the christian calendar, yet that liberty for which he died
still moves on, and will move on until every throne beneath the circle of the
sun shall have been shaken to its fall. Moving on where the Danube and the
Volga move; moving on where the south wind makes music along the Tiber's
winding way; it will move on until equal rights, the darling theme of Lincoln's
life, shall be established, and the clanking of chains forever silenced, for
the consummation of such an end is certain. God, not man, created men equal,
and deep laid in the solid foundation of God's eternal throne the great
principles of man's equality are established indestructible and immortal. When
that time comes, when liberty shall unfurl her beautiful banner of stars over the
crumbling tombs of empires, heaven and earth will rejoice and the generations
that follow will look back upon the past, (perhaps it will be a century or
more,) and say of Abraham Lincoln, he was the world's leading spirit for
freedom, truth and the rights of man, and the world's bitterest foe against
treason and imperialism.
The memory of
Lincoln, his model manhood, his exalted virtues, his heroic endeavors amid
darkness and disparagements; his sublime devotion to the cause he had espoused;
his love towards the Union army; his great sympathy for the widow and the
orphan boy whose father fell with Wadsworth and Sedgwick in the wilderness,
whose life blood made crimson Rappahannock's rippling waters, whose lamp of
life flickered out in Andersonville and Libby prisons as victims to a ferocious
tyranny; these all will be forever linked with the memory of the patriot
pilgrims, who, in years to come, will bow their heads in silent reverence
before the marble cenotaph that marks the place where the martyred champion
sleeps. May Americans ever love to applaud his virtues, for virtues he had as
pure as the driven snow. "Vivit post funera virtus": may the Illinois
soldiers tread lightly around his tomb; may the prairie winds ever chant
requiems to his memory, and may the great American people remember the day when
their leading light went out-when their brightest star went home to God.
The Seventh remained
in camp at Morrisville, until after the surrender of Johnson [sic], when we retraced our steps and
went into camp on Crab Creek, five miles from Raleigh.