Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/605

Rh States still evidenced the compact by which the States had confederated. The State governments under that Constitution were still operating except where they were obstructed by military authority. Jefferson Davis was still President and commander-in-chief. His cabinet in part, as far as he required, were with him, and a small military body was detailed to escort him. Thus he passed through South Carolina into Georgia, held his last cabinet council in Washington, Georgia, and then, anxious for the safety of his family, pushed on westward designing to cross the Mississippi river. While thus seeking to reach the western Confederacy Mr. Davis was captured, imprisoned, bound in chains and closely guarded.

In the meantime a most deplorable event happened in the unexpected assassination of President Lincoln, concerning which it may be earnestly said that all verbal resentment of that crime was paralyzed by the inexpressible horror of it. The shame of it still disgraces the continent. It was a disreputable American event, when the elected head of a free people fell by the hand of an assassin whose lips profaned a sacred State motto in the very act of hideous murder. Complicity with such a crime could only occur among demons of the most vicious class, and it is unthinkable by any brain untempered by hate and unswayed by excitement that men of established good fame would share with the chief criminal the guilt of a murder so hurtful to public interests, so foul in its motive, so base in its execution. Not far away from the guiltiness of actual complicity with this chief crime of the American continent lies the guiltiness of the slanderers who falsely accused innocent men of aiding and abetting this desperate deed. It is not easy to distinguish be tween the offense by which the innocent Lincoln lost his valuable life and the offense of the attempt to murder the character and then take the life of the innocent Davis. Much mitigation, however, of the offense against justice at this moment, when a whole land was in a storm of