organized unmolested, and captured our neglected forts and starving garrisons. Because of a drivelling, morbid, perverted sense of justice, the enemy of the government has been permitted to go at large, under the shadow of the Capitol, all through this war. God only knows how much we have suffered for the lack of justice. And now to restore these leaders seems like moral insanity. Better than this, give us back the stern, inflexible indignation of the old Puritan, and the lex talionis of the Hebrew Lawgiver. Our consciences are debauched, our instincts confounded, our laws set aside, by this indorsement of a blind, passionate philanthropy.

Theodore Parker has a passage in his work on religion, in which he gathers into heaven the debauchee, the swarthy Indian, the imbruted Calmuck, and the grim-faced savage, with his hands still red and reeking with the blood of his slaughtered human victims. And the idea, to me, of placing the leaders of this diabolical rebellion in a position where they might come again red-handed into the councils of the nation, is equally revolting and sacrilegious. It makes me shudder. And yet I think there was an indecent leniency beginning to manifest itself towards them, which would have allowed to these men, by and by, votes and honors and lionizing. The soldiers did not relish this prospect. They are not to be deceived by the misapplication of the term magnanimity to an act that turns loose into the bosom of society the men who systematically murdered our prisoners by starvation, and again and again shot prisoners of war after they had surrendered,

shot gallant officers, even in these last battles, after being told that they were mortally wounded, and strung up Union men in North Carolina because they had enlisted in the federal army.

And now we see and feel just as the soldiers do. The spirit that shot down our men on the way to the capital, the spirit that shot Ellsworth at Alexandria, the spirit that organized treachery, treason, and rebellion, the spirit that armed those leaders to strike at the life of the government, is the same hell-born spirit that dastardly takes the life of our beloved President, is the same atrocious spirit that seeks the bed-chamber of a sick and helpless man, and cuts his throat, and strikes the murderous dirk at the heart of every attendant. We see its malignant, fiendish nature now!

And what shall be done with these secessionists, if we succeed in arresting them before they get out of the country, with the blood of the President, and of the Minister of State on their hands? Pity them as insane? parole them as prisoners of war? Doubtless, like the St. Albans raiders, they have their commission from Richmond! Does this make your blood boil? is this too shocking to suppose? Well: shall we hang them, hang the less guilty, and let the more guilty go free? hang the miserable, worthless hirelings, and let the principals and chiefs live? To do that is to arm men, and goad them to take vengeance into their own hands. The instinctive justice of the human conscience must be satisfied by the action of government, or it will have private revenge. There is a consciousness of right in the masses, that will not be tampered with, in such a

time as this. Not the branches of this accursed tree, but the trunk and the roots must be exterminated from the land. Hear me, patriots, sires of murdered sons, weeping wives and orphans, I say exterminated! "Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, and ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of him that is fled, that he come again to dwell in the land; for blood it defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed but by the blood of him that shed it." And when David died, he charged Solomon to fulfil this divine command in regard to Joab and Shimei, who had been too strong for him during his life.

3. One thing more: Let us face the future, and all the solemn responsibilities of these uncertain hours with courage. We have God on the throne that no violence can reach, the God who has always been with us. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God."

And then, such is the happy structure of our government that no assassination can arrest its wheels. A terrible calamity has overtaken us, but it will only the more exhibit the inherent vitality of our institutions, and the greater strength of the people.

Andrew Johnson, who now becomes the chief magistrate, by the mysterious providence of God, is unquestionably an able man. He has been much in public life, and never failed. except in his speech on inauguration day to meet the exigencies of his position.

Besides, he has had a schooling in Tennessee which

may have prepared him to lead at this very time. When I was in Washington, four years ago, I heard much in his praise. He told the secessionists, who were just then leaving their seats in the Senate to inaugurate the rebellion, — told them to their faces, for substance, 66 were I President of the United States, I would arrest you as traitors, and try you as traitors, and convict you as traitors, and hang you as traitors." And judging from the speech which he made at Washington after the news of the fall of Richmond, he has not changed his mind.

We want no revenge: we will wait the forms and processes of law. We want justice tempered with mercy. We want the leaders punished, but the masses pardoned. Let us confide in him as our President. And do you make crime odious; disfranchise every man who has held office in the rebel government, and every commissioned officer in the rebel army; make the halter certain to the intelligent and influential, who are guilty of perjury and treason, and so make yourself a terror to him that doeth evil, and a praise to him that doeth good,- and we will stand by you,

Andrew Johnson.

Another ground of courage is, that the nation is a unit against rebellion to-day as it never was before. It is too much to hope, I suppose, that any traitor will have his eyes opened to see the true character of the awful work in which he has been engaged, though it seems as if such an atrocious butchery were enough to make him see it; but of this be sure, that all loyal men are united now; and woe be to the secessionist who

does not instantly sue for mercy, or fly the country. I have seen them launch a great ship. The ways are laid, solid and secure. And then the workmen split away, one after another, the blocks from underneath the keel. Gradually the huge structure settles upon the slippery ways, and glides majestically into her future element. The two ways under our ship of state are justice and mercy. In the providence of God, block after block has been knocked away; prop after prop removed, till now, just ready to glide into the new future, she is settling all her weight upon her ways,ways made slippery by the blood of the murdered chief magistrate, and minister: woe, woe, woe to him who puts himself in the line of her course. Infinitely better for him, had he been strangled at the birth.

Be sure, this people will mourn from sea to sea: but be sure, also, that any provocation will bring out the indignant, instant, sympathetic cry from every lip, "Die, traitors, assassins, all; live, the republic, liberty, and law."

The God of infinite justice and mercy be our helper. Amen.

NOTE. Preached Sunday morning, April 16, after the news of the assassination of President Lincoln.