Lincoln in Richmond

President Lincoln had been at City Point and vicinity, for several days before the fall of Richmond, anxiously watching the current of events. On the day after the Confederate capital was evacuated, he went up to that city on Admiral Porter's flag-ship, the Malvern; and while on his way to Weitzel's headquarters, at the late residence of Jefferson Davis, he was saluted with the loud cheers and grateful ejaculations of a vast concourse of emancipated slaves, who had been told that the "tall man" was their liberator. On the day of Lee's surrender, he returned to Washington; and on the 11th he issued a proclamation, in which he demanded, henceforth, for our vessels in foreign ports, on penalty of retaliation, those privileges and immunities which had hitherto been denied them on the plea of according equal belligerent rights to the Republic and its internal enemies. On the following day an order was issued from the War Department, putting an end to all drafting and recruiting for the National army, and the purchase of munitions of war and supplies. This virtual proclamation of the end of the war went over the land on the anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter (April 14), while General Anderson was replacing the old flag over the ruins of that fortress. Preparations were a-making for a National Thanksgiving, and the beams of returning peace illuminated the Republic, so to speak, when suddenly a dark cloud appeared and overspread the firmament with a gloomy pall. Before midnight the telegraph flashed the sad tidings over the land that the President had been assassinated! He was sitting in a theatre at Washington, with his wife and friends, when John Wilkes Booth, an actor by profession, entered his box stealthily and shot Mr. Lincoln in the back of his head with a Derringer pistol. The assassin then rushed to the front of the box with a gleaming dagger in his hand, and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis"--so may it always be with tyrants--the motto on the seal of Virginia. Then he leaped upon the stage, booted and spurred for a night ride; and shouting to the audience, "The South is avenged!" he escaped by a back door, mounted a horse that was in readiness for him, dashed across the Anacosta and found temporary shelter among sympathizing Maryland slaveholders. Then he fled into Virginia, where he was overtaken by pursuers in a barn below Fredericksburg, which was set on fire; and as the assassin emerged from the flames he was shot by a sergeant named Boston Corbett.

The President expired early in the morning of the 15th of April. His body was taken, in solemn procession, to his home in Springfield, Illinois, by way of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany and western cities, everywhere receiving tokens of the people's love and grief. Funeral honors were displayed in many cities in the land. Six hours after the demise of the Chief Magistrate, Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President, who was his constitutional successor, took the oath of office as President of the United States, administered by Chief-Justice Chase.

There seems to be a warrant for the belief, that the assassination of the President was only a part of a plan, in which the murder of the cabinet ministers, General Grant, and prominent Republicans, was contemplated; for on the same evening a murderous attack was made upon Secretary Seward, at his own house, by an ex-Confederate soldier. Secretary Stanton was absent from his home, and was not visited. It was a night of horrors at the capital; and President Johnson issued a proclamation early in May, signed by himself and Mr. Hunter, the Assistant Secretary of State, in which he declared that there was "evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice" that there had been a conspiracy formed by "Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, George N. Saunders and William C. Cleary, and other rebels and traitors against the Government of the United States, harbored in Canada," to assassinate the President and Secretary of State; and he offered a reward of $25,000 apiece for their arrest, excepting Cleary, a clerk, for whom $10,000 were offered.