[FN#1] Since the MS. of this discourse was given the printer, the
assassin has met his retribution. Hunted like a wild beast to his
lair, he was surrounded by his pursuers, forsaken by his accomplice,
the barn to which he had fled fired, then shot to death, lingering
several hours in intense suffering and his remains consigned to
impenetrable obscurity. Retribution came to him before his victim was
buried. So be it ever! His accomplices are known and _must be_
punished.


A morning journal, which has been somehow retained in the interest
of wrong, of home-traitors, of misrule, has already impliedly put in
the plea of insanity for the assassin. The same journal runs a
parallel between him and John Brown. Well, Virginia executed John
Brown--its own precedent is fatal to its own client!

Let justice be done on the leaders of rebellion. Have done with the
miserable cant of curing those perjured conspirators with kindness.
Libby Prison mined under Federal captives, the starved skeletons of
our slowly murdered kinsmen, the grave of Lincoln, and the gaping
wounds of Seward are your answer. It must be taught men for all time
that treason is, in this life, unpardonable! It is all crimes in one.
In this case it is without the glitter of seeming chivalry for its
relief. It has had nothing knightly. It has conspired to starve
prisoners, has plotted conflagrations which were to consume, in one
dread holocaust, the venerable matron, the gray-haired sire and the
mother with her babe; has resorted to poison, the knife of the cut-
throat and the pistol of the assassin. No treason was ever so
repulsively foul, so reekingly corrupt. For its great leaders, the