was to die. So was Seward. That same night one of the
conspirators, a gigantic boy of feeble mind, gained entrance to
Seward's house and wounded three people, including Seward himself, who
was lying already injured in bed and received four or five wounds.
Neither he nor the others died. The weak-minded or mad boy, another
man, whose offense consisted in having been asked to kill Johnson and
refused to do so, and another alleged conspirator, a woman, were hanged
after a court-martial whose proceedings did credit neither to the new
President nor to others concerned. Booth himself, after many
adventures, was shot in a barn in which he stood at bay and which had
been set on fire by the soldiers pursuing him. During his flight he is
said to have felt much aggrieved that men did not praise him as they
had praised Brutus and Cassius.

There were then in the South many broken and many permanently
embittered men, indeed the temper which would be glad at Lincoln's
death could be found here and there and notably among the partisans of
the South in Washington. But, if it be wondered what measure of
sympathy there was for Booth's dark deed, an answer lies in the fact
that the murder of Lincoln would at no time have been difficult for a
brave man. Fair blows were now as powerless as foul to arrest the end.
On the very morning when Lincoln and Grant at the Cabinet had been
telling of their hopes and fears for Sherman, Sherman himself at
Raleigh in North Carolina had received and answered a letter from
Johnston opening negotiations for a peaceful surrender. Three days
later he was starting by rail for Greensborough when word came to him
from the telegraph operator that an important message was upon the
wire. He went to the telegraph box and heard it. Then he swore the
telegraph operator to secrecy, for he feared that some provocation
might lead to terrible disorders in Raleigh, if his army, flushed with
triumph, were to learn, before his return in peace, the news that for
many days after hushed their accustomed songs and shouts and cheering
into a silence which was long remembered. He went off to meet Johnston
and requested to be with him alone in a farmhouse near. There he told
him of the murder of Lincoln. "The perspiration came out in large
drops on Johnston's forehead," says Sherman, who watched him closely.
He exclaimed that it was a disgrace to the age. Then he asked to know
whether Sherman attributed the crime to