ns 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
block and the halter; for its chieftains, military and civic, of the
second class, perpetual banishment with confiscation of their goods,
for all who have volunteered to fight against the Union perpetual
disfranchisement--these are the demands of a long-suffering people.

The case of treason-sympathizers among us is one of grave moment. It
is hard to bear their sneers and patiently to listen to their covert
treason. It is a question whether the limit of toleration has not
been passed. The era of assassination has been commenced. Be sure
that any man who will excuse an assassin, will himself do foul murder
when he can shoot from behind a hedge, or strike a victim in the
back. It is matter of self-defence to cast such from our midst. Let
us have no violence, no lawlessness, _but such persons must be
persuaded to depart from us._ "They are gentlemen." Booth was courtly
in speech and mien. Have they been State officers? So was Walsh,
whose house was a disunion arsenal. The time has come when we cannot
permit men in sympathy with armed rebellion, which employs the
assassin, to dwell in our midst.

Abraham Lincoln is no more. His work is done. We may not comprehend
the mystery which permitted his removal at such an hour, in such a
way. God hideth himself wondrously, and sometimes seems to stand afar
from His truth and His cause when most needed.

Our leader is gone. His work is finished, and it may be that his
Providential mission was fully a