e Cottage, and
the President dismounted and entered. Thinking the affair rather
strange, a corporal and myself started in the direction of the
place from where the sound of the rifle report had proceeded, to
investigate the occurrence. When we reached the spot where the
driveway intersects with the main road we found the President's
hat--a plain silk hat-and upon examining it we discovered a bullet
hole through the crown. The shot had been fired upwards, and it
was evident that the person who fired the shot had secreted himself
close to the roadside. We listened and searched the locality
thoroughly, but to no avail. The next day I gave Mr. Lincoln his
hat and called his attention to the bullet hole. He rather
unconcernedly remarked that it was put there by some foolish
gunner, and was not intended for him. He said, however, that he
wanted the matter kept quiet, and admonished us to say nothing
about it. We all felt confident that it was an attempt to kill
him, and a well-nigh successful one, too. The affair was kept
quiet, in accordance with his request. After that, the President
never rode alone.'"]

That this dark and wicked and bloody Rebellion, waged by the upholders
and advocates of Slavery, Free Trade, and Secession, had descended so
low as to culminate in murder--deliberate, cold-blooded, cowardly
murder--at a time when the Southern Conspirators would apparently be the
least benefitted by it, was regarded at first as evidencing their mad
fatuity; and the public mind was dreadfully incensed.

The successor of the murdered President-Andrew Johnson-lost little time
in offering (May the 2d) rewards, ranging from $25,000 to $100,000, for
the arrest of Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson,

[The same individual at whose death, in 1885, the Secretary of the
Interior, ordered the National flag of the Union--which he had
swindled, betrayed, fought, spit upon, and conspired against--to be
lowered at halfmast over the Interior Departmental Building, at
Washington, D. C.]

Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, George N. Sanders, and W. C. Cleary,
in a Proclamation which directly charged that they, "and other Rebels
and Traitors against the Government of the United States, harbored in
Canada," had "incited, concerted, and procured" the perpetration of the
appalling crime.

On the 10th of May, one of them,