In this process of "whitening Abraham's tomb," as a few dyed-in-the-wool Southern sympathizers called it, _Punch_ led the way in a poem by Tom Taylor: "_You_ lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, _You_, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face." * * * * * "Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil and confute my pen-- To make me own this hind of princes peer, This rail-splitter a true-born king of men[1294]." Less emotional than most papers, but with a truer estimate of Lincoln, stood the _Times_.

Severely reprobating the act of Booth and prophesying a disastrous effect in the treatment of the conquered South, it proceeded: "Starting from a humble position to one of the greatest eminence, and adopted by the Republican party as a make-shift, simply because Mr.Seward and their other prominent leaders were obnoxious to different sections of the party, it was natural that his career should be watched with jealous suspicion.

The office cast upon him was great, its duties most onerous, and the obscurity of his past career afforded no guarantee of his ability to discharge them.

His shortcomings moreover were on the surface.

The education of a man whose early years had been spent in earning bread by manual labour had necessarily been defective, and faults of manner and errors of taste repelled the observer at the outset.