Indeed the people of the United States have rarely been stirred to greater excitement than that aroused by the full details of this nefarious transaction as it came to them through the public press and through official reports.

The effect was disastrous to the President, and was hurtful, in the extreme, to the cause of prompt reconstruction.

The Northern people shrank from the responsibility of transferring the government of States to the control of men who had already shown themselves capable of desperate deeds.

In their wrathful zeal for justice they would hear no apology and no defense of the President.

They held him as an accomplice in the crime,--as one having in advance a guilty knowledge of the pre-arranged assassination.