act was accordingly passed for the establishment of NATIONAL BANKS. The constitution of these was peculiar in the last degree. The new banks were born out of the exigency of the times and their anomalous character must be explained from the existing conditions. The National Bank Act of May, 1862, provided that the new banks might use national bonds as the basis of their currency instead of gold and silver. Each bank must purchase and deposit with the Treasurer of the United States the requisite amount of bonds and receive thereon ninety per cent. of the valuation of the bonds deposited in a NATIONAL CURRENCY, such currency to bear the name of the particular bank from which issued, but otherwise to be of a common type for the whole country.

The new banks were rapidly organized in all the States under national authority. In a short time a mixed currency, composed about half and half of greenbacks and national bank bills, took the place of the old local paper money which had formerly constituted the bulk of the currency. Gold and silver soon disappeared from sight. All financial transactions swam henceforth for about seventeen years in an ocean of self-sustaining paper money. The precious metals became mere merchandise; but their fictitious connection with the national currency constituted a dangerous element of monetary speculation which the financial jobbers of the country were not slow to discover and use with fatal effect. The currency of the national banks was furnished and the redemption of the same guaranteed by the Treasury of the United States. By the various measures above described the means for prosecuting the Civil War were provided. At the end of the conflict the national debt proper had reached the astounding sum of nearly three thousand millions of dollars, and to this prodigious-almost incalculable-aggregate the exigencies of the war were add

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ing more than two millions daily! Had the war continued another year national bankruptcy must have ensued.

On the 4th of March, 1865, Lincoln was inaugurated for his second term. The brief address which he delivered on the occasion was one of the most remarkable ever produced by a great man in a trying ordeal. He sought by sympathetic utterances to call back to loyalty the infatuated people of the Southern States, exhorting his countrymen, "with malice towards none, with charity for all," to go about the work of healing the nation's wounds and restoring political and social fellowship throughout the Union.

At the time of his second inauguration the great Confederacy was in the throes of dissolution. Within a month the military power of that government was broken. Three days after the evacuation of Richmond by Lee's army the President visited that city, conferred with the authorities and then returned to Washington; but in the strange vicissitude of things the tragedy of his own sad life had already entered its last act. On the evening of the 14th of April he attended Fort's Theater with Mrs. Lincoln and a party of friends. As the play drew near its close a disreputable actor, named John Wilkes Booth, stole, unnoticed, into the President's box, leveled a pistol at his head from behind and shot him through the brain. Lincoln fell forward in his seat, was borne unconscious from the building, lingered until the following morning and died. It was the greatest personal tragedy of modern times-the most atrocious and awful murder of history. The assassin leaped out of the box upon the stage, escaped into the darkness, mounted a waiting horse and fled across the Long Bridge of the Potomac into Virginia.

It was immediately perceived that a murderous conspiracy was on foot to destroy the government by assassination, through no conniving, however, of any responsible leader of

the South. In the same hour of the shooting of Lincoln another murderer named Louis Payne Powell burst into the bed-chamber of Secretary Seward, who had recently been disabled by an accident, sprang upon the couch of the sick man, stabbed him nigh unto death and made his escape into the night. The city was thrown into the wildest alarm and excitement. The telegraph flashed the news throughout the land and a tremor of rage ran through all hearts. Troops of cavalry and the police of Washington departed in all directions to hunt down the conspirators. On the 26th of April Booth was found concealed in a barn south of Fredericksburg. He refused to surrender even when the barn was set on fire. The object was to drive him forth alive; but Sergeant Boston Corbett, gaining sight of the assassin through the wall of the building, shot him down and he was dragged forth to die. Powell was caught, convicted and hanged. David E. Herrold and George A. Atzerott, together with Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, at whose house the plot was said to have been formed, were also condemned and executed. Michael O'Laughlin, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd and Samuel Arnold were condemned to imprisonment for life in the Dry Tortugas, and Edward Spangler for a term of six years.

Thus in darkness, but not in shame, ended the strange career of Abraham Lincoln. He was one of the most remarkable men of any age or country-a man in whom the qualities of genius and common sense were strangely mingled. He was prudent, far-sighted and resolute; thoughtful, calm and just; patient, tender-hearted and great. The manner of his death consecrated his memory. Thrown by murder from the high seat of power, he fell into the arms of the American people, who laid him down as tenderly as chil dren lay their father on the couch of death. The funeral pageant was prepared on a scale never before equaled in the

New World. From city to city in one vast procession the people followed his remains to their last resting-place in Springfield. From all nations went up the cry of sympathy and shame-sympathy for his death, and shame for the dark crime that caused it.

It would appear that Lincoln fell in an inauspicious hour. The great Confederacy of the Southern States was tottering into oblivion; but the restoration of the Union remained to be effected. Who but Lincoln in such a crisis was fitted for such work? His temper, after the surrender of Lee, showed clearly the trend of his thoughts and sympathies-his sincere desire for peace, his love for his countrymen of all sections.

The man of Europe might well be surprised at the slight disturbance in governmental affairs produced by the assassination of Lincoln. The public credit was undisturbed. It was demonstrated that in one country of the earth the nation is the government.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE death of the President called Andrew Johnson to the chief magistracy. The latter on the day after the assassination took the oath, and at once assumed the duties of office. He was a native of North Carolina, born in Raleigh, on the 29th of December, 1808. His boyhood was passed in obscurity, poverty and neglect. He had no advantages of education, and at the age of ten was apprenticed to a tailor. At eighteen he removed with his mother to Tennessee, and made his home at Greenville, in that State. Here he took in marriage an intelligent lady, who taught him to write and cipher. Here by native talent, will and strength he first earned the applause of his fellowmen. Here through toils and hardships he rose to distinction and was elected to Congress. As Senator of the United States, in 1860-61, he opposed secession with all his vehemence, even after the legislature of Tennessee had declared that State out of the Union. Then on the 4th of March, 1862, he was appointed military governor of Tennessee, and established himself at Nashville. He administered affairs from that place with all the vigor and passion of his nature. There was neither quailing nor the spirit of compromise. His life was imperiled, but he fed on danger and grew strong. In 1864 he was elected to the Vice-Presidency in place of Hannibal Hamlin. Now, by the tragic death of the President, he was called suddenly to the assumption of responsibilities almost as great as those which Lincoln had borne during the war.