Now, with his death, following so closely the
collapse of the Confederacy, there poured out from British press and
public a great stream of laudation for Lincoln almost amounting to a
national recantation. 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.
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