These
forms of sickness lead; all the rest follow. There are twice as many
sick as there are wounded. The deaths range from seven to ten per
cent, of those under treatment.[7]
Note:
[7] In the U. S. Surgeon-General's office since, there is a formal
record and treatment of 153, 142 cases of wounds by government
surgeons. What must have been the number unofficial, indirect--to say
nothing of the Southern armies?
DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
_April 16, '65_.--I find in my notes of the time, this passage on
the death of Abraham Lincoln: He leaves for America's history and
biography, so far, not only its most dramatic reminiscence--he
leaves, in my opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic,
artistic, moral personality. Not but that he had faults, and show'd
them in the Presidency; but honesty, goodness, shrewdness, conscience,
and (a new virtue, unknown to other lands, and hardly yet really known
here, but the foundation and tie of all, as the future will grandly
develop,) UNIONISM, in its truest and amplest sense, form'd the
hard-pan of his character. These he seal'd with his life. The tragic
splendor of his death, purging, illuminating all, throws round his
form, his head, an aureole that will remain and will grow brighter
through time, while history lives, and love of country lasts. By many
has this Union been help'd; but if one name, one man, must be pick'd
out, he, most of all, is the conservator of it, to the future. He was
assassinated--but the Union is not assassinated--_ca ira_! One falls
and another falls.
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