Nor was this insincere, for Seward had, first in the estimate of British statesmen, more slowly in the press and with the public, come to be regarded in an aspect far different from that with which he was generally viewed in 1861.  There was real anxiety at the reports of Seward’s accident, but when, in less than a week, there was received also the news of the assassination of Lincoln and of the brutal attack on Seward, all England united in expressions of sympathy and horror.  “Few events of the present century,” wrote Adams, “have created such general consternation and indignation[1291].”

In Ford’s Theatre on the evening of April 14, Lincoln was shot by Booth, a fanatical Southerner, who had gained entrance to the box where the President was sitting.  Lincoln died early the next morning.  On the same evening, at about ten o’clock, an unknown man was admitted to Seward’s house on the plea that he had a message from the physician, passed upstairs, but was stopped by Seward’s son at the door of the sick room.  Beating the son into semi-unconsciousness with a revolver which had missed fire, the stranger burst open the door, attacked the Secretary as he lay in bed with a bowie-knife, slashing at his throat, until Seward rolled off the bed to the floor.  Seward’s throat was “cut on both sides, his right cheek nearly severed from his face”; his life was saved, probably, because of an iron frame worn to support the jaw fractured in the runaway accident nine days before[1292].  The assailant fought his way out of the house and escaped.  For some days Seward’s life was despaired of, whether from his injuries or from shock.

These tragic occurrences were the outcome of a revengeful spirit in the hearts of a few extreme Southerners, and in no sense represented the feeling of the South.  It was inevitable, however, that abroad so horrible a crime should react both to the detriment of the Confederacy and to the advantage of the North.  Sympathy with the North took the form of a sudden exaltation of the personality of Lincoln, bringing out characterizations of the man far different from those which had been his earlier in the war.  The presence of a “rural attorney” in the Presidential office had seemed like the irony of fate in the great crisis of 1861.  Even so acute an observer as Lyons could then write, “Mr. Lincoln has not hitherto given proof of his possessing any natural talents to compensate for his ignorance of everything but Illinois village politics.  He seems to be well meaning and conscientious, in the measure of his understanding, but not much more[1293].”  But Lyons was no more blind than his contemporaries, for nearly all characterizations, whether American or foreign, were of like nature.