Solemnly, in the sight of God, I charge this murder where it belongs, on Slavery.  I dare not stand here in His sight, and before Him or you speak doubtful and double-meaning words of vague repentance, as if we had killed our President.  We have sins enough, but we have not done this sin, save as by weak concessions and timid compromises we have let the spirit of Slavery grow strong and ripe for such a deed.  In the barbarism of Slavery the foul act and its foul method had their birth.  By all the goodness that there was in him; by all the love we had for him (and who shall tell how great it was); by all the sorrow that has burdened down this desolate and dreadful week,—­I charge this murder where it belongs, on Slavery.  I bid you to remember where the charge belongs, to write it on the door-posts of your mourning houses, to teach it to your wondering children, to give it to the history of these times, that all times to come may hate and dread the sin that killed our noblest President.

If ever anything were clear, this is the clearest.  Is there the man alive who thinks that Abraham Lincoln was shot just for himself; that it was that one man for whom the plot was laid?  The gentlest, kindest, most indulgent man that ever ruled a State!  The man who knew not how to speak a word of harshness or how to make a foe!  Was it he for whom the murderer lurked with a mere private hate?  It was not he, but what he stood for.  It was Law and Liberty, it was Government and Freedom, against which the hate gathered and the treacherous shot was fired.  And I know not how the crime of him who shoots at Law and Liberty in the crowded glare of a great theatre differs from theirs who have levelled their aim at the same great beings from behind a thousand ambuscades and on a hundred battle-fields of this long war.  Every general in the field, and every false citizen in our midst at home, who has plotted and labored to destroy the lives of the soldiers of the Republic, is brother to him who did this deed.  The American nature, the American truths, of which our President was the anointed and supreme embodiment, have been embodied in multitudes of heroes who marched unknown and fell unnoticed in our ranks.  For them, just as for him, character decreed a life and a death.  The blood of all of them I charge on the same head.  Slavery armed with Treason was their murderer.

Men point out to us the absurdity and folly of this awful crime.  Again and again we hear men say, “It was the worst thing for themselves they could have done.  They have shot a representative man, and the cause he represented grows stronger and sterner by his death.  Can it be that so wise a devil was so foolish here?  Must it not have been the act of one poor madman, born and nursed in his own reckless brain?” My friends, let us understand this matter.  It was a foolish act.  Its folly was only equalled by its wickedness.  It was a foolish act.  But when did sin begin to be wise?  When did wickedness learn wisdom?