{ title: 'The Independent. (New York, N.Y.) 18??-1928, February 14, 1884, Page 1, Image 1', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/np00110001/1884-02-14/ed-1/seq-1/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/np00110001/1884-02-14/ed-1/seq-1.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/np00110001/1884-02-14/ed-1/seq-1/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/np00110001/1884-02-14/ed-1/seq-1/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
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(195) 3 reat -g at- - of the the old onsistory tasted and •lgious. No a devout spir- us to pray for Columbus af- the sailors of his but on the high seas traders and corsairs. Shipman,” iScience take lie no kepe, is craft to recken wel his tides, stremes and his strandes him besides.” as the boon companion of faithful dev otees of the Virgin, who, as another old writer says: “ Out of Bristowe [Bristol], and costes many one” were wont to sail to Iceland and “ the costes cold.” It is clear, therefore, that those who shape the coming Columbian fes tival will make a mistake if they set our hero upon the wrong pedestal, or try to make him something that he was not. Co lumbus was no savant and no saint, yet he was a genius; a genius in the sense of Cic ero, who says that “ genius is persever ance.” Columbus was great in his way, and that not an inferior way. He was in advance of his age. His mind was vis ionary, but it was capacious. He took large views of things, and thus was sub lime in his blunders. It was the largeness of his conception that justified him in stip ulating such vast rewards for his own ser vices, and to turn with scorn from King John, of Portugal, when that monarch de clined to give him the viceroyalty of the Indies and a tenth of all the wealth that he was to obtain in the realm of Cathay. To his perseverance he added that rare cour age which led him to shape his course over the “ sea of darkness” with an unfaltering trust, and calmly brave those weird influ ences that restrained ordinary sailors from prying into the secrets of the mysterious West. All honor, therefore, to Columbus, not for what blind panegyrists would make appear, but for what he really was; and let our own people, in shaping the celebration of 1892 offer to Columbus an intelligent homage, doing real justice to the great hearted man, who, instead of being re warded by Spain with suitable emoluments, was ignominiously loaded with chains. Let us now consider the actual results of the voyage of Columbus upon the coloniza tion of the United States. King Alfonso and his ministers look upon the coming celebration as, substanti ally, a matter pertaining to Spain. They are not altogether without reason, even though fervid Americans fancy that they have about ten parts in the matter. It has even been proposed to bring the bones of Columbus to New York, notwithstanding the fact that we do not know where his bones now rest, the relics at Havana being pronounced fraudulent immediately after the failure to effect his canonization. Therefore, what connection with our civili zation has the voyage to the West Indies of 1492? It is a noticeable fact that those Spaniards who followed Columbus, after discovering that the coast afforded no gold and no strait to the Pacific Ocean, turned away in disgust. Columbus himsc-lf was sailing di rect for the coast of Georgia in 1492, when (.n ieve- m the k in 1525 * Rio San An- jfb on the coast he cap- Indians whom he carried s slaves, and where, however, is arrival he was laughed at, it liav- 0 first been reported that he had found the Indies and returned with cloves. Peter Martyr wrote at the time of Gomez: “ I always thought and presupposed that this good man’s imaginations were vain and frivolous” ; adding afterward, “ What need have we of those things which are common with all the people of Europe? To the South, to the South, for the great and ex ceeding riches of the Equinoctial.” After this period the followers of Columbus came no further North than the Carolinas, where Ayllon died in 1526 while engaged in kid napping his second cargo of slaves, laying foundations for our Indian wars, and nota bly for the massacres of Englishmen in Virginia. The slave trade and the Indian wars were the chief outcome of the discov ery of Columbus, the natives being needed to work the West Indian mines. The French were equally backward, and Francis I, happity, never made any use of the harbor of New York, first described by a European in 1524, when Verrazano, the Ital ian, came hither in his service seeking a strait to India. The French conducted op erations in Canada and the Spaniards at the South; but it was reserved for Englishmen, under the influence of English discoveries, to colonize the coast of the present United States. Thus we are brought to consider the fact that on St. John’s Hay, June 24th, 1497, John Cabot, the Venetian, in the service of the King, Henry VII, of England, discov ered the American Continent. From the deck of the “ Matthew,” of Bristol, one if not two years before Columbus saw any part of the mainland, Cabot saw the coast, and called his landfall “ Prima Vista.'''' He, not Columbus, was the discoverer of “ Ameri ca,” the Genoese being properly the dis coverer of the West Indies. To the voyage of Cabot we trace the colonization of the United States, the territory of which was held by virtue of English discovery against all comers. The voyage of Cabot, in turn, was the re sult of a series of voyages begun before Columbus undertook his enterprise, and which, no doubt, suggested the achieve ment of Columbus. Froude has underrated British maritime enterprise; for the reason that he knew so little about it. Bristol was its headquarters. Thence Columbus prob ably sailed in his voyage of 1477. The air of that city was pervaded by the spirit of daring which had led the English to Iceland and Greenland for’a period of two hundred years. In 1480 Thomas Loyd sailed thence with a ship equipped by John Jay, in search of the Island of the Seven Cities, supposed to lie toward our coast. Beginning with 1491, voyages were made every year for seven years in the same direction by the men of Bristol; and Ayala, writing to Ferdi nand and Isabella, says that it was “ ac cording to the notion of this Genoese,” (con la fantasia deste Oinoues). Yet the voyage of 1480 enables us to interpret the phrase which proves that Columbus him self was acting in accordance with the no tions of the men of Bristol, who, in 1477, were his masters and teachers. Accord ingly, on the oldest extant map of the New World, that of 1500, made by Cosa, the pilot of Columbus, we find a recognition of the voyage of Cabot, out of which, logically, came the colonization of the present United States, New York City being its latest and grandest culmination. June 24th, 1897, must therefore prove a high day for the people of this land. On the Festival of the Baptist, well nigh four hundred years ago, the beginning of ion in America was ren- ; for there was an indepen- ery by Cabot, who found the of America in advance of both is and Columbus, his operations ig in a strain of influence entirely irate from those of Spain. “ The Men of stol,” therefore, who first flung the ban ner of St. George to the breeze in the New World, and who, later, drew the first bill of exchange negotiated with North America, and who, again, in 1603, on the shores of Plymouth, thirteen years before the Pil grims undertook the first agricultural ex periments conducted in New England— I repeat, it was “ the men of Bristol,” not Christopher Columbus, who founded colonization in the United States. It was “ the men of Bristol” in connection the inventor of printing who prepared the way for the establishment of the proud mer cantile metropolis called New York, whose merchant princes, in providing those honors so justly due to the immortal Geno ese, should not, in their generous enthusi asm, forget the obligations that they will be called to recognize on St. John’s Day, 1897. N e w Y o b k C i t y . A REMINISCENCE. BY BENSON J . LOSSING, LL.D. I w a s at the National Capital at the second inauguration of President Lincoln on the 4th of March, 1865. I remember hearing talk at Willard’s that evening about a rasli attempt, by a handsome young man, to break through a line of policemen, in the rotunda of the Capitol, who were guarding the passage of the President and his attendants through the eastern door to the platform at the portico. I believe the circumstance was barely alluded to in the local journals the next morning as a ripple on the surface of current events. A month later, President Lincoln and his wife, with Miss Harris and Major Rath- bone, were seated in a box at Ford’s Thea ter in Washington, listening to the play of “ Our American Cousin.” A young man, in the passage-way aear the box, put a card into the hand of Air. Lincoln’s messenger, and entered the vestibule of the President’s box, fastening the door securely behind him. Standing a few moments, he drew a Derringer pistol, and with this weapon in one hand, and a two-edged dagger in the other, he stole noiselessly behind the Presi dent.; and put a bullet through his brain. Major Rathbone, the only man in the box besides Mr. Lincoln, seized the assassin, who dropped his pistol, struck the Major with his dagger, and wounding him se verely in the arm and tearing away from the grasp of the brave soldier, rushed to the front of the box with the gleaming weapon in his hand and shouted “ Sic sem per tyrannis,” the legend on the seal of Virginia. He leaped upon the stage. Booted and spurred for a night ride, one of his spurs caught in the folds of an Amer- can flag and he fell. Rising, he turned to the excited audience, and exclaimed, “ The South is avenged /” and then escaped through a back door, mounted a horse which a boy was holding for him, fled swiftly in the gloom of night across the Anacosta, and found a temporary refuge among sympa thetic friends in Maryland. On that sad night I was at the Eutaw House, in Baltimore. Before midnight the swift messages of the telegraph had carried the dreadful news over half the continent and beyond the sea. From the capital went out cavalry and a strong police force in radiatory lines, in search of the assassin whose face had been recognized in the stage as that of an actor. Every avenue of in gress to and egress from surrounding towns were closed and guarded. Bulletin after bulletin was sent abroad from the bedside of the dying President all through that night of horror at Washington ; for the Secretary of State had been almost mur dered by another assassin at the same time. At seven o’clock in the morning, just four years after the attack on Fort Sumter, the death of the President was announced. Before nine o’clock that morning I ob served the buildings of the principal streets in Baltimore heavily draped with tokens of grief. A contrast to the scene on the 19th of April, 1861. The events of that night vividly recalled to the memory of many persons the mad attempt of the young man to break through the line of policemen at the rotunda a few weeks before; for there was an impression then that he had a mischievous, perhaps a murderous intent. He and the assassin were identified as the same person. Little was said about it at the time, in the public journals, and histories of the Civil War are silent on the subject. These circumstances were brought to my attention recently by some authentic documents which were placed in my hands, and which give interesting details of the affair in the rotuuda, as told by partici pants in it and eye-witnesses of it. These documents have lain in concealment many years. They present materials and hints for an additional and important chapter in the history of the Civil War. I here give it in brief outline. Southern newspapers having declared that President Lincoln would never be in augurated a second time, and such being common utterances in the Southern Con federacy, special precautions were obseved at that inauguration for the protection of the person of the President and to prevent confusion during the ceremonies. These precautions were timely; for it is now known that a conspiracy to abduct or mur der Mr. Lincoln had been formed, of which his assassin seems to have been the leader. Major B. B. French, then Commissioner of Public Buildings at Washington, had this matter in charge at the Capitol. He sta tioned a double row of policemen in the rotunda, to which a large number of per sons were admitted by tickets to see the procession of the President and his attend ants—judges of the Supreme Court, the Cabinet Ministers, representatives of other nations, Congressmen and others—from the Senate Chamber in the north wing of the Capitol through the rotunda to the eastern portico of the main building, where the in auguration was to take place. The police were arranged from the north ern to the eastern door of the rotunda, to keep open the passage for the procession, and to prevent any of the spectators forc ing it. Major French, who was in com mand of the police force, took a position at the eastern door. While the procession was moving, and when the President and the judges had passed through the door, a young man suddenly rushed from the crowd of spectators and broke through the southern line of policemen. He was instantly seized with a firm grasp by John W. Westfall, a native of the state of New York, who was a private in the Capitol police force. The in truder, wild with excitement, struggled vi olently and insisted on his right to go to the inaugural platform. He was very strong, and after dragging Westfall from his place in the ranks, he broke from the policeman’s grasp. Mr. French had promptly closed the eastern door. The procession halted, assistance was rendered to Westfall, and the intruder, who was considered a lunatic, was forcibly thrust from the passage. The procession then moved on without further interruption. The lineaments of the face of this young man were deeply impressed on the memory of Mr. Westfall and others of the police force. Westfall was also impressed with a belief that the intruder intended to assasin- ate the President on the inaugural platform. When Mr. Lincoln was actually murdered, a few weeks later, and while the executors of the law were in pursuit of the assassins, this faithful guardian of the public peace sought for a photograph of the alleged criminal. He found it at the office of L. C. Baker, the head of the United States Secret Service, and at once recognized it as the similitude of the face of the young man with whom he had the fierce struggle in the rotunda. Westfall procured a copy of it, and hastening to the office of Major French and showing it to that officer, said: “ Mr. Commissioner, do you recognize that face ?” After scanning it critically a few mo ments, the Major said: “ Yes. I would know that face among a thousand or ten thousand. That is the man you had the scuffle with on Inaugura tion Day, who gave us so much trouble. I met him face to face. That is the same man. Who Is it?” (T
