Gass. 
 Book. 
 
THE NAMELESS CRIME: 
 
 A DISCOURSE, 
 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 FIRST CONSTITUTIONAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
 
 Sii/iday W8g9a* 9 AprllQ 23, 4335, 
 
 BY REV. H. DUNNING, Pastor. 
 
 jj r i it f t b b g J.I e q u e s t . 
 
 3AI/riMORE .... JOHN W. WOODS, PRINTER, 
 
 202 Baltimore Street. 
 
 1 8G 5. 
 
 
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 ADDRESS. 
 
 Brethren and Friends : 
 
 Having to speak to you to-night of a crime 
 that has no name, it would seem appropriate that my 
 discourse should have no text. Let the horrid crime 
 itself be my text 
 
 On the last Sabbath morning, it being my first op- 
 portunity after the commission of that unparalleled 
 crime which deprived the nation of its beloved and 
 honored head, I took occasion to speak to you, in 
 general terms, of the horrible fact itself which had 
 struck the nation dumb by its atrocity. I then gave 
 utterance, promptly and decidedly, to the feelings 
 which were excited in my own heart by the shocking 
 
 event. 
 
 On Wednesday last, at the hour of the funeral 
 solemnities in Washington, while we here, in com- 
 mon with the whole nation, were bowed in sympathy 
 and sorrow, I took occasion as was most befitting at 
 such a time, to speak of some of the more remarka- 
 ble characteristics of that great man upon whose 
 shoulders God had twice devolved responsibilities, 
 greater and weightier than almost ever fell upon 
 man; and who had thus been, by the brutal hand of 
 violence, snatched away, ere, as it would seem, he 
 had finished the work God had given him to do. 
 
 I am now to speak of that nameless crime by which 
 the land has been deprived of the honored represent- 
 
ative of its life and authority ; the people of their 
 beloved and trusted President ; and Freedom and 
 Humanity of their most faithful friend. I deem it 
 my duty at such a time to speak, and to speak in all 
 fidelity, irrespective of the favor and the frown of 
 men ; and I should speak what I believe the appalling 
 occasion bids me speak, though an hundred devils 
 stood before me, frowning and forbidding. 
 
 The nameless crime is my theme ; and why do I 
 call it a nameless crime? Because there is not in 
 our language a word which expresses this horrid 
 deed. For killing in almost every form or relation, 
 there is a name specific and descriptive : for this there 
 is none. It is not homicide ; that term does not by 
 any means express the whole of this crime. It is 
 not murder ; killing a man "with malice afore- 
 thought" does not fill out the measure of this iniquity. 
 It is not merely assassination, for here was more 
 meant and done than the mere stealthy killing of a 
 man. It is not regicide, for our President was no 
 king. It is not tyrannicide, for our twice chosen 
 head of thirty millions of people, of the people, in 
 sympathy with the people, beloved of the people, 
 was no tyrant. How then shall we express the as- 
 sassination of the elected head of a free nation ? 
 There is no word that contains and describes the 
 deed. It is only by circumlocution of horrid phrase 
 that you can express it. Let it remain a nameless 
 deed forever ; a horrid blank in human language. 
 Of this nameless crime, who can describe its atrocity 
 and ivickedness ? Look at the spirit which generated 
 and accomplished the deed. It is the spirit of rebel- 
 lion, of rebellion against divinely constituted author- 
 ity and law. The Bible teaches us that government 
 
is of God : "The powers that be are ordained of God" 
 Human government therefore finds its basis, support, 
 strength and authority in God. Resistance to a di- 
 vinely constituted government is therefore resistance 
 to God. "Whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the 
 ordinance of God" Now the spirit of this crime is 
 the spirit of rebellion intensified to the highest pos- 
 sible degree. It strikes not only at the representa- 
 tive of government, but at the authority of govern- 
 ment ; and through the representative, at those he 
 represents ; and through them, at all government it- 
 self; and through government, at God, the author of 
 government. The spirit of this crime first developed 
 itself in heaven. There it struck at God, and could it 
 have realized its malignant purpose, it would have 
 dethroned and have annihilated God. 
 
 The spirit of this crime is the animating spirit of 
 all sin. Its aim is the destruction of all government, 
 human and divine. It would annihilate God, and de- 
 vastate the universe. And this reveals to us the ap- 
 palling enormity of this nameless crime. 
 
 And when we consider the relations existing between 
 the victim of this crime and the criminal 'himself its 
 atrocity reveals itself in still darker colors. This 
 blow, be it remembered, was not aimed at Abraham 
 Lincoln, the man, the citizen, the individual, but at 
 Abraham Lincoln the President. The assassin had 
 no hatred of the man, perhaps no living being had ; 
 but of the President, and because he teas President. 
 But the President, as such, is only the representative 
 of national life and authority. He is the nation em- 
 bodied. The blow then was aimed at the nation, the 
 life and heart of the nation, and could it have real- 
 ized its horrid malignity in desired result, it would 
 
6 
 
 have annihilated not only the government, but the 
 nation whose embodied life the government is. 
 
 Now, the intense malignity and enormity of the 
 crime reveals itself in the fact that its perpetrator 
 was living at the time only on the forbearance and 
 leniency of the President. He openly professed to 
 be, he was publicly known to be an enemy of the 
 government whose protection he enjoyed, whose pro- 
 tection he was base enough to continue to enjoy and 
 to abuse for its attempted destruction ! Yet, though 
 thus known as a declared enemy, he was spared and 
 protected from judgment by the misplaced forbear- 
 ance of that government against which he lifted his 
 assassin hand, and at which he aimed this deadly 
 blow ! His freedom and life as a declared enemy of 
 government, in this hour of its great struggle for con- 
 tinued existence and authority, had both been for- 
 feited. He was permitted the enjoyment of both by 
 the too great leniency of the President. That len- 
 iency he outraged by the murder of him that showed 
 it ! If anything can show the hideous enormity of 
 this crime, and its desert of a double damnation, this 
 fact reveals it. 
 
 But its criminality is still further enhanced, by the 
 fact, that, its noble victim was, at the time medita- 
 ting an amnesty to all the thousands who had been 
 engaged in long and bitter strife against the govern- 
 ment of which he was the twice chosen representa- 
 tive and executive, and who were, just in this hour 
 of victory, wholly in his power. At such a time, when 
 clemency, when forgiveness, when an earnest desire 
 to assuage the bitterness engendered by this unhal- 
 lowed and conquered rebellion ruled in the heart of 
 this good man ; at such a time, in contradiction to 
 
every impulse of gratitude or generosity, this fear- 
 ful deed was done ! It was in wicked harmony in- 
 deed with the base ingratitude of them who had been 
 nursed at the bosom of the republic, but who had 
 striven to drive the assassin's dagger to her maternal 
 heart. 
 
 And then too tchat blindness, what stupidity what 
 desperate infatuation in this crime ! What could it 
 accomplish now for the cause it was designed to aid ? 
 Had it been committed four years ago, it might have 
 been extenuated by the wicked plea of the aid it 
 would render to the then newly inaugurated rebel- 
 lion ; but now it can have no such diabolic justifica- 
 tion ; on the contrary, it is manifest that nothing 
 could operate so seriously to the detriment of their 
 cause who had already, whether willingly or unwill- 
 ingly, submitted to the government. Nothing could 
 have been done which will so certainly cement, weld, 
 intensify, and augment the loyality of the nation. A 
 hundred victories could not have produced such a re- 
 sult. The blindness, the infatuation of the deed are 
 astounding. How does iniquity overleap itself, and 
 perish in its folly ! 
 
 The question now here arises, and it is one which 
 will be long pondered by the world, and which must 
 have an answer, how could this deed have been done ? 
 ffoio could this crime have been committed ? 
 
 We are now too near the commission of the hor- 
 rid crime itself to answer this question fully. But in 
 part you may see the explanation of the possibility 
 and the fact of its commission in the well known life 
 and character of the assassin. His long practice in 
 theatric displays and mock crimes and tragedies had 
 made him insensible to the guilt of real crimes. It 
 
3 
 
 had doubtless given birth to the feeling that it would 
 furnish a sort of grand theatric display before the 
 world ; that it would be a grand tragedy, enacted 
 upon a grand scale in real life, the victim of which, 
 should fall from the most exalted seat of power, 
 the auditory of which should be the world, and 
 the chief actor therein, as the assassin himself de- 
 scribed it, should win for himself immortal fame. 
 
 Smitten, perhaps, with an accursed ambition for 
 such fame, long cherishing the spirit which has in- 
 flamed the heart and nerved the arm of this rebel- 
 lion from the beginning ; harboring the most deadly 
 hostility towards the government, whose representa- 
 tive the President was ; long brooding over the dark 
 iniquity, and plotting it with his co-conspirators ; 
 urged on by those who were engaged in the same 
 diabolic effort against the nation's life on a grander 
 and more open and acknowledged scale ; thus exci- 
 ted, stimulated, urged on, restrained by no moral or 
 religious influences ; dissuaded, withheld alas ! by no 
 kind friend ; finding only unhallowed stimulation in 
 the drinking saloon and in the brothel ; fired by the 
 demon spirit of that institution which the rebel Hunter 
 declared was the cause of the whole rebellion, whose 
 friend and defender he was ; thus animated and 
 urged ; and thus unhappily unrestrained ; this young 
 man at length, after many purposed attempts, found 
 strength of diabolic purpose with which to strike the 
 fatal blow. To a certain extent this would seem to 
 account for the crime. In our horror of the deed, 
 we may exclaim, of the suspected criminal, in words 
 with which he must have been familiar, and which, 
 perhaps with tragic strut across the stage, he had 
 often quoted: 
 
"Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
 
 Of mercy, if thou didst this, this deed of death, 
 
 Art iliou damned." 
 
 And what a lesson have we here to the young and 
 to all upon the influence of theatric displays and of 
 the theatric spirit. The performing and the witness- 
 ing of fictitious crimes, prepares the heart for the 
 commission of real crimes. 
 
 And what a startling exhibition have we here of 
 the depravity of the human heart. This crime proves 
 to us that there is no conceivable enormity of wick- 
 edness ; no height or depth of possible iniquity 
 which does not lie concealed in the human heart. 
 You have only to excite the sleeping serpent in 
 every bosom ; only to awaken and arouse the pas- 
 sions there slumbering ; only to present the proper 
 infernal motives ; to stimulate by the proper excite- 
 ments ; to withdraw restraints, and it will strike at 
 the heart of God himself. We may start in horror, 
 shocked at such a suggestion, and like the young 
 courtier of Damascus exclaim, in affected or real in- 
 nocence of evil intent, "What ! is thy servant a dog, 
 that he should do this thing !" but, like Hazael, the 
 assassin, we may discover, when too late, the strength 
 of the evil and the weakness of the good within us. 
 We are startled at the enormity of these crimes 
 against human government, and it is well that we are ; 
 portentious would the sign be if we were not ; but 
 this is only a repetition of what is daily attempted 
 against the divine government. Rebellion against 
 God is an attempt to destroy the government of God ; 
 and sin against God strikes a blow at his existence. 
 
 This huge crime is but the development of that 
 evil spirit which lies in all our hearts. Unrestrained 
 
10 
 
 by education and by the providence and the grace of 
 God, we are all assassins. Let us not cease then to 
 thank God for his protection in the past, and to pray 
 for restraining grace in the future. "But for the grace 
 of God" exclaimed John Bunyan, as he saw a de- 
 graded wretch lying in the street, "But for the grace 
 of God, there lies John Bunyan, and so may we say, 
 "But for tlw grace of God, I am that assassin; I am 
 that fugitive from justice, accursed of God, and loathed 
 and feared by men !" Let us then incessantly praise 
 and pray for that restraining grace. 
 
 And have you not observed, my friends, how God 
 in his providence is here presenting a test of character 
 to this whole nation ? "As a man thinketh in his 
 heart, so is he. He who approves this deed, who "in 
 his heart" rejoices in it, or palliates or excuses it ; he 
 who does not find his whole moral nature abhor and 
 revolt at it, is himself, shall I add herself, an assassin. 
 He or she only needs the opportunity, the withdrawal 
 of restraints by God, the proper stimulation and 
 hardihood, to strike again to the heart of our present 
 President. If you hear a man palliate or excuse that 
 deed, never trust yourself alone or in a dark night 
 with him. Neither your reputation, nor your charac- 
 ter, nor your life would be safe with him. He that 
 approves or excuses a crime committed, is himself, 
 in the sight of God, guilty of that crime, and at the 
 bar of God must answer for it. Here then, we say, 
 God is applying a test of character to every man and 
 woman in this nation, and to his unerring eye there 
 is revealed by this test, who is a murderer, who is an 
 assassin and who is not. "Be ye not partakers of other 
 men's sins." 
 
 Finally, let us thank God that though this blow 
 
11 
 
 was aimed at the life of this nation, the nation still 
 lives, and it is all the more vividly and intensely alive, 
 because of this its sore bereavement. No dagger's 
 point can reach its life. You may take its chosen 
 head away, but still it lives, and will live, though an 
 hundred Presidents die. 
 
 "In all the centuries we can find but two or three 
 equal calamities. Assassinations indeed there have 
 been of sovereigns, ministers, but in not more than 
 two or three instances has a ruler been taken whose 
 person seemed so vital to the State ; yet never did 
 the loss prove fatal to the country. CLesar was 
 stabbed in the senate house — yet Rome lived even 
 after the mighty Julius fell. Henry IV, the great- 
 est of the Kings of France, was stabbed in the streets 
 of Paris, by a hired assassin. But though he died, 
 his country was still great and powerful. But a 
 heavier calamity it was which struck down William, 
 Prince of Orange, nearly 300 years ago, for the little 
 State of Holland seemed to rest on his single arm, 
 and when he fell, it seemed as if he carried down the 
 hopes of his country into the same grave. But God 
 was a wall of fire round about them. So when the 
 great Gustavus Adolphus fell, not by an assassin, 
 but, in battle, it seemed as if it were a blow fatal to 
 the cause of Protestanism in Europe. But the same 
 being who nerved the arm of Gustavus, raised up 
 other defenders. Thus men die, but nations live. 
 And so we cannot doubt it will prove here. The 
 God of our father who has led us through all the 
 dark periods of our history, will still be our protec- 
 tor and guide." — N. Y. Evangelist. 
 
 And let us, in this day of our national humiliation 
 and sorrow, by the contemplation of the enormity 
 
12 
 
 and horror of this crime, learn to hate and loathe and 
 pray constantly for deliverance from all crime and all 
 wrong. Let us cultivate a deeper and broader and 
 more sacred respect for all lawful authority. Let us 
 instill into the minds of the young a spirit of rever- 
 ence for and obedience to all lawful authority and 
 government. Let us teach them the sin against God, 
 which lies in resistance to that government ; the crime 
 before God and man of them that would destroy that 
 government ; and the unspeakable enormity and 
 guilt of this crime which has struck the world aghast 
 with norror, and smitten the national heart with an 
 incurable grief. Let us teach them the most sacred 
 dutjr of praying for their rulers, though even their spir- 
 itual guides set them not the example ; and that they 
 that refuse thus to do, not only disobey God, but 
 condemn themselves of the unutterable meanness of 
 consenting to receive and to enjoy the protection of 
 a government, which they hate and would destroy. 
 And let us see in this great and appalling overflow 
 of crime the permissive providence of God, who for wise 
 reasons, now as always, has permitted so great an in- 
 iquity, not because he could not have prevented it, 
 but because he intends out of so great evil to bring 
 forth good to this nation, and glory to himself. 
 
 Let us remember that, "He will mahe the wrath of 
 man to praise him" and the remainder thereof he will 
 restrain. — Amen.