Beneath the fleuron is an editorial comment taken from the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph dated 24 April 1865, ten days after the actual event. It would seem that not much has changed in 150 years - especially in the place this was published:
"We publish to-day the most astounding intelligence it has ever been our lot to place before our readers — intelligence of events which may decide the fate of empires, and change the complexion of an age. The killing of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward may be more wonderful than the capitulation of armies.
"With the perpetration of these deeds we can have no sympathy, nor for them can the Southern people be held any way responsible. While Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward had by their malignity created only feelings of detestation and horror for them in the minds of our people, and while in their death the finger of God’s providence is manifest, it is still impossible to look upon an assassin with complacency, even though he frees us from the threatened yoke of a tyrant. We look upon his as God’s instrument, and as such leave him with his maker, praying for infinite mercy to succor him in his hour of need.
"God Almighty ordered this event or it could never have taken place. His purpose in it as His purpose in the surrender of Lee’s army, remains to be seen. The careful observer of the history of this war is struck with nothing more than with the fact that no great event has been foreseen by the actors, and that an Almighty hand has shaped the entire course of events. What this event will lead to no man can foresee. We are all instruments in His hands for the accomplishment of His purposes. The ways of Providence are inscrutable, utterly past finding out. It behooves us His creatures to look on in wonder and to act the part of duty according to the lights before us. That duty leads us to be true to our faith, true to our cause, and while it forbids our sanction to unlawful violence — to assassination — it commands us to accept all things as ordered by a Supreme Power, to bow to the exhibitions of that power, and to obey the manifest teachings of His will.
What will [be] the result of these tremendous events, no man can foresee. Theories will present themselves to every man’s mind. We have a dozen all equally probable, and all equally uncertain. Let us wait in patience for the next scene in this terrible drama."
Having read and digested this, it's easy for me to see how nothing has really changed since Booth murdered the President: the same kind of mocking, self-serving journalistic hyperbole steeped in religious dogma that pretended to put the event in the same league as today's modern soap opera, broadly proclaiming:
"What will [be] the result of these tremendous events, no man can foresee. Theories will present themselves to every man’s mind. We have a dozen all equally probable, and all equally uncertain. Let us wait in patience for the next scene in this terrible drama."
...is bombastic nonsense, intended in the journalistic style of the day to boost the sale of future newspapers. There wasn't a single person alive then who didn't have a full understanding that the "war between the states" had only just begun, and the only actual unknown was how it would continue to manifest itself in the future - through economic metamorphosis, shunning, lynching, sanctions, racism, bigotry, religious zealotry, murder - maybe even a combination of all of the above. And it turns out that "all of the above" was the correct choice, and continues almost unabated to this day.
So where are we in this 21st century America - these times, once predicted to have the skies filled with flying automobiles, colonies on the moon and world hunger eliminated?
Indeed.
The biggest problem that both communism and conservatism have is that they fail to account for the one thing that has been consistent since the beginning of time: the human being's infinite capacity for hatred and carrying a grudge. In that respect, the lawn around Lincoln's grave in Springfield, Illinois must be very healthy and green: for all the turning over in his grave, the soil must be extremely well-aereated.