I never saw such sad faces, or heard such heavy hearts beatings, as here in Charleston the day the dreadful news came! The colored people -the native loyalists — were like children bereaved of an only and loved parent. I saw one old woman going up the street wringing her bands and saying aloud, as she walked looking straight before her, so absorbed in her grief that she noticed no one,-- “ Lord! O Lord! O Lord! Massa Sam's dead! Massa Sam's dead! O Lord! Massa Sam's dead!” “Who's dead, Aunty?” I asked her. “Massa Sam!” she said, not looking at me,renewing her lamentations: “O Lord! O Lord! Lord! Massa Sam's dead!” “Who's Massa Sam?” I asked. “Uncle Sam!” she said. “O Lord! Lord!” I was not quite sure that she meant the President, and I spoke again:--
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“He's brought us safe through the Red sea.”
“He looks as deep as the sea himself.”
“He's king of the United States.”
“He ought to be king of all the world.”
“We must all pray to the Lord to carry him safe through, for it ‘pears like he's got everything hitched to him.”
“There has been a right smart praying for him, and it mustn't stop now.”
A southern correspondent of the New York Tribune, in Charleston, South Carolina, the week following the assassination, wrote:--
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