As the vast crowd, mad with grief, poured forth, weeping and lamenting, they met with another multitude bringing the news that Secretary Seward, lying on his sick-bed, had been nearly murdered. A few days before, he had fractured his arm and jaw by falling from a carriage. While in this condition, an accomplice of Booth’s, named John Payne Powell, tried to enter the room, but was repulsed by Mr. Seward’s son, who was at once knocked down with the butt of a pistol. Rushing into the room, Payne Powell stabbed Mr. Seward three times, and escaped, but not before he had wounded, while fighting desperately, five people in all. During the night, there was fearful excitement in Washington. Rumours were abroad that the President was murdered--that all the members of the Cabinet had perished, or were wounded--that General Grant had barely escaped with his life--that the rebels had risen, and were seizing on Washington--and that all was confusion. The reality was enough to warrant any degree of doubt and terror. There had been, indeed, a conspiracy to murder all the leading members of Government. General Grant had escaped by going to Philadelphia. It is said that this most immovable of men, when he heard that President Lincoln was dead, gravely took the cigar from his mouth and quietly said, “Then I must go at once to Washington. I shall yet have time to take my family to Bordertown, and catch the eleven o’clock train.” Efforts have been made by both parties to confine all the guilt of this murder to Booth alone, and to speak of him as a half-crazed lunatic actor. As the facts stand, the murder had long been threatened by the Southern press, and was apprehended by many people. Booth had so many accomplices, that they expected between them to kill the President, Vice-President, and all the Cabinet. And yet, with every evidence of a widespread conspiracy which had numbers of ready and shrewd agents in the theatre, on the road, and far and wide, even the most zealous Union writers have declared that all this plot had its beginning and end in the brain of a lunatic! It so happened that, just at this time, the North, weary of war and willing to pardon every enemy, had no desire to be vindictive. When Jefferson Davis was tried, Mr. Greeley eagerly stepped forward to be his bail, and there were many more looking to reconstruction and reconciliation--or to office--and averse to drive the foe to extremes. Perhaps they were right; for in great emergencies minor interests must be forgotten. It was the Union-men and the victors who were now nobly calling for peace at any price and forgiveness. But one thing is at least certain. From a letter found April 15th, 1865, in Booth’s trunk, it was shown that the murder was planned before the 4th of March, but fell through then because the accomplices refused to go further _until Richmond could be heard from_. So it appears that, though Booth was regarded as the beginning and end of the plot, and