Republican Herald

From the Washington Globe, Jan. 31.

ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THE PRESIDENT.

While the President was at the Capitol yesterday, in attendance on the funeral of the Hon. Warren R. Davis, from South Carolina, Richard Lawrence, a painter, resident in this city, attempted to shoot him. Col. Lane, of Indiana, informed us, that he saw this individual enter the hall of the House during the delivery of the funeral sermon. Before its close, however, he had taken his stand on the eastern portico, near one of the columns. The President, with the Secretary of the Treasury on his left arm, on retiring from the Rotunda to reach his carriage at the steps at the portico, advanced towards the spot where Lawrence stood, who had his pistol concealed under his coat, and when he approached within two yards and a half of him, the assassin extended his arm and levelled the pistol at his breast. The percussion cap exploded with a noise so great that several witnesses supposed the pistol had fired. On the instant, the assassin dropped the pistol from his right hand, and taking another ready cocked from his left, presented and snapped it at the President, who at the moment had raised his stick, and was rushing upon him, Mr. Woodbury and Lieut. Gedney at the same instant laid hold of the man, who gave way through the crowd and was at last knocked down. The President pressed after him until he saw he was secured.

We attended the examining court immediately after the event. The Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of the Navy, Col. Bird of the House, Mr. Kingman, and Lieutenant Gedney, all of whom witnessed the act, were examined, and gave a most minute detail of the circumstances above stated.

Mr. Randolph, the Sergeant of the House, who attended the Marshal to conduct the prisoner to examination, gave in testimony that the prisoner, when asked what motive he had, to make his horrid attempt, stated that the President had killed his father. His father was an Englishman, who died many years ago in this city. The son himself was apprenticed afterward to a Mr. Clark, with whom he lived three years. Mr. Clark, when called upon, said, that he was a young man of excellent habits, sober, and industrious; that he had seen him very frequently, and was well acquainted with him since he had left his family, and heard nothing to his disadvantage, until of late, he was informed that he was quarrelsome among his friends, and had treated one of his sisters badly.

The total absence of any personal motive on the part of the prisoner to commit the deed he attempted, has suggested the idea that he must be insane. There was, however, no evidence given in the examination to authorize the supposition, as although several persons intimately acquainted with him, one boarding in the same house with him, gave evidence upon the occasion. The demeanor of the prisoner, when committing the act—when he was seized, when under examination, bore not the slightest appearance of phrensy, or derangement of any sort. When asked by the Court if he wished to cross-examine the witnesses, or to make explanation, he answered in the negative—said that those who had seen the act could state the facts—and at the conclusion, when asked if he had any thing to offer, said that he could not contradict what had been given in evidence.

The prisoner is a handsome young man, well dressed and prepossessing in his countenance. He appeared perfectly calm and collected in the midst of the excitement and anxiety which prevailed around him—and the President in conversing with us, since the event, observed, that his manner, from the moment his eye caught his, was firm and resolved, until the failure of his last pistol, when he seemed to shrink, rather than resist.

We are informed by Mr. Wilson the keeper of the Rotunda, that he had frequently observed this man about the Capitol—so frequently that he had become an object of curiosity to him—that he had endeavored to draw him into conversation, but found him taciturn and unwilling to talk. Whether Lawrence has caught, in his visits to the Capitol, the mania which has prevailed during the two last sessions in the Senate—whether he has become infatuated with the chimeras which has troubled the brains of the disappointed and ambitious orators who have depicted the President a Caesar who ought to have a Brutus—as a Cromwell—a Nero—a Tiberius, we know not. If no recent conspiracy has prompted the perpetration of the horrid deed, we think it not improbable that some delusion of intellect has grown out of his visits to the Capitol, and that hearing despotism and every horrid mischief threatened to the republic, and revolution and all its train of calamities imputed as the necessary consequence of the President's measures, it may be that the infatuated man fancied he had reasons to become his country's avenger. If he had heard and believed Mr. Calhoun's speech the day before yesterday, he would have found in it ample justification for his attempt on one, who was represented as the cause of the most dreadful calamities to the nation—as one who made perfect rottenness and corruption to pervade the vitals of the government, insomuch that it was scarcely worth preserving, if it were possible.

Judge Cranch saw nothing in the conduct of the prisoner, or in the evidence, to suggest the idea that he labored under any mental malady. He entered up an order that he would be bailed, if he could give security in $1000. The District Attorney said that the atrociousness of the crime attempted, should induce his honor to require bail in a higher penalty. The Judge seemed moved by this, but as the constitution he said provided that excessive bail should not be demanded, he could not require a bond for more than $1000!! So, if any of our patriots should think fit to furnish this sum to stand the forfeiture, we may have this desperate man with new weapons of destruction at the next Levee.

We attended the Court—and being asked to examine the load in one of the pistols, drew out with a screw, a ball of which about sixty would make a pound. It was well packed, forced down right on a full charge of excellent glazed powder. How the caps could have exploded without firing the powder, is miraculous. Providence has ever guarded the life of the man who has been destined to preserve and raise up his country's glory, and maintain the cause of the People. In the multitude of instances in which he has hazarded his person for his country, it was never in more imminent danger than on yesterday, when in a funeral procession, followed by his Cabinet—the Senate—and the Representatives of the people.