Execution Stereoviews

[KateH.]

As Lincoln said, both sides were to blame for the Civil War. Could it have been avoided with compromise and the realization that no one is going to think in the exact same way as you? Could thousands of innocent lives have been saved? Families were torn apart and you never recover from those kinds of deaths, whether it was Mrs. Powell losing her son or the death of Constance Harrison's cousin's husband. As much as you can read personal accounts, it is impossible to know that cold and deep black well of sorrow until it consumes you personally.

We are all people and we all make mistakes. It's sad that stigma keeps people from learning about their families. Not to lessen or romanticize the situation, but after 150 years we should be able to see those who sided with the North and the South as people and not evildoers. Bad choices were made but we need to look at the condemned and see people living in the 19th (not 21st) century to understand them and their mindsets. This does not excuse the wrong done but it helps give a better explanation for the situations. The stigma will lessen when we see people as people (not unlike us) who made mistakes and are no less deserving of respect and understanding.

[LincolnToddFan]

KateH...this is my choice for Post Of The Day...beautifully worded!

Gene, I agree with what you posted too. I wish to God Atzerodt had run straight to the Metropolitan Police that awful day instead of hitting the bar where he was assigned to kill Andrew Johnson.

Lincoln would have lived. So would Booth and Surratt, Powell and Herold, and of course George himself. Their families' lives would not have been shattered and the country would not have been traumatized by the first assassination of a sitting president.

That is...if the police had believed Atzerodt ,and there is no guarantee they would have. He was an undistinguished German immigrant who spoke heavily accented English and seemed afraid of his own shadow. Look how prejudiced and unflattering the newspaper articles wrote about him during the trial.

There is no arguing that their ill-advised participation in the plot made them guilty. All I am saying is that they did not to hang for what they did.

In my opinion, the only one who deserved to hang was John Wilkes Booth.

[KateH.]

Thank you.

It's a shame that Atzerodt (or someone else) didn't speak up. But you make a good point. Would he have been believed? Plus, there might have been the fear of retribution since he was working for the CSA and would have known enough details of the plot to show he was involved somehow. But did he deserve to hang for keeping quiet? No. No one hanged Eugene Smith in 1894 when he didn't call H.H Holmes a bluff for claiming to be a mere "acquaintance" to the man who had worked beside him for five years. (A mistake which allowed three more victims to die). Booth got the "eye for an eye" punishment and that should have been the end of the deaths. I guess the Union forgot how Lincoln wanted to forgive southerners, too concerned with making bloody examples out of people who committed crimes that merited jail time but not suffocation in the hangman's noose.

[HerbS]

You can now see Dr.Mary Walker-MOH-on her resting horse.Everyone turned turned to see the only women to attened-the trial-and- execution.-Herb