Incident at an Antique Store

[David Lockmiller]

(08-11-2014 02:40 PM)L Verge Wrote:  And I shall continue to learn about and understand Mr. Lincoln while honoring the memory of Southern patriots who fought for their beliefs -- and after defeat went back to desolation and waste and struggled through the hard times (and harsh Radical measures) to restore their lands and property. Their actions show character and dedication also. And they and their descendants went on to join forces with their conquerors to fight enemies of the UNITED States of America for another 150 years.

Before his last public speech on the night of April 11, 1865, President Lincoln spoke to Noah Brooks: “It is true that I don’t usually read a speech, but I am going to say something tonight that may be important. I am going to talk about reconstruction.”

At the close of the speech, a member of the audience, John Wilkes Booth, a man who did not have the courage of his convictions that would enable him to fight alongside the South’s men-in-arms, turned to a friend and declared: “That means ***** citizenship. . . . That is the last speech he will ever make.”

Prior to this speech, in order to encourage die-hards to surrender, Lincoln offered a practical inducement: “the remission of confiscations being within the executive power, if the war be now further persisted in, by those opposing the government, the making of confiscated property at the least to bear the additional cost, will be insisted on; but that confiscations (except in cases of third party intervening interests) will be remitted to the people of any State which shall now promptly, and in good faith, withdraw its troops and other support, from further resistance to the government. What is now said as to remission of confiscations has no reference to supposed property in slaves.”

It was because of President Abraham Lincoln that there was no call for the prosecution of high-ranking military or government personnel of the South. There was no massacre of defeated soldiers (as you see now occurring in the Mideast and Africa); soldiers of the South were treated with the respect that they had earned on the battlefield.

It is true that Andrew Johnson had been selected as President Lincoln’s vice-presidential candidate for his second term in order to increase Lincoln’s chances with the electorate for his being re-elected to a second term and finish the work that he had so nobly progressed. At the time of Johnson’s selection, President Lincoln’s prospects for re-election were not very good.

Shortly after the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, the President told this story at a Cabinet meeting. “Thad Stevens was asked by someone, the morning of the day appointed for that ceremony, where the President and Mr. Seward were going. ‘To Gettysburg,’ was the reply. ‘But where are Stanton and Chase?’ continued the questioner. ‘At home, at work,’ was the surly answer. ‘Let the dead bury the dead.’”

Following his high-margin election as President for a second term, President Lincoln came to regret his selection of Andrew Johnson as his Vice-Presidential candidate. Just three days before the murder of President Lincoln, Vice-President Johnson called upon him at the White House and remained about two hours. When the President joined his family, and in conversation regarding the delayed ride with his family, he remarked, with much apparent concern: “That miserable man! I cannot anticipate the troubles he will cause me during my second term of office.”

In short, it was the assassin’s bullet, and not President Abraham Lincoln, that determined the government’s Reconstruction policy for the South.

I meant no disrespect in my previous post to the people and soldiers of the South. President Lincoln found fault with both the people of the North and the people of the South for the Civil War. His efforts, beginning with his first Presidential Inaugural Address were to prevent Civil War.

One may recall the famous tribute story of President Lincoln following the death of General Stonewall Jackson. When the Chronicle, of Washington, had the courage to speak well of "Stonewall" Jackson, accidentally shot, as a brave soldier, however mistaken as an American, Lincoln wrote to the editor:"I honor you for your generosity to one who, though contending against us in a guilty case, was nevertheless a gallant man. Let us forget his sins over a fresh-made grave."