Incident at an Antique Store

[LincolnToddFan]

...Mr. Davis has gone they say-not this way, but by Abbeville. Gone where?
"Oh! said Mary Darby vengefully one night, as Burton Harrison had left us after telling all manner of wrongs done to Mr. Davis. "Oh! One thing is so respectable in those awful Yankees. If they did choose a baboon to reign over them, they were sharp Yankees and saw in his ugly hide the stuff to carry them through weal and through woe. Oh!through, and he saved them-if he could not save himself".
"That mad man that killed him! Now he will be Saint Abe for all time, saint and martyr".

"Andy Johnson...made Lord of all by the madman Booth, says "Destruction only to the wealthy classes"

quoted above from "Mary Chesnut's Civil War"..pgs #795 and #825
edited by C. Vann Woodward

The first paragraph I used to underscore what I believe was the widespread sentiment in the North-very perceptively noted by a Southerner- particularly after the fall of Atlanta in September 1864 that led to Lincoln's re-election. He might not have been loved at that point, but there was a slow grudging awareness by the North that they had gotten where they were due to his wisdom, patience, and pragmatism. The electorate resolved to stick with The Ape and reject McClellan and the Copperheads(who they began to perceive as traitors) because they had grown to at least respect him, if not to love him.

I completely agree that his apotheosis into Beloved Old Abe might have never happened but for his assassination and the ascent of Andrew Johnson chomping at the bit to seize his golden opportunity to stick it to the hated Southern planter class.

Yet, I meet Southerners to this day who loathe Lincoln but never have a word to say against Andrew Johnson. I don't understand.