Killing Lincoln: The Real Story

[Thomas Thorne]

The idea of Lincoln being killed by members of his cabinet is dependent on a historical fate that few Americans could have foreseen in 1865. Who could believe that AL would come to be venerated by Americans of different political persuasions for different reasons.? Nationalists idolized the Savior of the Union. African Americans worshiped the memory of the Great Emancipator. Southerners of unabashed Confederate sympathies such as D W Griffith idolized the Man of Mercy.

David Donald in his famous article "Getting right with Lincoln" showed to what degree future American political movements would go to claim Lincoln as their own by citing the Lincoln-Lenin Day banquets held by US Communists who suppressed the memory of A Lincoln,railroad attorney.

The idea of Lincoln being killed by members of his own party is impossible to believe if you have reservations about Lincoln being not only a "Man of Mercy" but one who was eager to betray the cause he led in giving the defeated South such a soft peace, that all Unionists had fought for would be lost.

This doesn't square with the man who led the Union thru 4 years of hard war and who never expressed distress over the ravages of Sheridan and Sherman.

I know people will bring up Lincoln's idea of executive reconstruction,the Wade Davis manifesto and Charles Sumner's silly ingratiating remarks to Andrew Johnson after the latter's accession to the presidency as proof of Republicans seething with bloodlust who if they didn't kill Lincoln, would have impeached him the next day.

How do we square this myth with the fact that in 1864 Abraham Lincoln became the first sitting President since 1840 to be nominated by his party at the next election.

The events of Lincoln's last cabinet meeting of 4/14/65, the day he was shot are often forgotten, which is itself proof of the absence of bitter feelings that are required for political elites to resort to violence against each other. Lincoln had granted permission for the Virginia Legislature to assemble in the hope they would remove Virginia troops from Confederate service. He changed his mind when confronted with opposition among the cabinet. Stanton withdrew his proposal that Virginia and North Carolina have the same officer be the military governor for both when his colleagues insisted that each state should have its own military governor.

People do not kill each other over such trivialities. We have no record that day of Stanton assaulting Lincoln by throwing a butter roll at him.
Tom