“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”
“I am not concerned that you have fallen — I am concerned that you arise.”
“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
–Abraham Lincoln (16th President of the United States of America)
On this date in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln attended a performance of the play, Our American Cousin, at Ford’s Theatre which is situated on 10th Street, NW, in Washington, D.C. At approximately 10:00 p.m., actor, Confederate sympathizer, and spy, John Wilkes Booth, entered the President’s box and shot President Lincoln, mortally wounding him. He then leapt from the box onto the stage, waving his pistol, and yelling “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (Latin for, “Thus ever to tyrants”). Booth escaped from the city, and remained at large until April 26, when he was shot at a Virginia farm. President Lincoln died 9 hours after being shot, on the morning of April 15, 1865.
While Booth’s motivation for the assassination of President Lincoln was presumably to aid the Southern cause, his actions probably did more to harm that cause than any other. Before, during, and following the War, the radical Republicans sought to punish the Southern States. It is believed, based upon all historic evidence, that President Lincoln would have restrained the radical Republicans and effected a more just reconciliation. Only a victorious War President could possibly accomplish that; history reveals that a slightly regarded Democrat Vice-President suddenly elevated to the office of President was wholly ineffectual in that effort.
There is much to criticize President Lincoln for as to his conduct of the War. But there is much good to recognize, as he struggled to maintain the unity of a country that he truly believed could not stand divided. He used suspect methods in the pursuit of victory, but made it clear before his death that charity and reconciliation would mark the post-war recovery. Sadly, he never got to implement his plan. One can only wonder what would have happened had John Wilkes Booth failed on that fateful night 161 years ago.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 