April 14, 1865: "That means nigger citizenship. ... That is the last speech he will ever give."

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Subscriber Note: This post was meant for Friday, April 14. It’s been difficult to do five posts a week and I also still like commenting on current events.

A new posting schedule will be released soon so stay tuned. Frankly, I like the On This Day format but some special events in the news need to be highlighted.

We can do both.

Most likely, the middle days (Tuesday - Thursday) will be days for historical reflection.

Monday and Friday will be reserved for observations of the coming (and past) week’s events. If a special historical event is on Monday or Friday, then that will also be highlighted.

Designed by John B. Bachelder and painted by Alonzo Chappel, this work of art depicts those who visited the dying president throughout the night and early morning of April 14–15, 1865. These people did not visit Lincoln at the same time: they could not have all fit in the small first-floor room of the Petersen House.

One uneasy thought is that America has a long history of political violence and of assassinating its leaders. The murder of President Abraham Lincoln adds a fog to counterfactual history as Americans theorize how Reconstruction would have been different under President Lincoln’s watch.

The nefarious forces that ended Lincoln’s life sympathized with a Confederate nation that had been burned and brutalized due to their deep-seated attachment to a dehumanizing economic system. Reconstruction had its high points, but for the most part, it ended in failure as feudal terrorism (directed at Americans of color and other poor Americans) swept across the land and added legal, psychological, and cultural depth to an American weakness that is still with us today. 

Abraham Lincoln was going to Ford Theater to enjoy the play, Our American Cousin. John Wilkes Boothe was from a prominent acting family in Baltimore, Maryland. He had been plotting to assassinate the president for a while as an outspoken Confederate sympathizer and as a member of a group that plotted to kill mane of the federal government’s top officials within the executive branch: the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State.

The group of assassins included Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt.

Observers of history have also pondered on whether Boothe was motivated by a personal rivalry with his Unionist older brother. Another motivation was pure racism, for when Lincoln promoted emancipation and voting rights for African Americans, Boothe in a froth of rage wanted his co-conspirator, Lewis Powell to shoot Lincoln on the spot:

“That means nigger citizenship. ... That is the last speech he will ever give.” 

-John Wilkes Booth as President Lincoln promoted voting rights and emancipation for African Americans

The plot was successful with regard to Abraham Lincoln, but Andrew Johnson’s assassin (Atzerodt) was too drunk, and William Seward’s assassin (Powell) was unsuccessful and only wound the Secretary. Boothe was a famous actor and thus was viewed as a natural choice for Lincoln’s murder as his knowledge of the theater and his celebrity status gave him easier access to the president’s box. 

Boothe entered Ford Theater, showed the box’s usher a card and wrote something on it, and then was allowed into the president’s arrangements. He barred the first door and then waited until a part of the play that usually elicits laughter to take the fatal shot. 

Boothe escaped on foot and then by horse carriage. He broke his leg while landing from a 12-foot jump after taking the shot. For the remainder of the night, surgeons tended to Lincoln until his death the next morning at 7:22 am. Easter Sunday was the day after that.

Not only Americans, but the world mourned the loss of President Lincoln. Different governments from Ecuador to China issued statements about the tragedy. Hundreds of thousands attended Lincoln’s funeral on April 19 and millions of people lined the tracks on his body’s return journey home to Springfield, Illinois. 

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,

Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris,

Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,

Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,

Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,

Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,

Night and day journeys a coffin.

-Walt Whitman on Lincoln’s last journey home, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

Meanwhile, the largest manhunt in American history was underway and directed personally by Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. The War Department issued a $100,000 bounty for the assassin. However, Boothe was shot and killed at Garrett’s Farm in Virginia. The famous actor had been turned away from the Brockenbrough-Peyton Home in Port Royal due the homeowner (and Boothe’s connection) not being present. He snuck into the farm without the knowledge of the residents and was found by Sergeant Boston Corbett who shot Lincoln’s killer an inch below the spot where Boothe’s bullet killed the Great Emancipator just several days before.

Other conspirators were hunted and arrested.

John Surratt made it to Quebec and was hidden by priests. He traveled to Europe and tried to join a regiment defending the Papal States but had escaped those authorities when the U.S government was alerted by someone from Surratt’s childhood. So, he fled to Egypt, but was captured by a U.S. agent in November 1866.

The major players of the partially successful conspiracy were executed.

---

Mary Todd Lincoln wouldn’t be the only First Lady to hold her dead husband after being shot in the head.

Sadly, political assassinations are just one component of a dark history of political violence.

Political violence is also an outgrowth of our society’s ability to create political monsters out of each other, our society’s preternatural fear of faraway government action we believe will exact tyrannic control over its population if given too much power, and our Republican politician’s allowance of a weapon, built for warfare and mass death, to be easily bought and sold.

America has always been a multicultural society and in recent decades, a multicultural democracy.

One of our chronic conditions is the pretension of our society to create tribes based on ethnic identity, religious affiliations, and political ideology. A lack of gun control and a race-baiting Republican party throws gasoline on simmering embers.

So, it would behoove us to reexamine our political affiliations and reassess our love affair with guns. 

Guns are also tools for hunting and can have sentimental value for their connection to bonding activities passed down through generations. However, assault weapons and easy access to semi-automatics have also been the leading harbinger of death for our nation’s youth. The bullets are sprayed when children are at school and the resulting shootings become a parent’s worst nightmare come to life. 

But Republicans will still just offer thoughts and prayers.