President Lincoln Abraham Lincoln\'s Life

President Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's life as president was a celebration of the American paradigms of equality and freedom. The President spent not only his time in office, but also his life, in attempting to understand the plight of the poor and the oppressed, and to relieve this plight. As such, Lincoln attempted to mitigate the issues leading to the Civil War in order to stop such a war from ever occurring.

While he failed in this, he ruled with wisdom throughout the War and strove to heal the rift in the country as soon as possible afterwards. The tragedy of his assassination is directly connected to his accomplishments as president, and the fact that he would never be able to carry on the work that he started at a time when his country needed it most.

Abraham Lincoln's Life

Lincoln became president within a very stormy political environment. Losing the election as Senator against Stephen a. Douglas, his debates with the winner nevertheless gained Lincoln a Republican nomination for President during the year 1860. During this time, increasing tensions between the North and South appeared to be a pathway to inevitable war. So advanced were the tensions that Lincoln had to mention it in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war." Despite the President's efforts to the contrary, war was indeed inevitable, as history proves. Lincoln nevertheless continued his efforts during the war and built the Republican Party into a national leadership entity that was strong and secure in its position.

In his effort towards the abolishment of slavery, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation at the beginning of 1863. Under the Proclamation, all slaves within the Confederacy were declared forever free. When the Civil War ended, Lincoln was re-elected in 1864, and continued to help the country through this difficult and wounded time. He acted as an instrument of healing between the North and the South, and displayed magnanimity, flexibility and friendship particularly towards the South, whom he encouraged to join the countrywide reunion as soon as possible. As such, Lincoln resolved to heal the nation not only in terms of the rift between the North and the South, but also in terms of culture. In this, he sought to establish freedom for the whole nation with a "government of the people, by the people, for the people...."

Abraham Lincoln reinforced this idea of a reunified country, offering freedom and opportunity to all, during his Second Inaugural Address, stating that he wished to bind up the nation's wounds through both charity and firmness in the knowledge of "the right." After the horror of the Civil War, it appeared that this president's wisdom and generosity would make him an instrument not only of peace, but also prosperity in the future of the United States.

In this lies the tragedy of his assassination.

The President would never have the opportunity to lead the country towards the bright and peaceful future he projected for it. The highly emotional issues that sparked the Civil War in the first place had not fully come to rest in the heart of people such as the actor John Wilkes Booth. Booth assassinated the President at Ford's Theater in Washington on Good Friday, April 14, 1865. This crushed all hopes of a peaceful and magnanimous reunion between North and South, and among the various ethnic cultures of the country. Instead, further upheaval resulted not only in terms of politics, but also in terms of rather hysterical speculations regarding the possibility of conspiracy.

In contrast to Lincoln's positive projections for the country's future, Booth harbored extreme enmity towards the president and his views. Ironically, the assassination was to further the cause of the South, but in fact brought harm to the whole country.

Booth's Decision to Assassinate

According to R.J. Norton, John Wilkes Booth saw in President Lincoln not only the representative of everything he was against, but also the reason for the ills of the South. Initially however, his plan was not to assassinate the President, but rather to gain revenge by kidnapping him and demanding the release of Confederate prisoners of war. With his co-conspirators, Booth planned the capture for March 17, 1865, when the President was to attend a play at a hospital. The plot however failed, because Lincoln had changed his plans. Already angered by this, Booth's fury was further flamed by the President's suggestion that voting rights be granted to a selection of black people. This is the point at which Booth's thoughts began to turn to assassination.

Appomattox. Two days later Lincoln spoke from the White House to a crowd gathered outside. Booth was present as Lincoln suggested in his speech that voting rights be granted to certain blacks. Infuriated, Booth's plans now turned in the direction of assassination. He arranged several attacks with his coconspirators. Scheduled for around 10:15pm, several attacks would take place on April 14, with Booth killing the President at the theater, Atzerodt to murder Vice-President Andrew Johnson, and Powell was to kill Secretary of State William Seward.

The main premise of all this killing was that chaos would ensue among the now strong Federal Government. Booth was hoping that this chaos would result in government weakness, and an opportunity for the South to reinstate its pre-war paradigms.

At the assigned time, Booth shot President Lincoln in the back of the head at close range and made his escape from the theater before anyone could stop him. The President never regained consciousness and died on the morning of April 15. Interestingly, his conspirators were not as strong as he had hoped, either in resolve or in physical capacity:

Atzerodt did not even attempt his part of the conspiracy, while Powell did stab Seward, but did not kill him. Perhaps it is justice that Booth was killed later by the federal authorities for refusing to give himself up. The co-conspirators were arrested and found guilty. The above-mentioned Powell and Atzerodt were hanged.

The greatest tragedy for the immediate future of the country was that Lincoln was leading it in a process of change that was far from complete. Had the President lived, this change might have occurred much more peacefully than history reveals. Being left without its president and leader, the country became prone to renewed violence and oppression, and Booth's dream of a revived South was also not to be. In this way, both Lincoln and Booth lost both their lives and ideals, because the latter saw no way to reconcile the extreme and diametrically opposite differences in the country.

For the further future, the tragedy is that the United States might have been a much different country under the continued leadership of Lincoln. Rather than the still very present paradigms of racism and other forms of oppression, the country could have been one of peace and true freedom, which are the ideals of the country.

A further immediate tragedy after the death of the President was the discreditization of government officials by the birth of many different conspiracy theories. Almost immediately after Lincoln's death, speculations arose around whether Booth was solely responsible for the assassination, or if there was a larger conspiracy involved. The tragedy here is that Lincoln's legacy of peaceful reconciliation within the country would be clouded by sensationalistic and hate-breeding speculations regarding possible conspiracies. The focus would move away from the high ideals the president held, and move towards the banal and unimportant, which weakened the government in the eyes of the public.