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JOHN WILKES BOOTH ASSASSINATES ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By Jim Werbaneth
Sic semper tyrannis.
It is rare for the effects of a mistake, an act of a moment, to be felt over decades, even more than a century; rarer still when that act is committed by a single person. The most glaring example of this is the shooting of Abraham Lincoln and his subsequent death on the morning of April 15, 1865. Admittedly, John Wilkes Booth’s actions were part of a conspiracy. But at the moment of decision, it was his finger on the trigger.
Booth’s motivations were to avenge his beloved South, recently laid low by its defeat in the Civil War, and deep-seated racism. Witnessing an impromptu speech by President Lincoln, in which he promised the vote for some, but not all, black men, Booth pithily said, “That means nigger citizenship. Now by God I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.” Then he made good on that promise.
If Booth wanted to save the South from further destruction, he failed. Instead, the former Confederacy was subjected to Reconstruction, during which black people were enfranchised and admitted to the halls of power, at least for a while. At the same time, the region was occupied by Northern troops, sent to protect freed slaves from a resurgence of Confederate loyalists. All of this took place in an environment of violence and vengeance, with night riders of the Ku Klux Klan terrorizing black people and demonstrating that military occupation was perhaps not such a bad idea after all.
What amounted to a war after the Civil War was waged by multiple combatants. There were the former Confederates, usually Democrats, who could not accept that slavery had been replaced by freedom, and even a degree of empowerment, for African-Americans. Then there was the army and agencies such as the Freedmen’s Bureau. There were also “carpetbaggers,” Northerners who moved south to take advantage of business opportunities created by victory, and the Southern “scalawags” who sided with them. And there were the former slaves, caught in the middle and largely without protection, except that provided by the federal government.
Eventually, it was the former Confederates who won. With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the clock turned back. While legalizing slavery was out of the question, segregation was not. Furthermore, black people were increasingly denied the rights of full suffrage. They had a hard enough time getting into the polling places to cast their votes, let alone taking office in legislatures. This would last into the 1960s, at last overturned by the civil rights movement, Supreme Court decisions hostile to segregation, and a reengaged federal government. This time, ironically, the charge would be led by Democrats, especially Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
All of this can be traced to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth. The next chief executive was a much-less-impressive figure, Andrew Johnson. His selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee was a gesture of unity. Johnson was from Tennessee, and the only senator from a seceding state not to resign his seat. He was also a Democrat, and his presence was not only a bid to reconcile with the South; it was also meant to ensure that in his second term, Lincoln would not be dominated by radical “Black Republicans,” the most adamant enemies of both the Confederacy and slavery.
Unfortunately Johnson was not nearly the man that Lincoln had been. While Lincoln struggled with issues of race, Johnson accepted the inferiority of black people as a matter of course. He was also an alcoholic who was alleged to have been drunk at his 1864 inauguration as vice president (Johnson, recovering from typhoid fever, may have been “self-medicating”). Finally, Lincoln was an astute politician, skilled at balancing competing interests and mediating conflict, and Johnson was not.
By assassinating Lincoln, Booth removed the South’s best hope after its defeat. He heard Lincoln’s call for “nigger citizenship,” but apparently missed the part in his second inaugural address about “malice toward none” and “charity for all.” Lincoln had the political skills to successfully reintegrate the South into the Union while preserving the emancipation of the slaves that was achieved on the battlefield. Johnson, on the other hand, lacked both the vision of Lincoln and his skills. Reconstruction ended with a return to the past and second-class citizenship for blacks. If anyone could have forestalled the strife of Reconstruction, and its disappointing outcome, it was Lincoln, given a full second term. It was a job wholly beyond Andrew Johnson’s abilities. A continued Lincoln presidency would have added a powerful, compelling voice against the growth of the “lost cause” mythology, while extending more charity than malice to the defeated South. If Booth wanted to save the South’s soul, he couldn’t have made a poorer decision.