Lincoln's Assassination and the Civil War

Hello all, and welcome once again. Today we will discuss something that is very important, nay essential, to American history and how it shaped later events. To begin let me ask you a question, my dear readers: “What was one of the bloodiest wars in American history?” Easily, the American Civil War. The Civil War shaped much of what American society is today, and if events changed even in the slightest, perhaps we would be living in a completely different world today. In honor of its 150^th anniversary, today we will tackle a very important turning point in American history, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Buckle in your seats ladies and gentlemen, because it’s gonna be a long ride.

Now normally at this point, I would begin to talk about the historical background leading up to the Civil War, which would lead to Lincoln’s assassination 150 years ago on April 14^th 1865; however, this time I feel that a different approach is necessary simply because of the large amount of history and the major events occurring in the war, so I will do my best to summarize about a good 87 years of history or so.

In 1776 the 13 British colonies, in what would soon be known as the United States of America, officially broke ties with Britain and declared themselves to be a new, independent nation due to the various grievances that Britain refused to hear. This event would later be repeated by the Southern states of the United States, who would secede from the nation in 1861, claiming that because the Northern government was preventing the Southern states from exercising their states rights’ they would secede if Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the 1861 election, was elected. The two events are vastly different though, simply because of the causes for why the colonies and Southern states decided to secede and leave the “Mother country.” While the colonies decided to leave and rebel because they were being taxed without proper representation in British parliament, the Southern states decided to secede from the Union because they felt that the Union was not respecting the states’ rights, a code word meaning the Southern states were scared that the Republican party, an anti-slavery party, was going to abolish slavery completely. Yup, that’s right the Civil War was definitely fought over slavery, though that’s oversimplifying matters a bit. Now the Republican Party was anti-slavery, but that didn’t mean that they were totally against slavery, but rather just wanted slavery to stay in the South and not let it move out west. This would be the biggest problem the country would face until the Civil War started.

Let’s fast forward a bit, and jump to the more important events that caused the Civil War. The first would be the Mexican-American war in 1846. This war was caused by the United States in an attempt to beat Mexico in a war and gain land, something that the United States had been attempting to do by offering to buy land from Mexico. Mexico repeatedly refused to sell the land to the United States. The president of the time, James K. Polk, ran on a campaign that he would annex Texas into the United States, which before this time Texas was its own independent country that wanted annexation into the US. Unsurprisingly, because of his campaign, Polk won the election of 1845 and proceeded to annex Texas. The border of Texas was a main conflict between the US and Mexico because of what the border was. The US claimed the Rio Grande as the border, while Mexico claimed the Nueces River as the border, which was about 150 miles north of the Grande. Polk ordered troops to move down to the Nueces River, since he knew that the Mexican government would attack the American troops, since they would view this as an invasion or some other kind of aggressive show of power on the part of the US. There was a brief skirmish, where the US troops were killed, and Polk asked Congress to declare war on Mexico because Mexico “spilled American blood on American soil” and that Mexico needed to pay the price. Long story short, Mexico lost and had to give up most of what is now the American Southwest as a result in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In 1846, a few months before the Mexican-American War broke out, a Congressman by the name as David Wilmot introduced a proviso, the Wilmot Proviso (gee I wonder who named it). This Proviso stated that if the US won any land from the war it would be closed to slavery, which of course, sat badly with the South because they wanted slavery everywhere possible. Of course the Proviso failed to gather enough support and it was essentially ignored.

Let’s focus now on the politics of the North and South in regards to slavery. The North and South were different in pretty much every regard, with wage labor thriving in the North and, of course, slavery in the South. This led to the South wanting to expand slavery to the West at any costs, while the North wanted to prevent the expansion of slavery. It was this division in politics that ended up ending one of the most influential political parties of the time, the Whig party. The Whigs were a political party established in the 19^th century to oppose President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. The Whigs were prominent in both the North and the South, and had no real national stance other than to prevent Democrats from winning office. Once the Democrats didn’t have as much power as before, tensions within the Whig party began to form in the form of, yup you guessed it, slavery. Slavery would tear the Whigs apart and further divided the nation. There were Whigs on both sides of the slavery debate and it was this divide that would eventually end this party. The focus on anti-slavery would eventually lead to the formation of new parties, some would end quickly, while one formed would become the reason for the Civil War, and became a major political party, becoming one of the two major parties in today’s politics: the Republican Party.

Now that we’ve captured a rough idea of why the Civil War broke out (*cough* slavery *cough*) and what the response was from the North and South, let’s go ahead and talk about the Civil War itself. In the beginning of the War, the North seemed to be the clear winner of the war, with a larger population and train tracks; however, because of the lack of proper generals and control of troops the North was unable to properly fight the war and as a result, the North would fight a losing war for a majority of the war. The South had the advantage in the War because they didn’t need to win the war, only have the North surrender. In addition to this advantage that the South had, they had the better commanders and generals due to the fact that most of the major military schools were in the South and also in general, the South had more money due to the large amounts of cotton being exported, primarily to Britain. We’ll get into the importance of Britain in the Civil War soon enough, I promise, but for now let’s continue to focus on the North and South. In 1861 the southern states, beginning with South Carolina in 1860, in response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States of America. The problem that the South had was the fact that Lincoln was a Republican and had an anti-slavery stance. As mentioned above, Republicans wanted to halt the expansion of slavery, not abolish it as an institution. The Southerners; however, felt that Lincoln would attempt to abolish slavery due to the fact that he was a Republican, previously a Whig, and stood against the Mexican-American War when it began. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln said that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” This was clearly an attempt by Lincoln to prevent the remaining Southern states from seceding and try to reintegrate some of the seceded states, and also clearly show the rest of the nation that Lincoln was not an emancipator, nor would he try to free slaves if he could help it.

Now Lincoln didn’t like slavery, but he would not allow his personal ideas to influence what he would decide in the Civil War. In a letter in 1862, Lincoln wrote that he would do whatever it took to save the Union, that if freeing all the slaves would save the Union he would do it, if leaving slavery alone could save the Union he’d do it, and if freeing some slaves and keeping others enslaved would save the Union, he would do it. During the war many Northern generals were freeing slaves; however, Lincoln ordered the generals to stop freeing slaves, and return the slaves to their owners because Lincoln didn’t want the Southern slave owners to become angry at the North any more than they already were. Ultimately the question of slavery was not as important to Lincoln as ending the war quickly and saving the Union. Before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, there was a Confiscation Act, which allowed Northern generals to confiscate property to be used in the war effort. Slaves would be “captured” by the Northern generals and, since the South viewed slaves as property, the slaves would be confiscated and “used” by the Northerners. Before the Proclamation, it was understood that the slaves would have to return to their owners after the war, because since the war was over any and all property confiscated by the North would have to be returned to their original owners. The Second Confiscation Act of 1862 essentially said that the slaves would not be returned to their owners. This is especially noticeable with the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln used as a war measure and not as a moral tool to end slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation is interesting because of the fact that it was used to free slaves in the states in rebellion in the South. In order for the various acts and most importantly, the Emancipation Proclamation, to affect the South, they had to be considered not as a separate nation, but rather as states rebelling against the United States, which was how the North viewed the Confederate States of America. The middle states, states that were in between the North and South and didn’t have as much slavery, were exempt from these acts and the Proclamation because Lincoln and his government didn’t want to lose these important middle states.

Now before we talk about the Emancipation Proclamation, let’s talk about Britain like I promised. Britain had many factories and textile mills and had to import most of their cotton used in the factories from the Southern states of the US since they had the largest amount of cotton to export. Because of this, Britain wanted to help the South win the Civil War in order to keep their amount of cotton stable, or perhaps even increase due to the help Britain could provide. Britain had previously abolished slavery in 1833 and until the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War was not clearly about slavery. Once the Proclamation was passed, the war became clearly about slavery, with the South now fighting to preserve this institution while the North fought in order to end slavery. This change in the war caused Britain to be unable to support the South because it was fighting for slavery and Britain had already abolished slavery. Perhaps if the Proclamation hadn’t been passed, Britain would have openly supported the South and perhaps they would have won.

The Proclamation also served to motivate more people to serve in the military, since prior to this many soldiers deserted or refused to join the military when they were drafted, with this happening on both sides. Once the Proclamation passed pro-slavery people in the South fought to keep slavery while more anti-slavery people in the North fought to end this institution. This would also rise morale in the troops for both sides and, because of the Proclamation, more black soldiers would side with the North to end slavery and free those that were still trapped in the South. Blacks were, in a sense, the first emancipators in the Civil War because, once war broke out and there were less men to keep slaves in line, slaves would take advantage of this and either runaway to the North or take up arms and rebel on plantations knowing that there were few men to stop them. Because of the large number of troops, the rise in morale, and the North finally having a fully capable general to lead the troops into battle, General Ulysses S. Grant, the Northern army entered into a war of attrition to quickly end the Civil War. It was in these later battles of the Civil War that caused many of the casualties in the Civil War, though this doesn’t mean that earlier battles weren’t as bloody or had lower amounts of casualties. The only thing that the Proclamation did not spell out was what would happen to the freed slaves, because the Proclamation did not state that the freed slaves would become citizens.

I’m going to go ahead and wrap up the Civil War here, now that we know a bit more of its background and a brief history of Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, let’s go ahead and talk about what really matters and why I’m writing this: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Before we get into the actual assassination, let’s go ahead and talk a bit about the assassin and the assassination plan that John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators had.

Booth was a white supremacist and a sympathizer of the Confederacy. Now to be clear, Booth was not a Confederate, he was born in Maryland. He believed that allowing blacks to live in the United States, where they worked hard, became Christians, and were lucky to live in a great country, though as slaves because blacks were inferior to whites. The Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s last speech showed Lincoln’s true intentions when it came to slavery. In Lincoln’s last speech he said that black males should have the right to vote, something that further infuriated Booth. Originally Booth and several other conspirators attempted to kidnap Lincoln, but when that failed, he decided to kill Lincoln. Now it’s interesting to note that Booth and his fellow conspirators not only wanted to kill Lincoln, but also General Grant, Vice-president Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. This was done to try and decapitate the Northern government, to distract them long enough for the Confederacy to regain power and win the war, as long as there were still Confederates fighting after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at the Appomattox Court House.  There were some issues with this decapitation plan mainly that the conspirators were unable to complete the plan because of various issues. The conspirator assigned to kill Johnson lost his nerve and didn’t try anything, Grant’s wife and Lincoln’s wife disliked each other so Grant was not in Ford’s Theatre, and Seward survived his assassination attempt. Ultimately, only Booth was able to assassinate Lincoln and as a result, Reconstruction varied from what Lincoln originally wanted. Lincoln’s assassination was one of the greatest turning points for history because of how Reconstruction would play out due to Andrew Johnson being much more lenient in how he wanted Reconstruction to play out. Lincoln’s assassination was planned, but it hinged on many details. For example if Lincoln decided not to attend the play, “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre that Good Friday 150 years ago, Booth would not have killed him. Or perhaps if Booth’s small handgun, which held only one bullet, missed or jammed, Lincoln would not have died. Perhaps if Lincoln had more security with him, since the Secret Service had not been established yet, he would not have been killed.

If seemingly small parts of the American Civil War had varied, perhaps we would be living in a completely different world. If Lincoln never issued the Emancipation Proclamation, perhaps Britain would have stepped in to aid the Confederacy and the Confederacy had won the Civil War, perhaps the United States and their allies would lose World War I, or perhaps there would be no World War II. Perhaps if Lincoln hadn’t been assassinated, he could have pushed for more progressive treatment toward African-Americans and as a result, perhaps race relations in the United States now would be better. This is pure speculation on my part, but it is interesting how different the world would be if any of these details in history had been changed.

This will end this post, and as usual my dear readers, remember that originality, independence, and living your life the way you want, are the most important things. Never let people stop you from achieving greatness, whether that means becoming the most successful person in the world, or simply being the best nurse, teacher, or secretary you can be. Never let anyone tell you that your dream is too small or too large for you because only you know what you are and what you want. Dream an endless dream, and fight the current that is keeping you from reaching the shore. Never let people keep you from doing what you love, and remember, even if no one believes in you and your dreams as long as you believe and keep fighting for what you want, nothing else will matter.