There Was More To The Lincoln Assassination Than Just Lincoln
Fascinating piece by Andrew Gumbel in the Independent:
Most people will remember that Abraham Lincoln was the first US president to be assassinated, that he was shot at close range in his box at a Washington theatre, and that his assassin was John Wilkes Booth, a sympathiser with the confederate South who had been left aghast by the outcome of the recently concluded Civil War.What may not be so familiar, at least to non-specialists on this side of the Atlantic, are some of the other hair-raising details of the assassination plot. It was not just Lincoln, but the whole top echelon of the government that was targeted on the night of 14 April 1865. William Seward, the secretary of state, was viciously knifed in his own bed and came close to perishing nine days after he almost died in a horse-and-carriage accident. Andrew Johnson, the vice-president and eventual successor to Lincoln, would have been shot in his Washington hotel had his designated attacker not chickened out at the last moment. Ulysses Grant, the commander of the victorious Union army and future president, was originally scheduled to join Lincoln in his box at Ford's Theatre and might not have survived had he kept the appointment.
The whole episode was, in many respects, an eerie foreshadowing of what happened to the US almost a century and a half later on 11 September 2001. The country quickly realised it was under devastating attack, but did not immediately know who the attackers were, on whose behalf, if anyone, they were acting, or how much more they had planned after the initial strike. Fear and paranoia gripped the nation, as wild rumours spread of a reconstituted confederate army rising again, of dastardly plots to spread germ warfare (by the dissemination of clothing infected with yellow fever) or to poison the water supply of New York City.
Hundreds of people suspected of approving of the assassination were set upon, beaten or even killed by angry mobs. Lincoln, a controversial leader throughout his tenure - not least because of his willing suspension of habeas corpus and other core constitutional rights in his prosecution of the war - was suddenly elevated to the status of a secular saint, a transformation at least a little reminiscent of George Bush's sudden, if much more shortlived, surge in opinion polls four and a half years ago.
The rest of the story is at the link above.
"Hundreds of people suspected of approving of the assassination were set upon, beaten or even killed by angry mobs. Lincoln, a controversial leader throughout his tenure - not least because of his willing suspension of habeas corpus and other core constitutional rights in his prosecution of the war - was suddenly elevated to the status of a secular saint, a transformation at least a little reminiscent of George Bush's sudden, if much more shortlived, surge in opinion polls four and a half years ago."
And Lincoln had a wife, just like Bush! Plus they both made decisions that affected a lot of dark-skinned folks.
Jim Treacher at March 29, 2006 7:49 AM
Lincoln chopped wood, Dubya chopped lines....
Crid at March 29, 2006 10:23 AM
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