Posted on 04/14/2003 7:39:53 AM PDT by Valin
The death of Lincoln was devastating to all of the US, but perhaps necessary to history. If he had survived and finished out his second term he would have been subject to all of the slings and arrows of the rather nasty politics of the times. How many politicians survived that period with reputations we care to remember now? As a martyr his legacy is fixed in stone. Sometimes fate may intervene in a tragic way to cement historic events for a higher purpose. Predestination vs free will, and all that.
Personally I've always been fascinated by John Wilkes Booth's older brother, Edwin. He was truly considered the finest actor of his day, certainly the finest Shakespearean. Irony followed the Booth's and the Lincoln's. Two years before the assassination Robert Lincoln, the only son of the President to live to adulthood, was returning to Washington by train from school at Harvard. On the platform in New Jersey, while waiting to buy tickets for the sleeper car, the train moved and Robert Lincoln fell between the train and the platform, where he would surely be crushed to death. A strong hand reached down and grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to safety. Yep, Edwin Booth.
After the assissination Edwin Booth retreated from public life in shame. He was lured back to the stage within a very few years by public demand. His conduct was never questioned in regards to the conspriacy and he was almoust universally viewed as yet another victim of the war and it's aftermath. He had a very active and successful career until his death in 1893.
He even founded a famed private club for actors, artists and writers called The Player's Club, which still exists in NY in what was his home. One of the co-founders was Sam Clemens and the visitors included Robert Lincoln, President Grant, Nikola Tesla and others. Since then the club has included virtually all major stage actors and many literary giants.
Another interesting character from the time, who had contact with all of the same people, is General/Governer/Ambassador Lew Wallace. A hero of the Civil War defense of Washington, he served as a judge in the trial of the conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln. He later served as territorial Governor of New Mexico at the time of the Lincoln County Wars, so he was heavily involved with Chisum, Billy the Kid, etc. He later served as Ambassador to the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire in the 1880s. He is most famous, however, as the author of Ben Hur, written mostly while Governor of New Mexico.
I think these people just lived bigger, fuller, lives than we do now.
[David H. ]Donald states (about Lincoln in August of 1864), "...Had he failed to to insist on abolition as a condition for peace negotiations, he explained, he would be guilty of treachery to the hundreds of thousands of African-Americans who had 'come bodily over from the rebel side to ours.' Such betrayal could not 'escape the curses of Heaven, or of any good man....
"But now, if he followed their advice, he would have to do without the help of nearly 200,000 black men in the service of the Union. In that case 'we would be compelled to abandon the war in 3 weeks.' Practical considerations aside, there was the moral issue. How could anybody propose 'to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee to their masters to conciliate the South?' "I should be damned in time and eternity for so doing,' he told his visitors (Gov. Randall, and Judge Mills, both from Wisconsin). "The world will know that I keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will.'"
There was noting expedient about this position. President Lincoln fully expected to lose the 1864 election. His advisors told him that rescinding the Emancipation proclamation would help his chances of re-election. He refused.
Abraham Lincoln was a great and good man and his reputation can withstand the slings and arrows of your little pissant arsenal.
Walt
So what annoyed you the most? The unelected part or the Negro part?
So it's sorta like being a little bit pregnant?
"The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of a nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, as far as human prudence could insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done by confining their choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of Congress to adopt any which might be approprate, and which were conducive to the end...to have prescribed the means by which the government, should, in all future times, execute its powers, would have been to change, entirely, the character of the instrument, and give it the properties of a legal code...To have declared, that the best means shall not be used, but those alone, without which the power given would be nugatory...if we apply this principle of construction to any of the powers of the government, we shall find it so pernicious in its operation that we shall be compelled to discard it..."
From McCullough v. Maryland, quoted in "American Constittutional Law" A.T. Mason, et al. ed. 1983 p. 165
Walt
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