And Lincoln insisted on including the 13th amendment in his 1864 platform, which DID free the slaves in all states. If a Confederate agent hadn't killed him, he'd have lived to see the amendment ratified.
President Lincoln's maniacal and devious murderer was the ultimate manipulative villain, the perfect ghoul, to play the key role with other cold blooded Confederate co-conspirators in their diabolical scheme to assassinate America's President, Vice-President & Secretary of State. The plot was a vicious, treasonous decapitation of the United States executive branch. What would have happened next, the rest of the government held hostage by Confederate agents?
Machiavelli had nothing on Booth!
Mary Henry Eyewitness to the Civil War in Washington, D.C.The Death of President Lincoln, April 1865
"[April] 15th. We were awakened this morning by an announcement which almost made our hearts stand still with consternation. The President was shot last night in the Theater."
"Deeply must the country mourn this death for although uncouth & ungainly he was true hearted, magnanimous and kind and in the present crisis ready to follow the such a course with the defeated belligerants as would win them back to their allegiance to the Government and subdue the rebellion in their hearts as well as subjugate their aims."
"The feeling of resentment at the South as instigating in all probability the murder is deep and I fear will entirely replace the feeling of kindness before entertained for the insurgents. The Southerners if they have countenanced the dreadful deed have fatally mistaken the interest of their cause."