Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America [1865]

Lincoln's dream of healing a divided nation and allowing Confederacy to reintegrate

into American society ends when one gunshot changes the country forever.

John Wilkes Booth was one of those people who thought the best country in the history of the world was the United States as it existed before the Civil War  Lincoln was changing the government fundamental ways. HOW? 

#1  Increasing the power of the federal government and emancipating the slaves (both things Booth was vehemently against)

#2 Booth was angered that the government instituted an income tax and the military draft, and that the government occasionally suspended habeas corpus, a legal protection against unlawful imprisonment.

The Conspirators in the Lincoln Assassination 

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The Civil War Diary of Major Charles Frederick Lewis

 "How nobly and unselfishly has he carried himself during these terrible four years.

Posterity will appreciate his services to the country, more even than we can."  

Many a day will pass before we will again see in the White House, the peer of Lincoln.

The Journal of Kate Stone 1861-1868

“All honor to J. Wilkes Booth, who has rid the world of a tyrant and

made himself famous for generations. It is a terrible tragedy, but what is war but one long tragedy?

What torrents of blood Lincoln has caused to flow, and how Seward has aided him in his bloody work."

And so, what resonates is what Stanton and President Johnson and the judge advocate general, Joe Holt, did in the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination, when the government was under incredible stress, how they balanced safety, national security with freedom is exactly what we wrestled with after 9/11

https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2006.66

View of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession, showing the home of Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt at the corner of Broadway and Union Square in New York. Two children are visible in the second story window, one of whom is Theodore Roosevelt, the other is his brother Elliott Roosevelt. 

Child's Drawing of Lincoln's Funeral
This drawing by a 9-year-old child depicts the funeral procession of Abraham Lincoln down Washington
Avenue in Albany  on Wednesday, April 26, 1865.
Courtesy of the Albany Institute of History and Art