Dreadful Tragedy
Abraham Lincoln didn't live to see the fruit of his labor.
During his term as President of the United States, the country was at its political, moral, and constitutional crisis. Five days before that fateful night at the Ford's Theatre, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army of the Potomac, which put the American Civil War to an end. Lincoln abolished slavery and strengthened the federal government, but there were some who wanted to revive the Confederate cause.
Monday, the fourteenth of April, marks the 149th year since John Wilkes Booth, a well-known state actor, shot Lincoln. He celebrated the end of the civil war by watching "Our American Cousin", a comedy, with Mary, his wife, having no idea of what awaited him later that evening.
"Now he belongs to the ages," said Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton, one of many at Lincoln's bedside hours after the assassination.
The North grieved after hearing the news (of his death). The black-draped funeral train retraced the 1,700-mile route Lincoln had traveled in 1861, on his journey for his inauguration. A crowd of 100,000 people gathered at the trestle where the train stopped. It was in Chicago, where the young Lincoln was a lawyer and rising politician. His casket was transferred to a hearse beneath a Gothic memorial arch, where mourners by the tens of thousands followed. Lincoln's body was laid at the Cook County courthouse for two days, and then he was put to rest in Springfield.
The assassination turned Lincoln into a (national) martyr. He held America during its darkest hour, becoming a symbol of freedom (during the Civil War). His devotion to the principles of the Founding Fathers and intense nationalism made him a hero to political conservatives. On presidential ranking polls, Lincoln was one of the top three, often #1. His legacy was assured with the building - and dedication - of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922. It was one of several Presidential memorials in Washington, D.C.
Cultural depictions of Lincoln were (unsurprisingly) flattering. Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln", based from in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, covered the last four months of his life. It focused on his efforts to make the United States House of Representatives passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Lincoln was portrayed as calm and confident, even patient and willing to play politics (to have the amendment passed), despite having to deal with his wife's emotional instabilities and the toll of the Civil War, which affected him. It was a man who faced a stern test - and passed with flying colors. Then there was "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter", Seth Graham-Smith's mashup novel on Lincoln being chosen as the defender of the oppressed. As the title suggests, the depiction is more graphical, with Edgar Allan Poe as one of his influences. This what made the dark fantasy genre clicked.
There may never be another man like Lincoln, which is quite tragic. But his legacy will continue to inspire.
