Why does the assassination of lincoln hurt the south

After the Civil War congress was controlled by a group called the "Radical Republicans. Lincoln looked to reconstruction as a time of healing. The Radical Republicans, however, looked at reconstruction as an opportunity to teach the South a lesson and to punish them.

In Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill which called for rather draconian Reconstruction measures. Lincoln vetoed the bill but thedebate raged. Lincoln would have been able to control the Radical Republicans, at least that is the conventional wisdom. Lincoln's death, however, left a void in leadership.

The new President, Andrew Johnson, was a southerner. As you can imagine this bitter irony was not lost on the Radical Republicans who hated him even before he was President. Johnson proposed a plan similar to Lincoln's. Suffice it to say, congress was not amused. The relationship between Lincoln and Congress soured quickly. Immediately following the Civil War, Southern states passed numerous laws restricting the rights of Blacks.

They were known as the "Black codes". Mississippi, for example, barred interracial marriages. The punishment for such an act was death. Another code restricted the area in which Blacks could live. Michael W. New York: Random House, Lincoln Archives Digital Project. John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper, eds. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Marjorie Spruill Wheeler and William A. The South in the History of the Nation , vol.

II: From Reconstruction. New York: St. Booth's Reason for Assassination Question. For more information Roger J. Hodes found records of some "good Union Men" who celebrated in the privacy of their homes when Lincoln was killed. Publicly, cities like Trenton that had a reputation for anti-Union sentiment still mourned.

But privately, some reveled. A company in New Jersey "secretly rejoiced" at the news of Lincoln's death. A woman in Bloomington, Indiana, held a "grand dinner" to celebrate. A Minnesota woman wanted to celebrate at a ball. Yet others reacted violently against anti-Lincoln sentiment in the North.

Dissent wasn't tolerated well in the North, when it was publicly expressed. Lincoln was eagerly greeted by former slaves in Richmond. On April 4, , shortly after the fall of Richmond to Union forces, President Lincoln arrived in the city with his son Tad.

According to reports of the time, overjoyed African Americans circled the president. It was their praise in particular that was interesting: they called Lincoln "father" or "master Abraham. That sentiment carried over after Lincoln's assassination. In a letter to the New York Afro-African newspaper, one writer said that Booth had "murdered their best friend," and the sentiment of Lincoln as a friend was a common one among Lincoln's sympathizers.

Freedpeople called Lincoln "the best friend I ever had" and "their best earthly friend. That intimate relationship with Lincoln — one of friendship — is hard to imagine today. Hodes says that at the time, the term "best friend" had a sense more akin to familial closeness than we might think today — a best friend was someone with a truly intimate connection.

For many at the time, especially the African Americans who felt they benefited from Lincoln's friendship, it was the most appropriate term. An illustration of Lincoln's funeral procession on April 25, Lincoln was shot on Good Friday in and died the next day. That made Easter a particularly dramatic experience, even as rumors about Lincoln's death circulated across the country.

Churches across the country were faced with the difficult task of celebrating Easter and mourning the death of Lincoln at the same time. Some people even believed that Lincoln's assassination was the only fitting capstone to the violent war.

Of course, it wasn't only the country's Christian majority who grappled with the assassination of Lincoln. Hodes quotes a synagogue in California whose members were "stricken with sorrow" but resolutely agreed to bow to "divine decree. A postcard showing the bed where Lincoln died, perfectly preserved. This postcard is from , but people sought Lincoln relics as soon as news broke that he'd been shot. It makes sense that people would want souvenirs from Lincoln's life. But his death prompted scrapbooking, thievery, and fervid collection.

One War Department employee took a blood-soaked towel from the president, while another clerk picked up Lincoln's bloody collar. Others made immediate pilgrimages to the theater and place where Lincoln died to see history in the making. Like those who travel to Ground Zero today, the appeal was elemental — as one woman said, it made everything "so vivid.