On April 15, 1865, around 7:22 a.m., Abraham Lincoln, the 16th
President of the United States, died after being struck by an assassin's
bullet the previous evening. The following gives the thoughts of three prominent Confederate leaders - President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee & Adm. Raphael Semmes - regarding the event.
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President Jefferson Davis was working to escape capture by the Yankees when the
Lincoln assassination occurred, and did not learn of it until five days after
the fatal shot was fired. On April 19th, as The President was about to enter a
Charlotte, NC home to take lodging, a telegram from John C. Breckinridge (Confederate general & former U.S. Vice-President) was brought to him,
informing him of Lincoln's fate. According to Davis biographer Hudson
Strode, Davis was shocked, and had to read it again before handing it
off to the person next to him, saying, "Here is a very extraordinary
communication. It is sad news." A column of Kentucky's Confederate Cavalry rode up to the house at that moment, and when someone read the dispatch aloud, one cavalryman shouted in jubilation, but Davis raised his hand to silence any further cheering before entering into the house. Inside, the President commented further to his personal secretary, Burton Harrison, saying, "I am sorry. We have lost our best friend in the court of the enemy."
Also traveling with the President was Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory, who recorded in his diary the following conversation with Davis about the assassination:
"I expressed my deep regret, expressing among other views, my conviction of Mr. Lincoln's moderation, his sense of justice, and my apprehension that the South would be accused of instigating his death. To this Mr. Davis replied sadly, 'I certainly have no special regard for Mr. Lincoln; but there are a great many men of whose end I would much rather have heard than his. I fear it will be disastrous to our people and I regret it deeply.'"
Years later, in Rise & Fall of the Confederate Government, he would reflect on the event by saying, "For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn; yet, in view of its political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune to the South. [Lincoln] had power over the Northern people, and was without personal malignity towards the people of the South; his successor was without power in the North, and the embodiment of malignity towards the Southern people."
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On
April 24, 1865, reporter Thomas Cook obtained an interview with General
Lee, who would summarize the General's words in the New York Herald's
April 29th edition. Regarding the Lincoln
assassination, Cook wrote:
"The General considered this event in itself one of the most deplorable that could have occurred. As a crime it was unexampled and beyond execration. It was a crime that no good man could approve from any conceivable motive. Undoubtedly the effort would be made to fasten the responsibility of it upon the South; but from his intimate acquaintance with the leading men of the South, he was confident there was not one of them who would sanction or approve it. The scheme was wholly unknown in the South before its execution, and would have never received the slightest encouragement had it been known; but, on the contrary, the most severe execration.
"I called the General's attention, at this point, to a notice that had been printed in the Northern papers, purporting to have been taken from a paper published in the interior of the South, proposing, for the sum of one million dollars, to undertake the assassination of the President and his Cabinet. The General affirmed that he had never seen or heard of such a proposition, nor did he believe it had ever been printed in the South; though if it had, it had been permitted merely as the whim of some crazy person that could possibly amount to nothing. Such a crime was an anomaly in the history of our country, and we had yet before its perpetration to learn that it was possible of either earnest conception or actual execution."
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Raphael Semmes, the one time Admiral in the Confederate States Navy turned Confederate Army General, was encamped with Southern troops near Greensboro, NC, when word of the assassination reached him on the morning of April 18, 1865. Four years later, in his book, Memoirs of a Service Afloat, Admiral Semmes gives the following thoughts about Lincoln and his killing: After Lincoln's assassination, myth-makers masked as historians took the story of this mortal-man and spun the 16th President's tale as if he had been one of Christ's apostles, if not making him out to be a fourth addition to the blessed Trinity. His murder having happened on Good Friday only bolstered their efforts to make him a type of Christ figure. The men quoted above knew differently, however; now, with the blessing of hindsight for those of us willing to look at the actual historical record, we know that Lincoln was nothing less than a tyrant in the same vein as the men who usually come to mind when such a label is used."[M]y camp was astounded one morning by the report that Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, was dead. He had gone to a small theatre in the city of Washington, on the evening of Good Friday, and had been shot by a madman!"It seemed like a just retribution that he should be cut off in the midst of the hosannas that were being shouted in his ears, for all the destruction and ruin he had wrought upon twelve millions of people. Without any warrant for his conduct, he had made a war of rapine and lust against eleven sovereign States, whose only provocation had been that they had made an effort to preserve the liberties which had been handed down to them by their fathers. These States had not sought war, but peace, and they had found, at the hands of Abraham Lincoln, destruction."As a Christian, it was my duty to say, 'Lord, have mercy upon his soul!' but the devil will surely take care of his memory."
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I personally view Lincoln's assassination unfavorably; not because he deserved better, but because the South did. It would have been better if he had been charged with war crimes, tried in a court of law, and sentenced for execution. Better still would it have been if, at some time before November 1842, Abe had died from the flu, or been bitten by a poisonous snake, or killed by Native Americans during the Black Hawk War. If you are wondering why I say before Nov. of 1842, it's because Lincoln was married on the fourth day of that month & year, and if he had not lived to see that date then he never would have had a wife to widow or children to leave fatherless... he certainly would not have ever entered the realm of American politics, and thus there would have been no war, and the South would not have suffered as it did during four years of war & the aftermath. Millions of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, relatives & friends would not have had to bury loved ones who died as a result of the unnecessary conflict.
These, of course, are just my own thoughts, and are now added among the millions of others written about the matter for public consumption. Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, and, because history played out the way it did, we here in the Sons of Confederate Veterans exist to tell the truth about that bloody struggle.
DEO VINDICE!
- Jonathan McCleese
2nd Lieutenant Commander
Admiral Raphael Semmes Camp #1321 (Dearborn, MI)
Army of Tennessee, Sons of Confederate Veterans
