Killing Lincoln

The reunification of the states is a goal of President Abraham Lincoln’s that, according to the text, fizzles and dies with his assassination. Throughout the narrative, and before Lincoln’s death, all his actions and thoughts lean toward healing the nation and reuniting the North and the South. Lincoln, as well as General Ulysses S. Grant, realize that the soldiers of the North and the South are also fathers, sons, and husbands, and that these very same men will be needed to heal and build the nation once the Civil War is over. In this way, neither man wants to severely punish the South for its treason. When Grant has the opportunity to attack Lee and destroy a large part of his retreating army, he doesn’t do so as he sees the fleeing men as humans first and soldiers second. Lincoln, too, does not want the men punished. He’d rather them return home and go about helping recoup the losses that the war has brought about.

Although reunification is Lincoln’s dream, it’s a nightmare for men like the Confederate president Jefferson Davis and Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth. Booth doesn’t want freed slaves to have the same rights as whites, and he doesn’t want to see the South lose to the North or be faced to accept voting rights and other privileges for Blacks.