Lincoln as Hero

7. The Assassination and Apotheosis of a Hero

70 c h a p t e r s e v e n The Assassination and Apotheosis of a Hero England’s Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin once observed: “Contemporary judgments were illusory; look at Lincoln’s case, how in his lifetime he was thought to be a clumsy lumbering countryman, blundering along without knowing where he was going. Since his death his significance has grown steadily.”1 Many great heroes, including the likes of Socrates, Galileo Galilei, and Vincent van Gogh, were shunned and criticized during their lifetimes, and Lincoln is no exception. Tragically, in many cases, it is not until death has robbed the world of its heroes that the world celebrates their greatness. Regicide, the death of any sitting chief executive, invariably generates a deep and enduring impact on the citizenry. Personal shock quickly gives way to public anxiety, fueled by a bombardment of news and pictures of the tragedy that keep nightmarish memories vividly and profoundly alive. Americans who live through such traumas are virtually lurched from the abyss of political apathy. By contrast, deaths of other leaders, political and national alike, seem to inspire only momentary ripples in the public consciousness. The pervasive mourning triggered by the violent death of incumbent presidents— from Lincoln to James Garfield to William McKinley to John F. Kennedy—proves that the resident of the White House occupies a unique place in the collective American psyche. Presidents are more than authority figures; they are the living “fathers” of their country. Assassination and Apotheosis of a Hero | 71 The first—and still the most wrenching—of these national calamities was the murder of Abraham Lincoln only days after the Union had achieved victory in the long and bloody Civil War. The murder of Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, struck the American psyche like a hammer blow. No previous president had been assassinated (though three have been killed since). Lincoln died at the successful conclusion of an Armageddon that finally reconciled the living nation’s values with those enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, so mass shock and mourning were surely not surprising . To America, Lincoln’s murder seemed so gratuitous, so irrational, and so utterly un-American that it defied logic. The nation had just endured a brutal, punishing four-year war, and just as the tide had begun to turn, in the midst of widespread national rejoicing at the restoration of peace, Lincoln’s assassination was a sharp reminder of the harrowing days of war. As historian Allan Nevins comments, Lincoln’s slaying “was clearly a sequel of the war, a product of its senseless hatreds, fears and cruelties.”2 Abraham Lincoln was acutely aware that he was an assassination target. Like Kennedy one hundred years later, he sometimes mused over the possibility of his death. On the day he was shot, Lincoln remarked to William Crook, his bodyguard, “I believe there are men who want to take my life. And I have no doubt they will do it.”3 Despite these mounting beliefs, it was Lincoln’s belief that human beings all have a “right to rise,” and that principle forbade an imperial presidency. Lincoln, who disliked guards and panoply, once said he could not be the people’s president if he shut himself up for safety in an iron box and that an assassin had better be careful because he might get somebody worse for the next president. Lincoln had been aware of the mobbing and killing of Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837, when Lovejoy defended his abolitionist newspaper in Alton, Illinois, and, by dying at the hands of angry proslavery men, gave the cause its first martyr. Lovejoy’s death was the issue stressed by Abraham Lincoln in his Springfield, Illinois, Lyceum speech. At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some 72 | Assassination and Apotheosis of a Hero transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! . . . At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. I hope I am over wary; but if I...