On this day in 1865 Abraham Lincoln gave his last public speech, taking up the question of reconstruction, managing to sound a radical note or two:
By these recent successes, the reinauguration of the national authority—reconstruction—… is pressed much more closely upon our attention…. Unlike a case of war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with—no one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with and mould from disorganized and discordant elements….
Later, in laying out the case of Louisiana, he remarked
It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the coloured man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.
Which is supposed to have inspired the listening John Wilkes Booth to say to his friend, “That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I will put him through. That will be the last speech he will ever make.”
But Booth wasn’t listening carefully enough. Lincoln also remarked,
We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper, practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of government, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier to do this without deciding or even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad.
Which seems to contradict the suggestion that the U.S. “begin with and mould from disorganized and discordant elements”. It sounds like a speech in which Lincoln was keeping his options open. As well he might; as he said, “we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction.” And we still do disagree just what Lincoln might have done.
22 comments
Comments feed for this article
April 11, 2008 at 5:09 pm
eyeingtenure
Lincoln’s first priority was always to preserve the Union. I believe he would have gone just as easy on the South as Johnson did in the early days of Reconstruction, even after a bloody civil war took its toll on the nation’s young men.
April 11, 2008 at 9:52 pm
foolishmortal
As long as we’re posting historically educational videos, here’s this.
April 12, 2008 at 2:40 am
drip
If Lincoln had nodded instead of speaking, he’d be alive today.
April 12, 2008 at 5:40 am
eric
And screaming to be let out of his coffin.
April 12, 2008 at 6:47 am
drip
Good God, man! Let him out! We need him!
April 12, 2008 at 8:42 am
LizardBreath
I’m a little confused by this one: what was Booth wrong about? (other than everything, of course.) Lincoln did want at least some blacks to be able to vote, which was what aggrieved Booth; the terms on which Louisiana was going to re-enter the Union (or remain within the Union, whichever) weren’t Booth’s main issue.
April 12, 2008 at 11:27 am
jim
I’m confused, too. Lincoln had freed the (bulk of the) black population in the (now former) Confederacy. Even if these freedmen held some undefined status somewhere between a slave and a citizen, surely their freeborn children would be citizens, natural-born citizens even. To prevent “nigger citizenship” would require positive action — action which, of course, Jim Crow took.
April 12, 2008 at 12:11 pm
zunguzungu
Isn’t the point that Lincoln was vacillating between saying “since the southern states are disorganized and discordant, the federal authority is going to come in and reconstruct them” (thus, black ctizenship) and saying “we’re just going to pretend it all never happened, and hand the keys back to the old white supremacist governments” (indicating unfettered jim crow). Had JWB heard more of the second message than the first (is the implication of the title) he might not have felt he needed to shoot the tyrant, etc, since all he had to do was wait for segregation and disenfranchisement.
I’m more interested in the line “no one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man.” What an interestingly counterintuitive notion.
April 12, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Matt McKeon
Booth was right to hate and fear Lincoln on racial grounds.
While Lincoln may be criticized in the 21st century on his speed and rhetoric on emancipation, as well as his strange tangent into colonialization, the 19th century understood him as a prime mover towards the end of slavery.
While the 21st century may cringe at his racial views and vocabulary, his political opponents understood how he was undermining white supremacy. In the 1864 election in particular, but in all Lincoln’s political campaigns his opponents reviled him in the crudest racist terms.
Lincoln consistently stated that the Confederacy was not a legitimate government, that the Civil War was not a war between groups of states, but a failed rebellion against the only true government. To what degree Lincoln, if he lived to finish his term in 1868, would have established and maintained black political rights is a question I don’t have an answer for. But if he didn’t sell out blacks to gain re election in 1864, I doubt he would have supported selling out black Republicans in 1876 to elect R.B. Hayes.
April 12, 2008 at 8:59 pm
charlieford
Nicely put there, Matt (I think). And Eric is surely right: Lincoln was a man of principles and an even near-religious patriotism, but also a clever–even wiley–politician. He knew how to ride with prevailing winds, whereas Johnson tried to fight them. Lincoln understood that in a democracy, you need to go with the flow and bend it, where you can. I would only say I don’t know that a tangent into colonization was “strange”–wasn’t it almost the universal position of all but most blacks and a small sliver of Garrisonians?
April 12, 2008 at 11:01 pm
urbino
And screaming to be let out of his coffin.
Are Lincoln jokes allowed now, or does the Carson Rule still hold?
April 12, 2008 at 11:16 pm
ari
Allowed.
April 12, 2008 at 11:43 pm
urbino
Thanks. I knew historians were good for something.
April 12, 2008 at 11:45 pm
ari
I knew historians were good for something.
Yes, but this may be it.
April 12, 2008 at 11:54 pm
urbino
Hey, that puts you one ahead of political “scientists.”
April 12, 2008 at 11:55 pm
ari
Not to mention the economists, who are a net negative for the nation.
April 12, 2008 at 11:58 pm
urbino
No kidding. When was the last time Milton Friedman contributed anything to the nation’s humor stockpile?
April 13, 2008 at 12:39 am
Walt
He inspired Bob Solow to say, “Everything reminds Milton Friedman of the money supply. Everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers.”
April 13, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Colin
Thank economists for occupying that abject category so the rest of you can look cool.
April 13, 2008 at 3:21 pm
student
I’ll have to agree with Matt M. on this. Booth heard what he heard: that the president was favorably disposed to giving black veterans voting rights. For a fervent racist Confederate hearing that was the worst of the worst. Eric’s point about the mystery of what Lincoln might have done is certainly valid. A basic issue is whether he would have stood by silently when southern white were undermining the emancipatory results of the war by imposing Black Codes on the freedmen and women.
April 13, 2008 at 6:19 pm
foolishmortal
Are Lincoln jokes allowed now, or does the Carson Rule still hold?
Masturbation, however, is right out.
April 15, 2008 at 4:45 pm
What if? « The Edge of the American West
[...] act of a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater, John Wilkes Booth, enraged by the speech discussed here, had shot Lincoln in the head. A single bullet had entered through the rear of Lincoln’s [...]