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John Wilkes Booth
Not a fan of Lincoln. I hold him highly responsible for the Civil War, which I believe could have been avoided with a more even handed approach to the problem of succession.
Instead of attempting a peaceful solution, Lincoln called out 75000 militia to put down an armed rebellion.
He skillfully painted the South into a corner, forcing them to fire the first shots and appear in the north and abroad as the aggressors.
With that said, I still think that Booths shot in Fords Theater, was the single most destructive shot fired against the Confederacy in the war.
With Lincoln gone, the last moderating influence to the black republicans was removed as well.
With the vindictive feeling of the northern population, and with a weak executive like Andrew Johnson in the White House, they enforced a strict and damaging policy of reconstruction on the South.
It caused years of depression and even longer feelings of hatred in the southern states.
I think the whole damn thing could have been avoided…
Reon

This appears to me to be exactly what the current administration is trying to do now. Create an excuse for an emergency declaration so that elections can be suspended.

To this day America is bitterly split on the Civil War. It is a shame and a sin. Lincoln was President. He did not act alone and the South's refusal to accept terms of no slavery in the new territories set the stage for the conflict. Booth did the south a great disfavor by assassinating Lincoln. Reconstruction would have been a lot less painful under Lincoln's watch. His plans were to return the southern states to normalcy as quickly and painlessly as possible. Much of the bitterness today is a result of that decision in my opinion. I'm fully aware I am most probably in the minority on this forum about that from what I have observed. Had the South succeeded in splitting the nation just how many nations would this country have today?

Let's see - The US, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, - well you get the idea!

Can't believe with all that is going on today that people still fighting the fuuukin civil war. The same with blacks and slaves and reds and cowboy settlers. It was near a couple hundred years age for crying out loud. Move on.............we are getting ready these days for something new to hash.

Agreed

If only Lincoln had respected the Constitution!

(The part in bold ->) That's pretty much how my maternal grandmother felt about it. She was born in 1886 and she was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.


website: https://hqudc.org/

Cheers! Bob F.

Cheers! Bob F.

Nobody ever plays Cowboys & Colored People.

Lincoln was up to the time the greatest traitor to the constitution and the nation. He had to die for his crimes against the south and even the north. People talk of how the south would have avoided reconstruction and returned to normal had he lived that’s simply not true, normal was gone. Booth was a patriot in my opinion, of course I’m jaded as I have ancestors that fought and died in every theater of the war.

Sic Semper Tyrannis!

The division in America was not caused by the Civil War. It predated the US Civil war and was visible in England all the way back to the Middle Ages. It was an ethnic division found on the island of Britain that made its way to America in immigration and settlement patterns related to geography. This division was visible in Colonial times. For instance most members of prominent New England families returned to England and fought for the Parliamentary forces in the English Civil War while in Virginia the opposite was true with many going to fight for the king. And newspapers of the colonial era are full of pejorative opinions of each other.

Far from modern propaganda slavery wasn’t considered by most to be much of an issue either way until the 1820s when it became a shorthand for each side to condense all the reasons and arguments why they hated the other. But the hatred was already there.

The same division remains today. The heart of progressivism is in New England and one can see that the sections of New England and the Old South almost always are diametrically opposed in presidential elections. Movement of peoples within the states and foreign immigration has softened it some, but it’s still there and you can see it.

The issue of slavery was a dead horse regardless, it was slowly dying, strangling under it own cost.
But certain fire eaters in the south refused to accept this, and they knew the only way to avoid losing money was to expand it into other territories.
Years ago I read a study conducted by someone who figured up the cost of subsidized manumission by the government versus to cost to the north fighting a 5 year war!
We would have been 5 or 6 times better off by buying them out and setting them free!😀
But it still riles me some to hear revisionist history claiming that the north waged a war for the purpose of freeing the slaves.
Lincoln in fact relieved 4 separate department commander for declaring slaves free in their department. Even after the emancipation proclamation took effect in the south, slaves still held in states in the union and southern territories under northern control were not effected at all!
Reon

It’s very difficult to dispute anything you stated ! memtb

"Your name is Mudd,"

CBS newsman, Roger Mudd, a direct descendent of the Doctor that set the broken leg of James Wilks Booth.

That’s nothing, America is still a young country. People in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa still hold grudges over wars that were fought over a thousand years ago.

There's more animosity between liberals and conservatives today than there was in 1860!

I could be wrong but I thought that reason states argued over rather or not slavery would be legal in new states or territories that would eventually become states was because the South feared that if it wasn’t. That the North would gain the votes to impose their will on the South rather Constitutional or not.

Contrary to what usually happens when this subject arises, there have been some very well-written and thoughtful posts.