The effect of Mr. Lincoln’s assassination on the people of the North was indescribable. It filled their hearts with bitterness and their minds with thoughts of revenge. It was averred that the murderer in crossing the stage of the theatre and defiantly brandishing a long knife had exclaimed: “The South is avenged!” This exclamation seemed to implicate the whole South, or at least its government, in the murderous act of Booth. The natural consequence was that the people of the North, who immediately after the surrender of Lee’s army were inclined to great leniency toward the vanquished and willing to receive them back into the Union with open arms, suddenly turned against them. The army and the government circles, and in fact the entire population of the national capital, who had learned to love Mr. Lincoln, demanded the most severe punishment for the rebels. Then began the long and tedious work of reconstruction, retarded by party spirit and retaliatory measures on both sides. It was terminated to the satisfaction of both only during the last few years, when the sons of the South fought shoulder to shoulder with the sons of the North for the deliverance of Cuba from Spanish oppression under the glorious banner of the Union. But how often during these years of contention, was the great man missed whose truly humane spirit would have contributed so much to bring the discordant elements of both sections together in fraternal harmony and mutual respect, and whose hands had penned the noblest document of the nineteenth century--the proclamation of emancipation--setting free four million slaves. Such deeds as his can never be forgotten.
The assassination did a great deal for Mr. Lincoln’s standing in history. It added the halo of martyrdom to his renown as a statesman, and it has made him a national hero, who, next to Washington--or with Washington--holds the highest place in the estimation of the American people. It is doubtful whether Abraham Lincoln, if he had not crowned his career with a martyr’s death, would have held this place. It had especially the effect of wiping out an impression which many had formed of Mr. Lincoln’s character, and which, during the first years of his presidential term, lowered him considerably in the eyes of the people. His Southern enemies and detractors made a great deal of Mr. Lincoln’s “undignified bearing,” his “lack of tact,” “his mania for telling funny stories, in and out of season,” and the Northern Democrats were only too busy repeating and circulating these stories, because they could not forgive Lincoln for having beaten their idol, Stephen Arnold Douglas.