ABRAHAM LINCOLN--AMERICA’S GREATEST HISTORIC NATIONAL BEREAVEMENT

By Edwin Cooney

Last Thursday, April 14, 2011, marked the 146th anniversary of John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln may be a martyr, but he was far from being a “saint,” political or spiritual. He would never have been comfortable with absolute purity or perfection! He was much too plain and practical a man to become too lofty, but some height -- political and legal, of course -- was necessary if he was to be an effective servant of the people. Thus, the six foot four prairie lawyer sought and won the highest office in the gift of plain-spoken “folks.”

Over the past few months, I have spent many hours reading of President Lincoln’s life and times in preparation for a two-part lecture I delivered which focused on Mr. Lincoln’s major presidential decisions. These decisions included: Lincoln's insistence that if a war was to occur, the South would be the aggressor rather than the victim; his willingness to overlook some of the pretences of cabinet members in their attempts to control him; his decision to suspend habeas corpus and thus deny “speedy” trials of men who were sabotaging the president’s efforts to secure the city of Washington and the State of Maryland for the Union; the president’s decision to disallow General John C. Fremont’s 1861 Missouri Emancipation Proclamation; and finally, the evolution of the president’s decision to issue his own Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 which would take effect on January 1, 1863.

His genius was in what he foresaw. Many asserted it was silly and outrageous for Lincoln to declare emancipation of a people he didn’t control while at the same time allowing for slavery in states that never abandoned the Union. It didn’t make sense unless you understood what Lincoln understood.

The South would destroy itself by not coming back into the Union and the crucial slave states that remained in the Union would become a political minority once victory over the South had occurred. Thus, emancipation was not only moral but practical! As head of the executive branch of the government, he couldn’t constitutionally outlaw slavery, but as Commander-in-Chief of the army in wartime he could recruit blacks as soldiers and issue the wartime orders that dealt with “enemy property.” After all, didn’t the South consider blacks to be property and wasn’t property the legitimate issue during most wars?

Abraham Lincoln never ran away from either of his professions, lawyer or politician. However, like every other red-blooded American politician, he would defend himself against political attack. Lincoln’s face was, like the rest of his physique, long and boney — a long way from being even close to handsome. Thus, on the campaign trail when he once was called “two-faced,” he responded by asserting to an audience: "Now I’ll leave it to you…If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"

Then it was Good Friday and Easter weekend -- the first peaceful Easter in four springs. Abraham and Mary Lincoln chose to attend Ford’s Theater. Just after 10:30 p.m., while his bodyguard John F. Parker, innocently (if recklessly) slipped away to have a drink or two while the Lincolns were safely in the theater, along came the angry and vengeful John Wilkes Booth.

Suddenly, this imperfect man with clear political and even spiritual foresight was no more. As his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton (once one of Lincoln’s biggest detractors) so eloquently and tearfully put it: “Now he belongs to the ages!”

There are two aspects of that night of national bereavement which you may find interesting.
The Lincolns were accompanied to the theater by Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris. Actually, Clara Harris was Rathbone’s stepsister, but they could marry since there was no blood relationship between them. On July 11, 1867, they did marry. However, there was tragedy in the marriage.

The couple had three children, one of whom, Henry Riggs Rathbone (1870-1928) became an Illinois Congressman. In 1882, Rathbone was appointed American Consul at Hanover, Germany. There already was some indication of Rathbone’s declining mental health. However, Rathbone’s mental health deteriorated completely on December 23, 1883 when he threatened the lives of his children and stabbed Clara to death. He would spend the remaining 27 years of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane in Germany.

Closer to the Lincoln legacy are the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets. For some mysterious reason, this information wasn’t released until April 12, 1976, but here is what they found: two pairs of spectacles, one chamois lens cleaner, an ivory and silver pocket knife, one white (slightly used) Irish linen handkerchief with “A. Lincoln” embroidered in red, a gold quartz watch fob without a watch, a new silk-lined leather wallet which contained a pencil, a Confederate five dollar bill, news clippings about unrest in the Confederate army, an article about the 1861 Missouri Emancipation Proclamation, the 1864 Union Party platform (the name given the Lincoln/Johnson 1864 national ticket), and an article on the presidency by author John Bright.

To his family, “humble” prairie lawyer and politician Abraham Lincoln left an estate valued at $111,000.

To the people, who elected him president and to their posterity, he reinvigorated Jefferson’s “promissory note of equality” which Dr. Martin Luther King and others insisted upon “cashing in” exactly 100 years later!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY