Nearly all Southerners know that today. They love Lincoln. They love that he freed the slaves. They love that he freed the slaveholders from their culture of dependency. And, most of all, they love that he preserved the integrity of the greatest nation in history.
There isn't any group of people more patriotic than the people of the South. They love the USA.
We're all so lucky to be here together. It's like Sarah Palin says, "One nation, under God, indivisible."
And, it's going to stay that way!!
Forty years later, when the centenary of Lincoln's birth was celebrated in 1909, a border state official reflected on the assassination of Lincoln, "Confederate veterans held public services and gave public expression to the sentiment, that 'had Lincoln lived' the days of reconstruction might have been softened and the era of good feeling ushered in earlier". A century later, Goodrich concluded in 2005, "For millions of people, particularly in the South, it would be decades before the impact of the Lincoln assassination began to release its terrible hold on their lives". The majority of Northerners viewed the assassin as a madman or monster who murdered the savior of the Union, while in the South, many cursed the assassin for bringing upon them the harsh revenge of an incensed North instead of the reconciliation promised by Lincoln.