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.
I would say that admiration for Lincoln will continue to grow, but the fact is that it is more or less universal now. I have seen his image all over the world.
And, of course, the vast majority of Confederate soldiers did not think of themselves as fighting to perpetuate slavery. They were told that they were fighting to defend their "home" and their neighbors.
It was a relative handful of bigshots, many of them slaveholders, who concocted this whole theory about "secession" and a God-given right to own people. Of course, the whole theory is preposterous when we think about it now.
But, you know, even those people, the people who had become dependent upon slaves to take care of them, were victims of their history. For generations, their families had been cared for cradle to grave by slaves. Quite naturally, they had lost confidence in their ability to take care of themselves. They even confess their dependency in Mississippi's declaration of "secession." They talk about how they could no longer work outdoors like those of the "black race." Slavery for them was "not a matter of choice, but of necessity." We can see a similar "culture of dependency" developing today in neighborhoods where generation after generation of families live on the dole and have (they believe) lost the ability to work or to take care of themselves. Lincoln freed them of all that. The descendants of these slaveholders have rediscovered the ability to care for themselves. Humans are remarkably flexible and resourceful.
I hope that someday, more people will learn to be more sympathetic to the memory of these Southern slaveholders. They didn't choose to be born into a system which led to such dependency. It was a culture that developed naturally and over a long period of time.
As you point out, though, it would have all gone much more smoothly had Lincoln not been murdered. Thanks again for sharing.