Problem was, the Confederacy’s best weapon, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, had surrendered two days earlier, and the Confederate government was running for its life. Johnston was still active in North Carolina, and some of the armies in the West as well, but by April 14, there basically was not a Confederate States of America left.
As harsh as Reconstruction was after Lincoln’s death (Booth giving the Radical Republicans the ammo they needed), I can only imagine how bad it would have been had Grant, the Union’s great war hero, been killed as well. Booth, by doing what he thought was his patriotic duty as a proud son of the South, instead consigned a lot of Southerners to up to twelve years of military rule and economic devastation. I’m as proud a son of Virginia as you’ll find on here, and I’ve no great love for Lincoln, but it would have been better for all parties concerned, North and South, had Booth’s pistol misfired.
}:-)4
It would have been even better if Lincoln had not plunged this nation into civil war, even better that he had not been elected president. But he did plunge the country into civil war, ignoring his campaign pledge. He does not deserve our respect, only our pity.