As Isserman puts it, “To have Lincoln, at the moment of triumph, be assassinated, be martyred for the cause of the union—many people at the time thought this was all a sign of the divine ordering of the events of the Civil War period.”
Posted on 04/11/2020 7:33:33 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
As the Civil War drew to its end, Confederate General Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865 — Palm Sunday — near Appomattox Court House. Then, four days later, on April 14 — Good Friday — President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre. He would die the next day.
Thomas Nast, the most famous political cartoonist of the period, commemorated the coincidence with an illustration pairing an image of Christ entering Jerusalem, the event that is commemorated every Palm Sunday, with an image of Lee surrendering to Grant at Appomattox. The illustration appeared in Harper’s Weekly.
“This is an age of intense evangelical enthusiasm, when many Americans viewed the war as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy,” says Maurice Isserman, professor of American history at Hamilton College. The most famous expression of this sentiment is poet Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which frames the war as potentially having an impact on the second coming, with the lines “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord” and “as He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.”
Abraham Lincoln himself also framed the war as divinely influenced, for example when he painted the conflict as God’s way of punishing the North and South for the institution of slavery in his second inaugural address: “Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'”
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
As Isserman puts it, “To have Lincoln, at the moment of triumph, be assassinated, be martyred for the cause of the union—many people at the time thought this was all a sign of the divine ordering of the events of the Civil War period.”
Sic semper tyrannis!
“Some Thought It Was Fate”
Still others counted him in virus statistics just to be on the safe side...
Other than that, how was the play?
When I was substitute teaching a high school history class some years ago, my assignment for the day was to show a documentary video about President Lincoln. As an incentive to the students to pay attention to the video, I told them that there would be a quiz afterwards. So I made up a quiz and handed it out fter the screening.
The quiz consisted of several multiple choice questions, one of which was, “on which holiday was President Lincoln shot?” and the choices were as follows: a)Shrove Tuesday, b)Good Friday, c)Ash Wednesday d)Super Bowl Sunday. Incredibly, several students chose d) as their answer.
I have seen the play. It is called “Our American Cousin” and it was okay.
Why am I not surprised?
American children are educated in SELF-ESTEEM...so they feel GOOD about themselves. They can't read, write or spell but they feel GOOD about being illiterate.
History? It's only worthwhile if it validates the latest "feel good" strategy of the elite, educators and jerks of the world.
They probably had NO clue as to what Shrove Tuesday, Good Friday and Ash Wednesday were all about.
The play was great, he laughed to death.
History? It's only worthwhile if it validates the latest "feel good" strategy of the elite, educators and jerks of the world.
They probably had NO clue as to what Shrove Tuesday, Good Friday and Ash Wednesday were all about.
Yes, indeed, every kid knows abut Super Bowl Sunday.
On the other hand, I ran into a kid who looked to be about nine or ten years old at the Nixon Library, where I volunteer as a docent. I mentioned the Vietnam War and the kid made a remark in which he compared the Vietnam War to the Hundred Years War. Since few if any public school kids these days have ever heard of the Hundred Years War, I asked him where he went to school, and he told me that he was homeschooled.
Deo Vindice !
He was probably one of those wunderkinds who was DOOMED to succeed NO MATTER WHAT. :o)
Google
The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts from 1337 to 1453, waged between the House of Plantagenet, rulers of England and the French House of Valois, over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. Each side drew many allies into the war.
The Vietnam war was 19 years long and the war was about communism. Not a "who" but a "what." Someone fell short in that lesson...the homeschooler.
Vietnam War: November 1, 1955 – April 30, 1975
We didn't enter it until 1965: Col. Hal Moore.
Another Mel Gibson movie where he played the role of Col. Moore...very well done: WE WERE SOLDIERS.
I went to parochial schools K-12 and we did learn about the Hundred Years War.
Wonder which day was omitted that year.
Even back then actors were crazy.
John Wilkes Booth was a Marylander. The assassination of Lincoln did great harm to the country--undoubtedly Lincoln would have handled Reconstruction better than Andrew Johnson did. Nancy Pelosi, at 80, must sometimes think she is in a race against time to be the Maryland native who does the most harm to the United States.
Kennedy was assassinated at age 46.
Garfield was assassinated at age 49.
McKinley was assassinated at age 58.
On the other hand:
Jefferson lived to 83
Madison lived to 85.
John Adams lived to 90.
Regan, Ford and HW Bush lived into their 90s.
Jimmy Carter is now 95.
The office has been tough on every president, crueler to some than others.
17 of the Presidents died at a younger age than I am now. That includes the four who were killed by an assassin. Polk died young from cholera. FDR was only 63 but managing the WWII effort may have accelerated his end.
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