He launched a war that killed 700,000 Americans, more than the number of Americans that died in WWII. He wasn’t very popular in some quarters.
From Great Grandfather’s memories:
[A]t the request of Governor Morton in September 1864, I was ordered to Indiana to act as Judge Advocate of the court detailed to try the members of the “Knights of the Golden Circle” or “Sons of Liberty.” These trials were finished sometime in December of that year, and I entered almost immediately upon the trial of the Chicago conspirators — St. Leger, Grenfel, and others, who had come over from Canada to engage in the enterprise of releasing the rebel prisoners then in Camp Douglas near Chicago.
While making the closing argument in this case, on the 17th of April, 1865, I received a dispatch from the Secretary of War, directing me to report in person immediately to the War Department to aid in the examinations respecting the murder of the President. I started for Washington the same evening, reached there on the morning of the 19th, and was “specially assigned by the Secretary of War for duty on the investigation of the murder of President Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Mr. Seward”, and a room was assigned to me in the War Department.
MOOD OF THE TIME
The gloom of that journey to Washington and the feeling of vague terror and sorrow with which I traversed its streets, I cannot adequately describe, and shall never forget. To this day, I never visit that City without some shadow of that dark time settling over my spirit. All the public buildings and a large portion of the private houses were heavily draped in black. The people moved about the streets with bowed heads and sorrow-stricken faces, as though some Herod had robbed each home of its first born.
When men spoke to each other in the streets, there were tremulous tones in their voices, and a quivering of the lips, as though tears and violent expression of grief were held back only by great effort. In the faces of those in authority — Cabinet ministers, officers of the army, — there was an anxious expression of the eye as though a dagger’s gleam in a strange hand was to be expected; and a pale determined expression, a set of the jaw that said: “The truth about this conspiracy shall be made clear and the assassins found and punished: we will stand guard and the Government shall not die.”
For no ruler who ever lived, I venture to say, not excepting Washington himself, was the love of the people so strong, so peculiarly personal and tender, as for Abraham Lincoln. Especially was this so among the soldiers; all members of the old army will remember with what devotion and patriotic affection the boys used to shout and sing, “We are coming, Father Abraham!” and will remember what a personal and confiding sort of relation seemed to exist between the soldier boys and “Uncle Abe”, and how those brave soldiers — veterans of four years of terrible war, inured to hardship, to sickness and wounds, familiar with the face of death — wept like little children when told that “Uncle Abe” was dead.
Oh good. We havent had a Civil war debate on FR in…..a couple of days?
He killed a lot of people and transformed our government into something very different than what the framers left us.
Let’s stop and look at the big picture on this thread.
In 2025 people of good will here are strongly battling over the first US Civil War and who was responsible for it.
April 12, 1861, to April 9, 1865.
Then people wonder how our two Dem/Socialist versus GOP/Conservative sides today can be so divided.