Excerpt from "The End of an Era:" Assassination of Lincoln
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Date Published: November 3, 2024
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Headings and sub-headings are the addition of this author for publication on this website. They are intended to aid in the flow and understanding of what was originally written by John S. Wise in his book, "End of an Era," on his and his fellow Confederate soldiers' perspectives on the death of Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War.
Any mistakes in this area are this author's and this author's alone.
Any mistakes in this area are this author's and this author's alone.
Peter E. Greulich, November 2024
Announcing Lincoln’s Assassination from “The End of an Era” by John S. Wise
- Chapter XXVI: An Excerpt from “The End” Describing Lincoln’s Assassination
Understanding the Effect of the Announcement of Lincoln’s Assassination
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“During this period of waiting came the news of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. Perhaps I ought to chronicle that the announcement was received with demonstrations of sorrow.
“If I did, I would be lying for sentiment’s sake. “Among the higher officers and the most intelligent and conservative men, the assassination caused a shudder of horror at the heinousness of the act, and at the thought of its possible consequences; but among the thoughtless, the desperate, and the ignorant, it was hailed as a sort of retributive justice. “In maturer years I have been ashamed of what I felt and said when I heard of that awful calamity. However, men ought to be judged for their feelings and their speech by the circumstances of their surroundings: “For four years we had been fighting. In that struggle, all we loved had been lost. Lincoln incarnated to us the idea of oppression and conquest. We had seen his face over the coffins of our brothers, relatives and friends, in the flames of Richmond, and in the disaster at Appomattox. "In blood and flame and torture the temples of our lives were tumbling about our heads. |
John S. Wise pictured at approximately the age when the Civil War ended.
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“We were desperate and vindictive, and whosoever denies it forgets or is false. We greeted his death in a spirit of reckless hate, and hailed it as bringing agony and bitterness to those who were the cause of our own agony and bitterness. To us, Lincoln was an inhuman monster, Grant a butcher, and Sherman a fiend. Time taught us that Lincoln was a man of marvelous humanity, Appomattox and what followed revealed Grant in his matchless magnanimity, and the bitterness toward Sherman was softened in subsequent years.
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“But, with our feelings then, if the news had come that all three of these had been engulfed in a common disaster with ourselves, we should have felt satisfaction in the fact, and should not have questioned too closely how it had been brought about.
“We were poor, starved, conquered, despairing; and to expect men to have no malice and no vindictiveness at such a time is to look for angels in human form. “Thank God, such feelings do not last long, at least in their fiercest intensity.” |