Abraham Lincoln

On April 14, 1865 John Wilkes Booth fatally shot Abraham Lincoln as he watched a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. With that shot Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, damaged the South for possibly the next 100 years.

Lincoln's death also ended his plans for reconstruction and turned those plans over to "carpetbaggers" who prevented and delayed reconstruction. Lincoln had written his plans for reconstruction in 1863, and they were cast aside as the Congress attempted to take power from the president. Southern legislators began to enact laws that would strip or limit the rights of recently freed former slaves. Money intended for the South was diverted into the pockets of the scavengers who arrived much as scam artists do today when disasters occur. They were also taking advantage of the desire for revenge which was further fueled by Lincoln's assassination.

The railroads in the South had been destroyed; factories often were unusable shells; farms were not able to produce enough food to feed the populace; the economic base of the South needed help to rebuild and there was little incentive for that help to come from the North. Anger toward the North would last for generations, and Vicksburg, MS would not celebrate the 4th of July until World War II. The threat to the 48 states brought the states together and formed the states into the nation of the United States of America.

In fact, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, stirred the nation and presented a common enemy to defend the United States against that enemy. The threat presented by the Soviet Union quickly replaced the Axis powers as a threat to the nation. The war in Korea soon followed and all many understood was that we were fighting the communists. This continued expansion of the military brought wealth to many parts of the South. Ironically, many Army bases were named after U.S. officers who fought in the Civil War as Confederate officers.

One has to wonder if Lincoln's plan to bring the southern states back into the Union would have changed the future for the Southern United States.

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He lives in Chaffee, Missouri.