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The Last Casualty:
-- "Now he belongs to the ages." -- Edwin M. Stanton -- Secretary of War -- April 15, 1865
Lincoln expected to reconcile the divided nation once the South had been defeated. In his Second Inaugural Message. Lincoln offered a hopeful vision of a reconstructed United States -- one in which a "new birth of freedom" would be coupled with "malice towards none and charity for all." But a pro-South extremist actor, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Lincoln before the war ended.
The President's death probably assured that his vision would not come true because few other Republicans felt as charitably toward the defeated South. And the bitterness that characterize the Reconstruction Era ensured that animosities would endure long after the last casualty of war. More than 620,000 soldiers lost their lives during the four years of conflict -- 360,000 Northerners and at least 260,000 Confederates. The Civil War caused nearly as many American deaths as all of the nation's other wars combined. |