"The last breath was drawn at 21 minutes and 55 seconds past 7 A.M. and the last heart beat flickered at 22 minutes and 10 seconds past the hour on Saturday, April 15, 1865." Carl Sandburg marked Lincoln's last moment of life in his monumental biography of Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln had prophetic dreams about his pending assassination. He considered himself a man of destiny and believed that his life would end at the hands of an assassin. Few will miss the irony of his assassination taking place on Good Friday, the day that Jesus suffered crucifixion on the cross. Lincoln had lived in a way similar to Christ, carrying his cross throughout the four bloodiest years in the history of the United States of America as the leader of the cause to preserve the union.
Lincoln's death came a few days after General U.S. Grant received the surrender of General Robert E. Lee on Palm Sunday 1865. Although the Confederacy had yet to formally surrender, all expected a complete and unconditional surrender soon. President Lincoln had made a daring visit to Richmond the day after Grant's army rode into the city. Lincoln sat in Jefferson Davis's chair in the capital building, pondering the man who had sat as his adversary throughout the four, long, horrendous years.
Lincoln had not even wanted to attend Ford's Theater that evening. He had no interest in watching the British play, Our American Cousin. Yet is wife insisted, wanting to celebrate the expected end of the war with levity and amusement. Once the announcement had been made in the newspapers, Lincoln felt obliged to attend, even though he had forebodings.
The death of Lincoln, like the death of Christ, seemed destined and nothing could stop it. Just as the Civil War seemed destined to exact the death of 620,000 North and South, Providence appeared to require the death of Lincoln upon the cross for the nation's sin of slavery. Slavery, that horrific practice of owning men like animals, led the United States into hell fire and brimstone, into an apocalypse of fury and destruction.
Why had the English colonies in America received African slaves? Pure and simple, making a profit through selling agricultural products. During the 1600s in New Amsterdam, slavery had been admitted and then dropped. The Dutch plan to create plantations worked by African slaves failed. In Jamestown, the effort to plant slavery in the 1600s succeeded. The Southern way of life and slavery became inextricably interwoven, especially for the aristocratic slave holders like Washington and Jefferson.
Slavery. The cross upon which Lincoln died. Did John Wilkes Booth, the foremost Shakespearean actor at the time in the United States, assassinate Lincoln because he abolished slavery? No. Booth's reason for killing Lincoln lay simply in his fury at the disgrace brought by the South's defeat. He held Lincoln responsible for that defeat and humiliation. Ironically, Lincoln would much rather have attended a Shakespeare play with Booth on the stage than Our American Cousin.
If God had wanted to save Lincoln's life that night, he could have easily done so. A combination of events, all essential to the success of the assassination, coincided. Lincoln's preferred body guard had other duties, leaving a misfit to protect his back in Ford's Theater. Rather than stay at his post, he went out for drink and women in the street. That allowed Booth to take his hiding place next to Lincoln's box. Booth used a single shot derringer from five feet distance to kill Lincoln. Angels surely could have fended away that inadequate bullet. But, no, the bullet struck Lincoln mortally.
Why did Lincoln have to die, crucified on Good Friday? If he had lived, how very different the Reconstruction would have been. Lincoln's lack of desire for revenge, his single-minded intention to forgive and welcome back all southerns who took a pledge of allegiance to the United States of America, his commitment to ease freed slaves successfully into the fabric of American society would have made for a very different nation.
Instead, Andrew Johnson, the vice president sworn in upon Lincoln's death, had a far less charitable stance toward the South. He held that punishment for rebellion is the proper and right course. The North would force the South through Reconstruction. The long road for freed slaves into full citizenship began. A road that, under Lincoln, certainly would have been shorter and more successful. If Lincoln had served through his second term, maybe Fredrick Douglas would have eliminated the need for Martin Luther King 100 years later. Who knows? Who knows . . . .
Yet we are often pawns of destiny far more than shapers of destiny. We have parts to play in the grand unfolding of the Providence of God. Why did God require the sacrifice of Abraham Lincoln on April 15th, 1865? Why did God require the sacrifice of Jesus Christ the same day about 1830 years earlier? The ways of God are mysterious and past all understanding. Yet we know that great people who believe in love often end their earthly lives on the cross. And, although we would prefer---as surely they would---that they lived, through their life and death on the cross of the providence, the world is a vastly better place.
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