Read Online Mourning Lincoln by Martha Hodes - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Martha Hodes
Ads: Link
service only with a “violent effort of self-control,” his voice breaking at the closing prayer for the slain president. 2
Men, one woman wrote, were “not
ashamed
of their tears.” To be sure, many who recorded the sobs of their male companions made sure to call those men strong, in an effort to distinguish them from excusably weak women. In the post office in New York, one woman found “the Clerks & every one so sad—
strong men in tears
,” just as a minister in Buffalo spoke of the “unusual spectacle of strong men in tears.” Others portrayed the men as shedding tears of fury. Inside Ford’s Theatre, one witness wrote, “strong men wept, and cursed, and tore the seats in the impotence of their anger.” Some men recorded their own emotions obliquely, bypassing the use of first-person singular. “We think it no shame to weep here to-day,” wrote a federal clerk in Washington. Others put it more directly. A man riding on the streetcars in New York found it “impossible to control my tears,” then found himself face to face with another weeping gentleman, the reality of the terrible crime once again verified in an exchange of glances that revealed befitting emotions. As a white officer in a black regiment told his mother, “I never wept so much over the death of any person.” 3
Because the sight of men crying in public was far from common, some observers felt obliged to describe them as children, thereby casting their actions as something more familiar. At a Quaker meeting in Philadelphia, a woman watched as a man cried out, “Oh no! no! it
cannot
be” and “wept as a child.” Aggrieved Union soldiers in Raleigh were subdued, some “weeping like children.” Of course those men were still strong. On the street outside Ford’s Theatre, wrote one eyewitness to the murder, “strong men throw their arms around each other’s necks and cry like children.” Anson Henry, Lincoln’s physician and friend, had come to Washington immediately on hearing the news. When he laid eyes on the president’s lifeless body, “the fountain of tears was broken up,” he wrote, “and I wept like a child refusing to be comforted, remaining riveted to the spot.” To his wife, he confided, “I had never before realized the luxury of tears.” 4
5
Blame
FOR SARAH BROWNE, THE “UNPARALLELED outrage” of Lincoln’s assassination was “enough to rouse up the spirit of the meekest angel.” Grieving and in shock, Sarah was also angry. She wanted the assassin and his conspirators to suffer, but it wasn’t they alone who were guilty. She also wanted the “Fathers” of the rebellion to suffer, for she believed that Confederate political and military leaders had made the actions of Booth and the conspirators possible. The many middling and poor white people of the South, for their part, had been drawn into the war “against the dictates of their hearts and Consciences,” Sarah believed, and thus deserved gentler treatment. 1
Sarah expressed grief more vividly than anger, while Albert vented a fury more easily permitted to men, enraged at the Confederates around him in the South, those “dastardly cowardly wretches” with their “devilish purposes.” Slavery, Albert proclaimed, had caused the murder of President Lincoln (the “tree of Slavery,” he wrote, had “borne fruit” in the assassination), and the terrible crime was the “culmination of the teachings from the Southern pulpit and press,” not to mention the leadership of Jefferson Davis and all of “Southern Society.” When it came to the “poor deluded ones”—the white southerners whom Sarah excused—Albert agreed thatthey should be pardoned freely, as long as their leaders were hanged or forever banished from the nation. The anger Albert Browne felt at Lincoln’s assassination turned him into a savage, he confessed. Subjugate them, humiliate them, exterminate them, he cried, underlining the word
exterminate
. “We have played with this
Men, one woman wrote, were “not
ashamed
of their tears.” To be sure, many who recorded the sobs of their male companions made sure to call those men strong, in an effort to distinguish them from excusably weak women. In the post office in New York, one woman found “the Clerks & every one so sad—
strong men in tears
,” just as a minister in Buffalo spoke of the “unusual spectacle of strong men in tears.” Others portrayed the men as shedding tears of fury. Inside Ford’s Theatre, one witness wrote, “strong men wept, and cursed, and tore the seats in the impotence of their anger.” Some men recorded their own emotions obliquely, bypassing the use of first-person singular. “We think it no shame to weep here to-day,” wrote a federal clerk in Washington. Others put it more directly. A man riding on the streetcars in New York found it “impossible to control my tears,” then found himself face to face with another weeping gentleman, the reality of the terrible crime once again verified in an exchange of glances that revealed befitting emotions. As a white officer in a black regiment told his mother, “I never wept so much over the death of any person.” 3
Because the sight of men crying in public was far from common, some observers felt obliged to describe them as children, thereby casting their actions as something more familiar. At a Quaker meeting in Philadelphia, a woman watched as a man cried out, “Oh no! no! it
cannot
be” and “wept as a child.” Aggrieved Union soldiers in Raleigh were subdued, some “weeping like children.” Of course those men were still strong. On the street outside Ford’s Theatre, wrote one eyewitness to the murder, “strong men throw their arms around each other’s necks and cry like children.” Anson Henry, Lincoln’s physician and friend, had come to Washington immediately on hearing the news. When he laid eyes on the president’s lifeless body, “the fountain of tears was broken up,” he wrote, “and I wept like a child refusing to be comforted, remaining riveted to the spot.” To his wife, he confided, “I had never before realized the luxury of tears.” 4
5
Blame
FOR SARAH BROWNE, THE “UNPARALLELED outrage” of Lincoln’s assassination was “enough to rouse up the spirit of the meekest angel.” Grieving and in shock, Sarah was also angry. She wanted the assassin and his conspirators to suffer, but it wasn’t they alone who were guilty. She also wanted the “Fathers” of the rebellion to suffer, for she believed that Confederate political and military leaders had made the actions of Booth and the conspirators possible. The many middling and poor white people of the South, for their part, had been drawn into the war “against the dictates of their hearts and Consciences,” Sarah believed, and thus deserved gentler treatment. 1
Sarah expressed grief more vividly than anger, while Albert vented a fury more easily permitted to men, enraged at the Confederates around him in the South, those “dastardly cowardly wretches” with their “devilish purposes.” Slavery, Albert proclaimed, had caused the murder of President Lincoln (the “tree of Slavery,” he wrote, had “borne fruit” in the assassination), and the terrible crime was the “culmination of the teachings from the Southern pulpit and press,” not to mention the leadership of Jefferson Davis and all of “Southern Society.” When it came to the “poor deluded ones”—the white southerners whom Sarah excused—Albert agreed thatthey should be pardoned freely, as long as their leaders were hanged or forever banished from the nation. The anger Albert Browne felt at Lincoln’s assassination turned him into a savage, he confessed. Subjugate them, humiliate them, exterminate them, he cried, underlining the word
exterminate
. “We have played with this
Similar Books
