Abraham Lincoln Being Shot Created a Somber Scene in the North. Although the Police Believed There to be a Conspiracy, the Assassination Was Likely the Work of One Man.

In the Northern states, Abraham Lincoln being shot was a truly devastating event.

Half the country solemnly mourned as they saw the leader who had managed to preserve the Union go down with a single bullet wound. Lincoln was an American Icon.

To many, he was a symbol of the Civil War and a symbol of the morals that the new society would live by, so the Northerners had a hard time processing his assassination.

Black people in the North and the South also had a hard time dealing with the death, as they equated Abraham Lincoln’s assassination with the death of civil rights.

Lincoln had just started to work on the civil rights movement when he was shot down for his beliefs.

To black people, it showed the great amount of resistance to their civil rights, and it was no secret the assassination was racially motivated, which led to a great deal of fear among the blacks.

For Southerners, the feelings they had were quite complicated, and in most cases they did not express those feelings out of fear of repercussions by the Northerners who might strike out against them if their true feelings were known.

Men like Jefferson Davis were pleased about the assassination, and he was much more open about his pleasure than many of his Southern counterparts who celebrated in privacy.

The South publicly showed their respect and mourned Abraham Lincoln being shot, but they felt his death was deserved for destroying the South.

When it came to Lincoln’s assassination, it was really a matter of race and rebellion and the two sides were stark opposites, which is why the assassination had a very different impact on each side.

The Southerners feared the Northerners would strike out at them and blame them for the assassination; because of this, they lived in great fear, since they did not know what would happen next.

The North was left looking for the party at fault, not believing it was the idea of one man.

The assassination of Lincoln helped widen the rift between the Northern and Southern states, and it would take a great deal of time for that rift to be healed. Some would say it is still not healed to this day.

A Fresh Start

Many Southerners thought Abraham Lincoln being shot meant they could get a fresh start after the smoke cleared.

They believed future presidents would not carry on the legacy of Lincoln, and this meant that while things would not be the same as they once were, they would be better.

What they did not realize was the fact the country had changed. It was no longer about a leader.

It had changed and the change had been fought for, and that meant it was the end of the line for slavery.

A Muddled Investigation

Investigators attempted to sort out the evidence and capture the people that had been involved in the assassination of Lincoln.

The truth is, it was likely too large a conspiracy for the police of that day to sort out, which means some people surely went free.

The police were outmatched by the nature of the conspiracy of Abraham Lincoln being shot.

Never before had they been forced to deal with an assassination of a president of a broken nation.

It was difficult by any standard and especially by the standard of the day.