The Lincoln Memorial. You know this building. Everyone knows this building. What almost nobody knows is this:
While Lincoln was alive, America HATED him.
The South, obviously. But the North hated him too. Harper's magazine compiled the insults in a single issue — Filthy Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Buffoon, Usurper, Fiend, Butcher. General McClellan called him nothing more than a well-meaning baboon. A Wisconsin newspaper editor openly called for his assassination — in print — if he won reelection. His own party tried to replace him on the ticket in eighteen sixty-four.
Then he was shot on Good Friday.
And everything changed.
Easter Sunday — April sixteenth, eighteen sixty-five. Pastors across the country scrapped their scheduled sermons and rewrote them overnight. A minister in New York declared — it was meet that the martyrdom should occur on Good Friday. Jesus Christ died for the world. Abraham Lincoln died for his country. Another in Philadelphia — dying on the anniversa
ry of our Lord's great sacrifice, a mighty sacrifice himself for the sins of a whole people.
The timing was devastating. Good Friday to Easter Sunday. The religious parallel was irresistible, and the country leaned into it completely. The man they'd called a buffoon and a butcher became a martyr in forty-eight hours.
But the memorial you're standing in — this didn't happen for fifty-seven years.
