Confederate Government Complicity in the Assassination of Abraham Research Proposal

Confederate Government Complicity in the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln - Research Proposal Example Among the authors who have substantively dealt with this issue is William Hanchet who states that like in any crime where the perpetrator is not appropriately tried or punished, there are a lot of conspiracy theories that came forth concerning the murder of Lincoln.3 Fingers have been pointed at the Vatican, the confederate Government and Lincoln’s own cabinet on the issue of the murder4. In analyzing the issues surrounding such a historical event, it is important to state what the known facts are before delving into the unknown. The assassination United States President Abraham Lincoln was carried out on the 14th of April, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth who was a renowned actor at the time. This was the first in a subsequent long list of assassinations of United States Presidents. On the fateful day, Lincoln was seated inside the presidential booth at the Ford’s Theatre in Washington watching a play Our American Cousin. With him in the box was his wife Mary who witnessed t he assassination. Booth sneaked into the box and shot the president from behind. He subsequently made good his escape even though he was challenged and nearly captured by Major Henry Rathbone who was in the President’s party to the show5. ... In fact, he shouted in Latin â€Å"Sic semper tyrannis!† which was the motto of the Virginia state that meant: Thus always to tyrants. However, the entire plan that booth and his two associates Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt did not materialize after the latter two failed to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson respectively. Powell managed to wound Seward but Atzerodt totally freaked out of the plan6. The purpose of this research is to find out to which extent if at all the Confederates were responsible for the plan to assassinate President Lincoln. The Hypothesis here is that the assassination of Lincoln was solely the work individual extremist fanatics inspired by the lost Confederate cause. Background By April 1865, the Civil War was nearing a historic crossroads. With the surrender of Lee’s badly mauled army, a rising chorus of voices from inside and outside of Confederate government called for a radical change of tactics . Members of President Jefferson Davis’ cabinet and a core group of army officers proposed a guerilla campaign, to be based in the wilds of western Virginia. Others favored a direct strike at the heart of the federal government, a bold and destabilizing gesture aimed at bringing the Union to its knees in on stroke.To that end, the Confederate government conceived a plan to kidnap Abraham Lincoln to force the Union to free Confederate prisoners of war. This scheme never came to fruition but does call into question whether, and to what extent, the Confederate administration may have been involved in Lincoln’s assassination.7 To be sure, Davis and key members of his government had conceived of, and funded, an initiative aimed at striking the Union beyond the battlefield, an initiative that