XXII, 6), "A great deal depends on the causes for which men undertake wars, and on the authority they have for doing so." In the popular mythology surrounding the President on the penny, the Civil War was the Great Crusade led by the Great Man. In the same passage Augustine went on to write the raison d'etre for all "just" wars in the Western civilization to follow: "When war is undertaken in obedience to God, who would rebuke, or humble, or crush the pride of man, it must be allowed to be a righteous war." Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, freed the African-American population of the Southern states from slavery; it took the Civil War, it took Union victory, to enforce Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. It was a righteous war by all "moral" accounts.
Without a doubt - save for the fact that, during his presidency, Lincoln endured the sort of low popularity among supposed supporters, and outright hatred from all others, that would have a politician of our contemporary ilk scurrying for private sector employment. How, then, could his death bring about such an "end of innocence" as this paper contends? In order to understand the loss, it is necessary to consider the events leading up to April 1865.
The sheer magnitude of the emergency which confronted the Lincoln administration in 1861 and after worked a permanent transformation upon the powers of the federal government. In part this was the inevitable consequence of the ever-increasing demands of a hard-fought war extending over far-flung battlefields and along some three thousand miles of seacoast. But it was also the result of the fact that the new Republicans and their President were bearers of a new nationalism which envisioned a central government of power and authority. Before the war was over, these two forces would completely overthrow the limited federal government which the Lincoln administration inherited in 1861. In its place would be a...