Did You Know…Lincoln/Booth/Juneteenth Edition

So we now have a new National Holiday…

Juneteenth.

Do you think Hallmark was consulted?

Why June 19th?

Though Abraham Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation in January, 1865, some Texan slave owners kept the news from their slaves, but according to legitimate lore, June 19, 1865, was when those slaves were finally told they were free at last…

the day slavery was renounced for all, at least on paper.

A pity it happened two months after Lincoln laughed his last.

Perhaps a bad joke, so shoot me…OOPS…there goes another one.

Rumor has it, as Mr. Lincoln sat in the Presidential Box in Washington D.C.’s Ford’s Theater, watching a light comedy called Our American Cousin, when Booth’s bullet blasted the back of his head, he was laughing.  

We can only hope.

John Wilkes Booth changed history forever as he leaped from the balcony onto the stage, the bad actor that he was, breaking his ankle, also the klutz he will prove to be, as he takes curtain calls across the country for murdering a most beloved man…

once a ham, always a ham.   

You see, he thought the south would exalt him, when instead they were collectively appalled.

Apparently when Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, heard the news said…God help the south now.

Why?

Because without Abe and his big old heart, they were…and excuse my parlance…monumentally fucked.

As for Johnny boy, if he had been smarter and kept going rather than taking those bows, he never would have been captured and killed twelve days later at the age of 26.

But back to Abe who deserved the applause but never got to hear it.

So what would he think 156 years later of our spanking new day of celebration?

In memoriam?

Too bad if you can’t take a joke?

He might say…looks as if they’re now trying to put that bottom back in the tub.

A friend asked, why did it take him so long to write and pass the Proclamation that now nobly resides in The National Archives?

He actually wrote it in September, 1862, but at the advice of his Secretary of State, William Seward, placed it in a drawer until a more opportune time.

His approval rating was at an all time low, so Seward, one smart cookie felt, we need a coupla victories first, so people will care.

I threw in the care part.

By 1862, the War Between the States, as it was more commonly known, was raging for well over a year when it was promised to only last one afternoon.

Oh yes, people came with picnic baskets to watch South Carolina’s Fort Sumter (April 12-13, 1861) get her ass kicked or not, like it was the play Our Town, giving a performance lasting two days.

Little did they know it launched the following four years when roughly 750,000 men would be lost.

My friend feels, by stuffing his mission statement in that drawer tarnishes Mr. Lincoln.

What can I say? Yes, he was a nice guy who also was a politician wanting to get reelected, and at that moment when he penned

 …all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free….

there wasn’t much of a chance, but then came the Battle of Antietam where the North held the ground though 23,000 men died in a single day, followed by Gettysburg where 55,000 on both sides were buried where they fell, but hey…Lincoln ran his victory laps anyway.

All is fair in love, war and politics it seems and let’s add, better late than never.

As what I think about this holiday that closed down my bank, we should just be kinder, assessing a man by his integrity rather than his skin, then we wouldn’t need all these trumpets blowing what feels like bullshit in the wind, and I wouldn’t have to use the ATM hoping no one blows my head off.  

A patriotic New Yorker’s two cents. 

Recommended Reading:

Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell (2005) 

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, James L. Swanson (2007)

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (2011)

SB