Cause and Effect: Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

Introduction: The Cause & Effect Essay is to analyze the causes and effects of an event. This essay focuses the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and applies "multiply causes and general effects " structure.

April 14, 1865 was an unusual day. With a sound of gun, President Abraham Lincoln was shoot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on that day ("Abraham Lincoln's Assassination").Consequently, everyone was shocked to the sudden assassination. Moreover, the U.S. government went to a mess on account of the death of their powerful leader Lincoln. As a result, the new president came to power with more conflicts ("How did the assassination of Abraham Lincoln affect Reconstruction?"). According to a plenty of research, there were a chain of reasons for the assassination.

In my point, Lincoln’s stand or statement contrast to the Confederacy leading to the murder was the main one. Additionally, it also was caused by the personal purpose of the Confederacy and the shooter.

First of all, Lincoln’ assassination was mainly due to his statement which “he called ‘sheet anchor’ of republicanism” (Jaffa, 399). At that time, He was playing an important role in political stage, representing for Republican Party. As early as 1850s, Lincoln regarded the Republicanism as his political stand .He also emphasized that American political basic was the value of Deceleration of Independence. However, other politicians were more interested in “sanctity of the Constitution” (Jaffa, 399). President Lincoln but also stood for freedom and fairy for all the citizens. That declaration was a great development in democracy process. Whereas, it set off the anger of Confederate State who supported the slavery institution. Hence, he’s enemies especially the Confederate States in South always wanted to attack him by using various methods. Furthermore, to collapse the Confederacy and to unify the Unities States, Lincoln led the Union War in 1986 which finally annoyed the objector.

In addition, the Confederated States eventually formulated the plot owing to the foreseeable consequence of the Union War. At that time, the war was coming to the end and everyone was waiting for the victory of the U.S. government ("Abraham Lincoln's Assassination"). Since it occurred, the Confederacy have an enormous loss but they still wanted to strive for their position. Accordingly, they planned the assassination in order to throw the U.S. government into disarray. With time went by, many conspiracy theories for the assassination supported by researchers have appeared. Nevertheless, what agreed by the most was that the assassination resulted in the Confederacy plot.

Another reason was the personal emotions of the shooter, John Wilks Booth. As we all knew, Booth was a famous actor. However, he was also the Confederate spy and a radical. Even if he didn’t join the Confederate army, he was contact with the” Confederated secret service” (Donald 586–587).To drive the US government to free the Confederate prisoners (Donald 586–587), Booth was formulating a kidnapping to the president for a long time. Unfortunately, he was determined to kill Abraham Lincoln instead of threatening because of constant failure for the kidnapping.

As a consequence, President Lincoln died in few hours after the assassination. The first effect was that the Republican Government lost their great leader and went chaotic. To control the situation, Andrew Johnson, a southerner and slave supporter, became the new president. However, the disagreement between the government and Congress became deeper owing to new institutions. ("How did the assassination of Abraham Lincoln affect Reconstruction?").Hence, the impact of the Lincoln’s death have lasted a long time in United States.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln happened resulting in the political combat in 19th century. Due to Lincoln firmly holding stand of Republican, he consequently became a political victim. American history had a big reversal on account of the event. On the other side, his great contribution to the United States has been slowly realized through the effect of the assassination and the deeper truth would have been digested with time went by.

Works Cited

"Abraham Lincoln's Assassination." History.com, Staff. History 2009. 22 October 2016. <http://www.history.com/topics/abraham-lincoln-assassination>.

"How did the assassination of Abraham Lincoln affect Reconstruction? " Jakeson, Bill. The Social Studies Help Center 2001. 22 10 2016. <http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/lesson_36_notes.htm>.

Jaffa, Harry V. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

David Herbert , Donald. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.