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Letters to the Editor

History still needs to be taught year in, year out

Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday we just celebrated, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theater in Washington at 10:15 p.m. on Friday April 14,1865, and died the following morning at 7:22 a.m., and it’s true that, as Chancellor-designate Victor Boschini put it recently, Lincoln “is going to die on the same day,” no matter “how much you teach history.”

But how do we happen to know that he was assassinated and died precisely at those times? Were some people checking their watches during the crisis? If not, are they estimates?

But there’s more. Didn’t Lincoln have any bodyguards looking after his safety in time of war? If so, how did Booth manage to get close enough to Lincoln to kill him? What weapon did he use? Was he part of a conspiracy or was he a loner like Lee Harvey Oswald?

How bad were the wounds inflicted on Lincoln? Did the doctors think there was any chance of saving his life? If not, why not? Were there any last words?

There’s still more. Why did Booth hate Lincoln so much that he resolved to kill him? Did he plan the assassination ahead of time or was it a last-minute decision? What kind of man was Booth anyway? Was he eventually caught and brought to justice?

How did Mrs. Lincoln handle the awful event? What was the reaction of people in the North? How about people in the South? What did people in other parts of the world think? What kind of funeral did Lincoln receive? Where was he buried?

And there’s a lot more. Who succeeded Lincoln as president? To what extent were the new president’s policies similar to those of Lincoln? How different would U.S. history have been had Lincoln lived to complete his second term? Did Northerners consider him a great president before the fatal day?

Why do most historians regard him as one of our greatest presidents? Why have so many biographies, scholarly studies, magazine articles, poems, and plays been written about Lincoln in the years since his death? What has been his appeal to so many generations of Americans? Has he been over-mythologized? What was he really like?

I could go on, but I won’t. I’ve already told you Lincoln was assassinated on April 14 and died on April 15.

Note: Chancellor-designate Boschini enrolled in Mount Union College after graduating from high school. He thought he wanted to teach history and signed up to student-teach at a rural Ohio school. But that didn’t last long. “When I taught,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “I thought, ‘No matter how much I teach history, Lincoln is going to die on the same day every year.’ Right then, I decided I wanted to do something else.”

— Paul F. Boller Jr., Professor Emeritus, History