Lincoln’s modest suffrage statement directly triggered his assassination

Evidence

Never before had an American president expressed his preference for even limited Black suffrage. “That means nigger citizenship,” murmured a twenty-six-year-old actor, from a family of famous thespians in Maryland. John Wilkes Booth and his Confederate conspirators had planned to kidnap Lincoln and demand the release of Confederate troops. “Now, by God,” Booth reportedly said, staring savagely at Lincoln, “I’ll put him through.” On April 14, Mary and Abraham Lincoln took in a play, Our American Cousin, from his presidential booth at Ford’s Theatre. When Lincoln’s bodyguard stepped away sometime after 10 p.m., Booth crept up behind Lincoln and shot a bullet into Lincoln’s skull. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 625

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s own claim that ‘the holy war tradition is Western, not originally Islamic’ — both trace a transformative political act to a single decisive moment. Also connects to the reading purpose: even a limited assimilationist step (suffrage for ‘the very intelligent’) was violently answered.