Book Review: Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Black Americans in Mourning: Reactions to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. By Leonne M. Hudson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2024. Softcover, 186 pp. $24.95.
Reviewed by Brianna Frakes
“The death of the President was like an electric shock to my soul,” recalled Mattie J. Jackson in 1866. A formerly enslaved woman who gained her freedom during the Civil War, she captured the immense feelings of grief, fear, and uncertainty following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. “I could not feel convinced of his death until I gazed upon his remains …. I was convinced that though we were left to the tender mercies of God, we were without a leader.” (1)
Jackson and countless Black Americans mourned Lincoln’s death as the nation staggered away from the fields of battle and turned toward the harrowed path that would be Reconstruction. This is the story Leonne M. Hudson sets out to tell in Black Americans in Mourning, one that raises the voices of those who most acutely felt the weight of the president’s death. Hudson, an associate professor emeritus at Kent State University, describes in great detail the response and universal mourning of the Black community after April 14, 1865. Using an array of voices—some well-known like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, others more obscure to history—Hudson crafts a narrative that reveals how deeply Black Americans personally and collectively viewed this unprecedented moment.
Organized into eight chapters arranged thematically with attention to chronology, Hudson demonstrates how Black criticism of Lincoln largely stopped after his assassination. African Americans rather quickly described Lincoln as “great and good,” and their responses to the assassination took on different dimensions from white Americans. Beginning with the news of the president’s assassination and continuing through his funeral train and the remainder of 1865, African Americans more overtly cited slavery and the fight for emancipation and the real fear of being reenslaved in their expressions of grief. Hudson refers to this as “liberation limbo,” where African Americans were elated with recent triumphs but apprehensive about what lay ahead. (10) This became most noticeable when Andrew Johnson ascended to the presidency, providing Black Americans with a stark contrast to the sixteenth president whom they called a friend and believed was an advocate for racial equality at the highest level of government.
African Americans hoped that Johnson would continue Lincoln’s work, that he would be the “modern Joshua” leading them to the Promised Land. (95) For many Black Americans, Lincoln was their “Earthly Moses.” (86) Religious language and imagery frequently characterized recollections of Lincoln; his efforts to end slavery were ordained by God, connecting the Civil War and destruction of the institution to the biblical story of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. Under Lincoln, Black preachers across the country orated, enslaved African Americans were led “through the red sea of blood to freedom.” (88)
The failure of Andrew Johnson to carry on Lincoln’s legacy and his subsequent betrayal to Black Americans further enshrined Lincoln’s memory and elevated the work he accomplished and, as many believed, paid the ultimate price for. When compared to Johnson, Lincoln appeared “unblemished,” deepening even further the unique bond African Americans felt toward him. Hudson’s book concludes with Charlotte Scott, a formerly enslaved woman born in Virginia who lived in Ohio, and her efforts to build a monument to Lincoln’s memory. Donating the initial five dollars, Scott inspired other African Americans to contribute, ultimately raising the necessary funds. The statue was unveiled in 1876 in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park.
Black Americans in Mourning adds an important and necessary layer to our understanding of the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and African Americans, his symbolism as the Great Emancipator, the creation and evolution of memory after the Civil War, and the upheaval that came after Confederate surrenders and a presidential assassination. This reader would have appreciated greater emphasis on the more practical side of African Americans’ mourning, focusing on what the death of Lincoln meant for the future of the Black race and the sheer uncertainty following Union victory and the destruction of slavery. Hudson’s work complements and builds on recent works focusing on Black Americans’ relationship with Lincoln, notably Jonathan White’s To Address You As My Friend and A House Built by Slaves. Hudson excels at highlighting Black voices, letting their statements and expressions fill the pages. Doing so illuminates how central Lincoln, his ultimate death, and his legacy were to Black Americans during and after the Civil War.
Brianna Frakes is an historian of the Civil War era and an assistant professor in the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at the Ohio State University. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia, studying under Elizabeth Varon. Her first book, No Safety for Union Men, examines the on-the-ground experience and evolution of Union military occupation in Virginia during the Civil War and Reconstruction years and will be published by Fordham University Press.
