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Lincoln Assassination

Historical Allusion
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth shortly after the Civil War's end.

Detailed Definition
The Lincoln Assassination, the 1865 murder of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth shortly after the Civil War's end, is alluded to in poetry as a tragic loss of visionary leadership, symbol of martyrdom for national unity, abrupt interruption of healing processes, and the enduring impact of violence on democratic ideals. Poets draw upon this event to meditate on sacrifice for the greater good, fragility of progress, collective mourning, resilience in the face of hatred, and the complex legacy of leaders who bridge divides, providing poignant historical context for themes of justice, forgiveness, political turmoil, and America's ongoing narrative of redemption and division.
Example
Example in poetry:
Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" are the twin elegies for Lincoln that his assassination produced; A student poet might write "Ford's Theatre, Good Friday, 1865 — Lincoln survived the war only to fall to the peace" to use the assassination's tragic timing; Edwin Stanton's words at Lincoln's deathbed — "Now he belongs to the ages" — function as a prose poem, and later poets have borrowed their cadence; A poet writing "the bullet that killed Lincoln also wounded Reconstruction — it was not just a man who died that night" uses the assassination to explore its political consequences; Herman Melville's "Supplement" to "Battle-Pieces" grapples with Lincoln's death as the loss of the one man who might have healed the nation
Additional Notes
The Lincoln Assassination is poetically potent because of its timing — just five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, with the war effectively over, Lincoln was shot at the theatre he had gone to for the first time in years. Walt Whitman, who had nursed wounded soldiers through the war, responded with "O Captain! My Captain!" and the more powerful "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." These poems are essential reading for understanding how an assassination becomes an elegy for more than a person — for a possibility, a hoped-for reconstruction, a national healing interrupted.
Also Known As
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Lincoln's Murder Ford's Theatre Assassination Death of Lincoln
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