"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle." — Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 1865
Lincoln's vision of national reconciliation was most directly disrupted by:
- A
The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment
- B
The collapse of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865
- C
The Supreme Court's ruling in Ex parte Milligan
- Dcheck_circle
His assassination weeks later and the ensuing Johnson-Congress conflict
Explanation
Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865, removed the architect of moderate reconciliation; his successor Andrew Johnson lacked the political skill to bridge growing congressional and presidential divisions.