3 And freed the slaves,
4 aAnd got assassinated,
5 And was born in a log cabin,
6 And was very very tall,
7 And wore a stovepipe hat,
8 And had a funny-looking beard,
9 And a funny-looking wife.
10 They also know that Lincoln was honest and great,
11 Because if he wasn't,
12 bWhy would he have such a nice memorial in Washington, D.C.,
13 cAnd his picture on the dfive-dollar bill,
14 eAnd so many movies made about his life?
15 Back then, the northerners also thought Lincoln was honest and great,
16 fBecause he got shot in the back by a southerner,
17 gAnd were so mad about what happened to him that they responded in the most traditional American way,
18 By arresting a whole bunch of conspirators,
19 Finding them guilty as charged in spite of the evidence,
20 And then hanging them by the neck until they were dead.
21 This event not only honored the memory of a great American,
22 But set the tone for the north's treatment of the south in years to come,
23 Including the new policy called hReconstruction.
CHAPTER 481 The president who came after Lincoln was named iAndrew Johnson,
2 Who wasn't born in a log cabin,
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3 jAnd was therefore dishonest and stupid.
4 In fact, Johnson almost got impeached,
5 For some reason,
6 And did kReconstruction completely wrong,
7 lWhich everybody knows,
8 Although there's still a lot of disagreement about how Reconstruction could have been done right.
9 For example, the southerners and quite a lot of Yanks still think that the biggest thing wrong about mReconstruction was that it was done at all,
10 Because the Yanks who wanted to get even with the south set everything up to make things as hard as possible for the white southerners,
11 Like sending a bunch of opportunistic and unscrupulous ncarpetbaggers down to spread as much corruption around the south as they had up north,
12 And creating a bunch of puppet state legislatures full of ignorant, illiterate black field hands who were anxious to learn as much as possible about corruption from the carpetbaggers, and not much else,
13 And letting black people run absolutely wild and free in the streets, so that they could terrorize white women and children and humiliate powerless, unarmed southern men.
14 oThe people who think this way about Reconstruction are usually the white people in the north and the south who were never that upset about slavery anyway, and thought the best way to get over the war was to forgive and forget,
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