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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AtulaSiriwardane" data-source="post: 3925367" data-attributes="member: 120286">Both Lincoln and Kennedy had wars thrust upon them right after being elected. Lincoln the Civil War, and kennedy the Vietnam war.Lincoln's assassination occurred just five days after the Civil War had ended with Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. When news of Lincoln's death spread, victory celebrations across the North were replaced by rituals of grief and mourning. "The Songs of Victory Drowned in Sorrow," ran a headline in the New York Times. The great difference between Lincoln and Kennedy is that the former died at his moment of victory while the latter was killed before he was able to achieve any great success. Lincoln was assassinated at the end of a Civil War, Kennedy at the beginning of a long-running cultural war.The man or woman on the street does not look back on history or on historical figures with the historian's concern with evidence and objective assessment. The memory of Lincoln was refracted through the lenses of his assassination and the final victory of the Union army. These events turned the politician who eight months earlier was certain that he would lose his bid for re-election into a martyr for the Union. Lincoln was the final casualty of the war and in that sense a symbol for everything it represented.In a parallel way, Kennedy, after his sudden death and solemn funeral, was turned into something different in public memory from how he was understood in life. Like Lincoln, Kennedy too was viewed as a martyr, but in devotion to a most ambiguous cause. Here was a source of much bewilderment about the man and the event. What exactly did John F. Kennedy stand for? What was the link between the assassination and the ideals he stood for?<a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/lincoln_and_kennedy_a_tale_of.html" target="_blank">http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/lincoln_and_kennedy_a_tale_of.html</a></blockquote>

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