Due to the controversial nature of Lincoln's presidency, its fair to say that Lincoln's death was cause for celebration to many Confederates.

The South's reaction was almost the complete opposite to the North. While the people in the North cried and mourned on the streets, the Southerners threw parties and celebrated.

However, while Lincoln was not the first president to have been part of an assassination, he was the first sitting president to have been assassinated while serving in office, and in fact there were many who mourned his death.

Some people may not have liked Lincoln, but they certainly did not wish him death by assassination.

I was fascinated to discover that many southerners who felt contempt towards the Union remained silent for fear of retribution and being blamed for his murder.

• “A kind of horror seized my husband when he realised the truth of the reports that reached us of this tragedy,” recalled the wife of Clement C. Clay, who represented Alabama in the Confederate States Senate and, late in the war, directed Rebel secret agents from a posting in Canada. “God help us,” Senator Clay exclaimed. “I[t] is the worst blow that yet has been struck at the South.” Not long afterward, Union officials arrested Clay on suspicions that he had conspired in Lincoln’s assassination and threw him into prison for more than a year.

• "... military officials dishonorably discharged dozens of loose-lipped enlisted men like the Michigan soldier who dared to blurt out, in Lincoln’s hometown, “The man who killed Lincoln did a good thing.”"

• "When a soldier named James Walker of the 8th California Infantry declared that Lincoln was a “Yankee son of a bitch” who “ought to have been killed long ago,” he was court-martialed and sentenced to death by firing squad. (An appeals court later commuted the sentence)"

Sources:

• Smithsonian Mag

• The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators 1865

• The Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson 1988