Government

Biden, Trump, And The Ides Of April

Mark your calendars.

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498602Travel back with me, if you will, to early April 1865.

After losing a battle at Richmond, Virginia, Robert E. Lee retreated west, trying to rejoin other elements of the Confederate Army. Ulysses S. Grant cut off Lee’s retreat at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee realized that he was surrounded and out of options. On April 9, 1865, in the living room of the McLean family home in Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered to Grant. Although other forces in the Confederate Army surrendered in the following weeks, the events at Appomattox effectively marked the end of the American Civil War.

Less than a week later, on Friday, April 14, President Abraham Lincoln attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. At about 10:10 at night, John Wilkes Booth entered the building. At roughly 10:15, Booth shot Lincoln behind his left ear and through his brain. Booth struggled with Major Henry Rathbone, who was sitting with Lincoln in the presidential box, and then jumped to the stage. He shouted the Virginia state motto — Sic semper tyrannis! (“Thus always to tyrants”) — and escaped through a side door.

Lincoln died the next morning, at 7:22, at age 56.

The nation, and Walt Whitman, were traumatized. Whitman famously wrote:

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red, [a]
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Eighty years later, in mid-April 1945, the American army had reached the Elbe River, about 50 miles outside Berlin. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been in declining health for four years. At the end of March 1945, Roosevelt traveled to the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia, to rest before attending the founding conference of the United Nations. On the afternoon of April 12, 1945, while sitting for an artist painting his portrait, Roosevelt said, “I have a terrific headache.” He slumped forward, unconscious, and was carried to his bedroom. Roosevelt was pronounced dead at 3:35 p.m., at the age of 63.

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In Berlin, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels heard the news and rejoiced. He rushed to Adolph Hitler to report: “We are saved!” Hitler’s end came 18 days later.

The United States, of course, was traumatized. Roosevelt had been elected to the presidency four times. For many young Americans, he was the only president they remembered.

Another 80 years later, in April 2025, either Joe Biden or Donald Trump was the President of the United States; I no longer remember which. The president was old, within spitting distance, one way or the other, of 80. The president had taken office at a time of terrible political division. The party that had lost the election the previous November was outraged; there were threats of violence everywhere.

My memory is vague about the precise events. I’m not sure if the president died of natural causes or from political violence. But I remember that the president’s supporters were outraged and distraught. Conspiracy theories about the death abounded. Crowds were taking to the streets; the police were overwhelmed.

Historians viewed this as the natural order of things: Every 80 years, an American president dies in office; the multitude reacts; history marches on.

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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