Answer: B - John Wilkes Booth's deranged motive to assassinate President Lincoln to reclaim the South's pride was ultimately considered ironic because Lincoln's successors treated the South much more harshly than he would have had he not been killed. His assassination led to the beginning of a divisive and fractured political climate, coupled with a weak president (his successor, Andrew Johnson). Without a decisive leader or a long-term plan for rebuilding the South effectively, Reconstruction ultimately doomed the region to economic, educational, and social bankruptcy, the ramifications of which are still readily apparent 150 years later.
