The President Who Kept Pardoning His Own Assassin

In 1865, a Confederate sympathizer named Michael O'Laughlen was convicted of conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. But years earlier, Lincoln had already demonstrated the very pattern the psalmist describes in Psalm 78. Throughout the Civil War, Lincoln pardoned deserters and conspirators with a regularity that infuriated his generals. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton once stormed into Lincoln's office after learning the president had pardoned yet another soldier who had abandoned his post — only to return to the army begging forgiveness when capture seemed imminent.…