Response To an Article About Abraham Lincoln's Death (Harper's Weekly)

I feel obliged to first explain that I chose to read this particular article because I just last night saw the movie Lincoln in theaters, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.  Granted, it wasn't a "thriller" per-se, since it pretty much entirely just consisted of dialogue rather than a bunch of Hollywood action sequences, but that dialogue was compelling nonetheless.  Also, being a huge Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan, I will add that Lincoln was far from being his best performance, so ultimately I wound up liking the movie for completely different reasons than I thought I would.  So there's that.  Having said all of that, the film ended abruptly with the death of Lincoln on which it did not elaborate whatsoever, so that made this article particularly meaningful to me.  I was immediately struck by the deliberate articulateness of the writer.  "[A nation's] chosen leader was stricken down by the foul hand of the cowardly assassin.  Exultations that had known no bounds was exchanged for boundless grief."  That, to me, resonates on a level that only the likes of Shakespeare can compete with.  And the entire article was permeated by such a writing style.  However, as flowing and beautiful as the writing was, the writer didn't really have much to say about Lincoln's death aside from the typical who done it, what Lincoln had been doing immediately before the shooting, and a convoluted sounding theory on how he suspected there was also an intended hit on General Grant.  Ultimately, the article simply served its purpose as just that, a to the point (though articulately), report style newspaper article, without much creative insight on the event itself or the impact it would have, aside from the "boundless grief" it professes Lincoln's sudden death had burdened the nation with.

Aside from the article itself, I was also intrigued by the Harper's Weekly banner at the top of the page.  It was incredibly detailed and, by my judgement, really well done, featuring some perfectly sketched hands (which are really hard to draw), as well as an inviting looking sunny sky, a lute, a painter's palette, a telescope, and a globe, which lent a philosophical kind of feel to the paper.  There were also some equally detailed drawings, one of which featured an extremely elaborate rendering of Lincoln's coffin, upon which sprawled a weeping young woman who I assumed to represent America, if only because the drawing also had a soldier from each side of the war weeping, head in hands, on either side of the coffin landscape.  Overall, there were a lot more compelling things said in the artistry of Harper's Weekly than in its writing that I experienced, though I was equally impressed by how well done that reportative style writing was done.