Had Lincoln been assassinated in 1862 instead of 1865 the Northern people would have lost a lot of their resolve to continue the fight.

It was Lincoln and his doggedness and his policy of subsutiting U.S.C. Troops for the White soldiers that kept the northern people in the war when facing such horrendus loses. There was a real fear that a true reporting of Casualities in the Union Army in 1864 would threaten the re-election of Lincoln against a peace candidate George McClellan.

It was truely "Mr. Lincoln's War"