Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15,
1865) served as the
16th President of the
United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April
1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest internal
crisis, the
American Civil War,
preserving the Union and
ending
slavery.
Before his election in 1860 as the first
Republican
president, Lincoln had been a country
lawyer, an Illinois
state legislator, a member
of the United
States House of Representatives, and twice an unsuccessful
candidate for election to the U.S. Senate. As an outspoken opponent of the
expansion of
slavery in the
United States,Lincoln won the
Republican Party nomination
in 1860 and was
elected president
later that year. His tenure in office was occupied primarily with
the defeat of the
secessionist Confederate States of America
in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in
the
abolition of
slavery, issuing his
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863
and promoting the passage of the
Thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution. Six days after the large-scale
surrender of Confederate forces under General
Robert E. Lee, Lincoln
became the first American president to be assassinated
.
Lincoln closely supervised the victorious war effort, especially
the selection of top generals, including
Ulysses S. Grant. Historians have concluded that he
handled the factions of the Republican Party well, bringing leaders
of each faction into his cabinet and forcing them to cooperate.
Lincoln
successfully defused the Trent
affair, a war scare with Britain
late in 1861. Under his leadership, the
Union took control of the
border slave
states at the start of the war. Additionally, he managed his
own reelection in the
1864 presidential
election.
Copperheads and other
opponents of the war criticized Lincoln for refusing to compromise
on the slavery issue. Conversely, the
Radical Republicans, an abolitionist
faction of the Republican Party, criticized him for moving too
slowly in abolishing slavery. Even with these opponents, Lincoln
successfully rallied public opinion through his rhetoric and
speeches; his
Gettysburg Address
(1863) became an iconic symbol of the nation's duty. At the close
of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of
Reconstruction,
seeking to speedily reunite the nation through a policy of generous
reconciliation. Lincoln has consistently been
ranked by scholars as one of the greatest of all U.S.
Presidents.
Personal life
Childhood and education
Samuel Lincoln, first American
ancestor of Abraham, worshipped at Old Ship Church, Hingham,
Massachusetts
Abraham
Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, two farmers, in a one-room
log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm, in
southeast Hardin
County, Kentucky
(now part of
LaRue County), making him the first
president born in the west. Lincoln was not given a middle
name.
His
ancestor Samuel Lincoln had arrived
in Hingham,
Massachusetts
from England in the 17th
century.His grandfather, also named Abraham Lincoln, had
moved to Kentucky, where he owned over , and was ambushed and
killed by an
Indian raid in
1786.
Thomas Lincoln was a respected citizen of rural Kentucky. He owned
several farms, including the Sinking Spring Farm, although he was
not wealthy. The family belonged to a
Separate Baptists church, which had high
moral standards frowning on alcohol consumption and dancing, and
many church members were opposed to slavery.Abraham himself never
joined their church, or any other church.
In 1816,
the Lincoln family left Kentucky to avoid the expense of fighting
for one of their properties in court, and made a new start in
Perry
County
, Indiana (now in Spencer County
). Lincoln later noted that this move was
"partly on account of slavery", and partly because of difficulties
with land deeds in Kentucky. Abraham's father disapproved of
slavery on religious grounds and because it was hard to compete
economically with farms operated by slaves. Unlike land in the
Northwest Territory, Kentucky
never had a proper U.S. survey, and farmers often had difficulties
proving title to their property.
When Lincoln was nine, his mother, then 34 years old, died of
milk sickness. Soon afterwards, his
father remarried to
Sarah Bush
Johnston. Lincoln and his stepmother were close; he called her
"Mother" for the rest of his life, but he became increasingly
distant from his father. Abraham felt his father wasn't a success,
and didn't want to be like him. In later years, he would
occasionally lend his father money.
In 1830, fearing a milk sickness outbreak,
the family settled on public land in Macon County,
Illinois
.
The next
year, when his father relocated the family to a new homestead in
Coles County,
Illinois
, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own,
canoeing down the Sangamon River to
the village of New Salem
in Sangamon County
.Later that year, hired by New Salem
businessman Denton Offutt and
accompanied by friends, he took goods from New Salem to New Orleans
via flatboat on the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers.Lincoln's formal
education consisted of about 18 months of schooling, but he was
largely self-educated and an avid reader. He was also skilled with
an axe and a talented local wrestler, the latter of which helped
give him confidence.Lincoln avoided hunting and fishing because he
did not like killing animals, even for food.
Marriage and family
Lincoln's first love was
Ann Rutledge.
He met her when he first moved to New Salem, and by 1835 they had
reached a romantic understanding. Rutledge, however, died on August
25, probably of
typhoid fever.
Earlier, in either 1833 or 1834, he had met Mary Owens, the sister
of his friend Elizabeth Abell, when she was visiting from her home
in Kentucky. Late in 1836, Lincoln agreed to a match proposed by
Elizabeth between him and her sister, if Mary ever returned to New
Salem. Mary did return in November 1836 and Lincoln courted her for
a time; however they both had second thoughts about their
relationship. On August 16, 1837, Lincoln wrote Mary a letter from
Springfield, to which he had moved that April to begin his law
practice, suggesting he would not blame her if she ended the
relationship. She never replied, and the courtship was over.
In 1840,
Lincoln became engaged to Mary
Todd, from a wealthy slaveholding family based in Lexington,
Kentucky
.They met in Springfield in December 1839,and
were engaged sometime around that Christmas.A wedding was set for
January 1, 1841, but the couple split as the wedding approached.
They later met at a party, and then married on November 4, 1842, in
the Springfield mansion of Mary's married sister.In 1844, the
couple bought a house on Eighth and Jackson in Springfield, near
Lincoln's law office.
The
Lincolns soon had a budding family, with the birth of son Robert Todd Lincoln in Springfield,
Illinois
on August 1, 1843, and second son Edward Baker Lincoln on March 10, 1846,
also in Springfield. According to a house girl, Abraham "was
remarkably fond of children".The Lincolns did not believe in strict
rules and tight boundaries when it came to their children.
Robert, however, would be the only one of the Lincolns' children to
survive into adulthood. Edward Lincoln died on February 1, 1850 in
Springfield, likely of tuberculosis.The Lincolns' grief over this
loss was somewhat assuaged by the birth of
William "Willie" Wallace Lincoln
nearly eleven months later, on December 21.
But Willie himself
died of a fever at the age of eleven on February 20, 1862, in
Washington,
D.C.
, during President Lincoln's first term.The
Lincolns' fourth son
Thomas "Tad"
Lincoln was born on April 4, 1853, and, although he outlived
his father, died at the age of eighteen on July 16, 1871 in
Chicago.
Robert Lincoln eventually went on to attend
Phillips
Exeter Academy
and Harvard College
. His (and by extension, his father's) last
known lineal descendant,
Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith,
died December 24, 1985.
The death of the Lincolns' sons had profound effects on both
Abraham and Mary. Later in life, Mary Todd Lincoln found herself
unable to cope with the stresses of losing her husband and sons,
and this (in conjunction with what some historians consider to have
been pre-existing
bipolar disorder)
eventually led Robert Lincoln to involuntarily commit her to a
mental health asylum in 1875.Abraham Lincoln himself was
contemporaneously described as suffering from "melancholy"
throughout his legal and political life, a condition which modern
mental health professionals would now typically characterize as
clinical depression.
Early political career and military service
Sketch of a younger Abraham
Lincoln
Lincoln began his political career in March 1832 at age 23 when he
announced his candidacy for the
Illinois General Assembly. He made
the decision based on self-confidence; he felt himself equal to any
man. He was esteemed by the residents of New Salem, but he didn't
have an education, powerful friends, or money. The centerpiece of
his platform was the undertaking of navigational improvements on
the
Sangamon River.
Before the election he served as a captain in a company of the
Illinois militia during the
Black Hawk
War, although he never saw combat. Lincoln returned from the
militia after a few months and was able to campaign throughout the
county before the August 6 election. At , he was tall and "strong
enough to intimidate any rival." At his first political speech, he
grabbed a man accosting a supporter by his "neck and the seat of
his trousers", and threw him. When the votes were counted, Lincoln
finished eighth out of thirteen candidates (only the top four were
elected), but he did manage to secure 277 out of the 300 votes cast
in the New Salem precinct.
In 1834, he won an election to the state legislature. He was
labeled a
Whig, but ran a
bipartisan campaign.He then decided to become a lawyer, and began
teaching himself law by reading
Commentaries on the Laws of
England.
Admitted to the
bar in 1837, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, that April,and
began to practice law with
John T.
Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin, who let
Lincoln have the run of his law library while studying to be a
lawyer.With a reputation as a formidable adversary during
cross-examinations and closing arguments, Lincoln became an able
and successful lawyer.In 1841, Lincoln entered law practice with
William Herndon, whom
Lincoln thought "a studious young man".He served four successive
terms in the
Illinois
House of Representatives as a representative from Sangamon
County, affiliated with the Whig party.In 1837, he and another
legislator declared that slavery was "founded on both injustice and
bad policy",.the first time he had publicly opposed slavery. In the
1835–1836 legislative session he'd voted to restrict
suffrage to whites only. He would later say that he
had been against slavery since he was a boy, but being labelled an
abolitionist was "political suicide" in Sangamon County in those
years, and so he chose his words carefully when discussing the
issue publicly.
National politics
Lincoln in 1846 or 1847
Lincoln was a Whig, and since the early 1830s had strongly admired
the policies and leadership of
Henry
Clay."I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig" he
professed to friends in 1861.The party favored economic expansion
such as improving roads and increasing trade.
In 1846, Lincoln was elected to the
U.S. House of
Representatives, where he served one two-year term.As a House
member, Lincoln was a dedicated Whig, showing up for most votes and
giving speeches that echoed the party line.He used his office as an
opportunity to speak out against the
Mexican–American War, which he
attributed to
President Polk's desire
for "military glory — that attractive rainbow, that rises in
showers of blood".
Lincoln's main stand against Polk occurred
in his Spot Resolutions: The war
had begun with a violent confrontation on territory disputed by
Mexico and Texas
,but
as Lincoln pointed out, Polk had insisted that Mexican soldiers had
"invaded
our territory and shed the blood of our
fellow-citizens on our
own soil".Lincoln demanded that
Polk show Congress the exact spot on which blood had been shed, and
proof that that spot was on American soil. Congress never enacted
the resolution or even debated it,and its introduction resulted in
a loss of political support for Lincoln in his district;one
Illinois newspaper derisively nicknamed him "spotty Lincoln."
Despite his admiration for Henry Clay, Lincoln was a key early
supporter of
Zachary Taylor's
candidacy for the
1848 presidential
election.
When Lincoln's term ended, the incoming
Taylor administration offered him the governorship of the Oregon
Territory
. The territory leaned heavily Democratic,
and Lincoln doubted they would elect him as governor or as a
senator after they were admitted to the union, so he returned to
Springfield.
Prairie lawyer
Back in
Springfield, Lincoln turned most of his energies to making a living
practicing law, even appearing before the Supreme
Court of the United States
, arguing a case involving a canal boat that sank
after hitting a bridge.By the mid-1850s, Lincoln was
representing competing transportation interests; the river
barges and the
railroad.
As a riverboat man, Lincoln had initially favored riverboat
interests, but ultimately he represented whoever hired him.In 1849,
he had received a
patent for a "device to
buoy vessels over shoals". Lincoln's goal had been to lessen the
draft of a river craft by pushing horizontal floats into the water
alongside the hull. The floats would have served as temporary
ballast tanks.The idea was never
commercialized, but Lincoln is still the only person to hold a
patent and serve as President of the United States.As the 1850s
began, Lincoln also argued cases on behalf of the railroad
industry. In 1851, he represented the
Alton & Sangamon Railroad in a dispute
with one of its shareholders, James A. Barret, who had refused to
pay the balance on his pledge to the railroad on the grounds that
it had changed its originally planned route.Lincoln argued that as
a matter of law a corporation is not bound by its original charter
when that charter can be amended in the public interest, that the
newer proposed Alton & Sangamon route was superior and less
expensive, and that accordingly the corporation had a right to sue
Mr. Barret for his delinquent payment.
He won this case, and
the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court
was eventually cited by 25 other courts throughout
the United States. Lincoln appeared in front the of the
Illinois Supreme Court 175 times, 51 times as sole counsel, of
which, 31 were decided in his favor.
Lincoln's most notable criminal trial came in 1858 when he defended
William "Duff" Armstrong, who was on trial
for the murder of James Preston Metzker.The case is famous for
Lincoln's use of
judicial notice to
show an eyewitness had lied on the stand. After the witness
testified to having seen the crime in the moonlight, Lincoln
produced a
Farmers' Almanac to show
that the moon on that date was at such a low angle it could not
have produced enough illumination to see anything clearly. Based on
this evidence, Armstrong was acquitted.
Republican politics 1854–1860
Lincoln returned to politics in response to the
Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which
expressly repealed the limits on slavery's extent as established by
the
Missouri Compromise (1820).
Illinois Democrat
Stephen A.
Douglas, the most powerful man in
the Senate, proposed
popular
sovereignty as the solution to the slavery impasse, and
incorporated it into the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Douglas argued that
in a democracy the people should have the right to decide whether
to allow slavery in their territory, rather than have such a
decision imposed on them by the national Congress.
In the October 16, 1854, "
Peoria Speech",Lincoln
outlined his position on slavery that he would repeat over the next
six years on the route to the presidency.
According to a newspaper account of the speech, Lincoln spoke with
"a thin high-pitched falsetto voice of much carrying power, that
could be heard a long distance in spite of the hustle and bustle of
the crowd ... [with] the accent and pronunciation peculiar to his
native state, Kentucky."
In late 1854, Lincoln decided to run for the United States Senate
as a Whig.Despite leading in the first six rounds of voting in the
state legislature, Lincoln instructed his backers to vote for
Lyman Trumbull to prevent
pro-Nebraska candidate
Joel
Aldrich Matteson from winning. Trumbull beat Matteson in the
tenth round of voting.The Whigs had been irreparably split by the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. "I think I am a Whig, but others say there are
not Whigs, and I am an abolitionist, even though I do no more than
oppose the expansion of slavery" he said. Drawing on remnants of
the old Whig party, and on disenchanted Free Soil, Liberty, and
Democratic party members, he was instrumental in forging the shape
of the new Republican Party.At the Republican convention in 1856,
Lincoln placed second in the contest to become the party's
candidate for Vice-President.
In 1857–58, Douglas broke with President
Buchanan, leading to a fight for control of
the Democratic Party. Some eastern Republicans even favored the
reelection of Douglas in 1858, since he had led the opposition to
the
Lecompton Constitution,
which would have admitted Kansas as a
slave
state.Accepting the Republican nomination for Senate in 1858,
Lincoln delivered
his
famous speech: "'A house divided against itself cannot
stand.'(
Mark 3:25) I believe this
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do
not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to
fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become
all one thing, or all the other."The speech created an evocative
image of the danger of disunion caused by the slavery debate, and
rallied Republicans across the north.
Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858
The 1858 campaign featured the Lincoln–Douglas debates, generally
considered the most famous political debate in American
history.Lincoln warned that "
The Slave
Power" was threatening the values of
republicanism, while
Stephen A. Douglas emphasized the supremacy of
democracy, as set forth in his
Freeport Doctrine, which said that local
settlers should be free to choose whether to allow slavery or not
and could overrule the Supreme Courts
Dred Scott v. Sandford decision.Though the
Republican legislative candidates won more popular votes, the
Democrats won more seats, and the legislature reelected Douglas to
the Senate.Nevertheless, Lincoln's speeches on the issue
transformed him into a national political figure.
On February 27, 1860, New York party leaders invited Lincoln to
give a
speech at Cooper Union to
group of powerful Republicans. In one of the most important
speeches of his career, Lincoln showed that he was a contender for
the Republican's presidential nomination.Journalist
Noah Brooks reported, "No man ever before made
such an impression on his first appeal to a New York
audience."
1860 Presidential election
On May
9–10, 1860, the Illinois Republican State Convention was held in
Decatur
.At this convention, Lincoln received his
first endorsement to run for the presidency.
On May 18, at the
1860 Republican
National Convention in Chicago
, Lincoln emerged as the Republican candidate on the
third ballot, beating candidates such as William H. Seward and
Salmon P. Chase.
Why Lincoln won the nomination has been subject of much debate. His
expressed views on slavery were seen as more moderate than those of
rivals Seward and Chase.Some feel that Seward lost more than
Lincoln won, including Seward himself. Others attribute it to luck,
and the fact that the convention was held in Lincoln's home state.
Historian
Doris Kearns Goodwin
believes the real reason was Lincoln's skill as a politician.Most
Republicans agreed with Lincoln that the North was the aggrieved
partyas the Slave Power tightened its grasp on the national
government with the
Dred Scott decision
and the presidency of
James Buchanan.
Throughout the 1850s Lincoln denied that there would ever be a
civil war, and his supporters repeatedly rejected claims that his
election would incite secession.
Meanwhile, Douglas was selected as the candidate of the northern
Democrats, with
Herschel
Vespasian Johnson as the vice-presidential candidate. Delegates
from eleven slave states walked out of the Democrat's convention,
disagreeing with Douglas's position on
Popular sovereignty, and ultimately
selected
John C. Breckinridge as their candidate.
As Douglas stumped the country, Lincoln was the only one of the
four major candidates to give no speeches whatever. Instead he
monitored the campaign closely but relied on the enthusiasm of the
Republican Party. It did the leg work that produced majorities
across the North. It produced tons of campaign posters and
leaflets, and thousands of newspaper editorials. There were
thousands of Republican speakers who focused first on the party
platform, and second on Lincoln's life story, emphasizing his
childhood poverty. The goal was to demonstrate the superior power
of "free labor", whereby a common farm boy could work his way to
the top by his own efforts. The Republican Party's production of
campaign literature dwarfed the combined opposition. A
Chicago Tribune writer produced a
pamphlet that detailed Lincoln's life, and sold one million
copies.
1860 presidential election
results
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of
the United States, beating Democrat Stephen A. Douglas,
John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democrats,
and
John Bell of
the new
Constitutional Union
Party. He was the first Republican president, winning entirely
on the strength of his support in the North: he was not even on the
ballot in ten states in the South, and won only two of 996 counties
in all the Southern states. Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes,
Douglas 1,376,957 votes, Breckinridge 849,781 votes, and Bell
588,789 votes. The electoral vote was decisive: Lincoln had 180 and
his opponents added together had only 123. Turnout was 82.2%, with
Lincoln winning the free northern states. Douglas won Missouri, and
split New Jersey with Lincoln.Bell won Virginia, Tennessee, and
Kentucky, and Breckinridge won the rest of the South.There were
fusion tickets in which all of
Lincoln's opponents combined to form one ticket in New York, New
Jersey and Rhode Island, but even if the anti-Lincoln vote had been
combined in every state, Lincoln still would have won because he
would still have had a majority in the electoral college.
Presidency and the Civil War
With the emergence of the Republicans as the nation's first major
sectional party by the mid-1850s, the old
Second Party System collapsed and a
realignment created the
Third Party System. It became the stage
on which
sectional tensions were played
out. Although little of the West–the focal point of sectional
tensions– was fit for cotton cultivation, Southern secessionists
read the political fallout as a sign that their power in national
politics was rapidly weakening. The slave system had been
buttressed by the Democratic Party, which was increasingly seen by
anti-slavery elements as representing a more pro-Southern position
that unfairly permitted the
Slave Power
to prevail in the nation's territories and to dominate national
policy before the Civil War. Yet the Democrats suffered a
significant reverse in the electoral realignment of the mid-1850s;
they lost the dominance they had achieved over the Whig Party and,
indeed, were the minority party in most of the northern states. The
1854 election was a
Realigning
election or "critical election" that saw a realignment of
voting patterns.Abraham Lincoln's election was a watershed in the
balance of power of competing national and parochial interests and
affiliations.
Secession winter 1860–1861
As Lincoln's election became more likely, secessionists made clear
their intent to leave the Union.
On December 20, 1860, South
Carolina
took the
lead; by February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana,and Texas had followed.The seven states soon
declared themselves to be a new nation, the
Confederate States of America.
The upper South (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas) listened to, but
initially rejected, the secessionist appeal.President Buchanan and
President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the
Confederacy.Attempts at compromise, such as the
Crittenden Compromise which would have
extended the
Missouri line of
1820, were discussed.
White, pp.
360–361.Despite support for the Crittenden Compromise among some
Republicans, Lincoln denounced it in private letters, saying
"either the Missouri line extended, or ... Pop. Sov. would lose us
everything we gained in the election; that filibustering for all
South of us, and making slave states of it, would follow in spite
of us, under either plan",
while other Republicans publicly stated it
"would amount to a perpetual covenant of war against every people,
tribe, and state owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del
Fuego
."
The Confederate States of America selected
Jefferson Davis on February 9, 1861, as
their provisional President.
President-elect Lincoln
evaded possible
assassins in Baltimore, and on February 23, 1861, arrived in
disguise in Washington, D.C.At his inauguration on March 4, 1861,
sharpshooters watched the inaugural platform, while soldiers on
horseback patrolled the surrounding area.In his
first inaugural address,
Lincoln declared, "I hold that in contemplation of universal law
and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.
Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of
all national governments," arguing further that the purpose of the
United States
Constitution was "to form a more perfect union" than the
Articles of Confederation
which were
explicitly perpetual, thus the Constitution too
was perpetual. He asked rhetorically that even were the
Constitution a simple contract, would it not require the agreement
of all parties to rescind it?
Also in his inaugural address, in a final attempt to reunite the
states and prevent certain war, Lincoln supported the pending
Corwin Amendment to the
Constitution, which had passed Congress the previous day. This
amendment, which explicitly protected slavery in those states in
which it already existed, was considered by Lincoln to be a
possible way to stave off secession.A few short weeks before the
war he went so far as to pen a letter to every governor asking for
their support in ratifying the Corwin Amendment.
By the time Lincoln took office, the Confederacy was an established
fact, and no leaders of the insurrection proposed rejoining the
Union on any terms. The failure of the
Peace Conference of 1861 rendered
legislative compromise virtually impossible. Buchanan might have
allowed the southern states to secede, and some members of his
cabinet recommended that. However, conservative Democratic
nationalists, such as
Jeremiah S.
Black,
Joseph Holt, and
Edwin M. Stanton had taken control of Buchanan's
cabinet in early January, and refused to accept secession.Lincoln
and nearly every Republican leader adopted this position by March
1861: the Union could not be dismantled. Believing that a peaceful
solution was still possible, Lincoln decided to not take any action
against the South unless the Unionists themselves were attacked
first. This finally happened in April 1861.
Historian
Allan Nevins argues that
Lincoln made three miscalculations in believing that he could
preserve the Union, hold government property, and still avoid war.
He "temporarily underrated the gravity of the crisis",
overestimated the strength of Unionist sentiment in the South and
border states, and misunderstood the conditional support of
Unionists in the border states.
Fighting begins
On April 12, 1861, Union troops at
Fort Sumter were fired upon and forced
to surrender. On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to send
detachments totaling 75,000 troops,to recapture forts, protect the
capital, and "preserve the Union", which in his view still existed
intact despite the actions of the seceding states. These events
forced the states to choose sides.
Virginia
declared its secession, after which the Confederate
capital was moved from Montgomery
to Richmond. North Carolina
, Tennessee
, and Arkansas
also voted for secession over the next two
months. Missouri
, Kentucky
and Maryland
threatened secession, but neither they nor the
slave state of Delaware
seceded. Lincoln urgently negotiated with
state leaders there, promising not to interfere with slavery.Troops
headed south towards Washington, D.C. to protect the capital in
response to Lincoln's call.
On April 19, angry secessionist mobs in
Baltimore
, a Maryland city to the north of Washington that
controlled the rail links, attacked Union troops traveling to
the capital. George
William Brown, the Mayor of Baltimore,
and other suspect Maryland politicians were arrested and imprisoned
at Fort
McHenry
.Rebel leaders were also arrested in other
border areas and held in military prisons without trial. Over
18,000 were arrested. One,
Clement
Vallandigham, was exiled, but the remainder were released,
usually after two or three months (
see:
Ex parte Merryman).
Conducting the war effort
The war was a source of constant frustration for the president and
occupied nearly all of his time. He had a contentious relationship
with General
McClellan,
who became
general-in-chief of all the Union armies in the wake of the
embarrassing Union defeat at the First Battle
of Bull Run
and after the retirement of Winfield Scott in late 1861.Despite
his inexperience in military affairs, Lincoln immediately took an
active part in determining war strategy.
His priorities were
twofold: to ensure that Washington was well defended; and to conduct an aggressive war
effort that would satisfy the demand in the North for prompt,
decisive victory.McClellan, a youthful West
Point
graduate and railroad executive called back to
active military service,took a more cautious
approach.
He took several months to plan and execute
his Peninsula Campaign, with the
objective of capturing Richmond
by moving the Army
of the Potomac by boat to the peninsula
and then traveling by land to Richmond.
McClellan's delay concerned Lincoln, as did his insistence that no
troops were needed to defend Washington, Lincoln insisted on
holding some of McClellan's troops to defend the capital, a
decision McClellan blamed for the ultimate failure of the Peninsula
Campaign. McClellan, a conservative
Democrat,was passed over
for general-in-chief (that is, chief strategist) in favor of
Henry Wager Halleck, after
giving Lincoln his
Harrison's Landing Letter, where he
offered unsolicited political advice to Lincoln urging caution in
the war effort.McClellan's letter incensed Radical Republicans, who
successfully pressured Lincoln to appoint
John Pope, a Republican, as
head of the new
Army of Virginia.
Pope complied with Lincoln's strategic desire to move toward
Richmond from the north, thus protecting the capital from attack.
However,
Pope was soundly defeated at the Second
Battle of Bull Run
in the summer of 1862, forcing the Army of the
Potomac to defend Washington for a second time.In response
to his failure, Pope was sent to Minnesota to fight the
Sioux.
Despite his dissatisfaction with McClellan's failure to reinforce
Pope, Lincoln restored him to command of all forces around
Washington, to the dismay of his cabinet (all save Seward), who
wished McClellan gone.
Two days after McClellan's return to
command, General Lee's forces crossed the Potomac River into
Maryland, leading to the Battle of Antietam
(September 1862).The ensuing Union victory,
one of the bloodiest in American history, enabled Lincoln to give
notice that he would issue an Emancipation Proclamation in
January,but he relieved McClellan of his command after waiting for
the conclusion of the 1862 midterm elections and appointed
Republican
Ambrose Burnside to head
the Army of the Potomac.Burnside was politically neutral, which
Lincoln desired, and for the most part supported the President's
aims.Burnside had promised to follow through on Lincoln's strategic
vision for a strong offensive against Lee and Richmond.
After
Burnside was stunningly defeated at Fredericksburg
in December,Joseph
Hooker took command, despite his history of "loose talk" and
criticizing former commanders.
Hooker was routed by Lee at the Battle of
Chancellorsville
in May, 1863,but continued to command his
troops for roughly two months. Hooker did not agree with Lincoln's
desire to divide his troops, and possibly force Lee to do the same,
and tendered his resignation, which was accepted. During the
Gettysburg Campaign he was
replaced by
George Meade.
Using black troops and former slaves was official government policy
after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. At first
Lincoln was reluctant to fully implement this program, but by the
spring of 1863 he was ready to initiate “a massive recruitment of
Negro troops.” In a letter to Andrew Johnson, the military governor
of Tennessee, encouraging him to lead the way in raising black
troops, Lincoln wrote, “The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and
drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would end
the rebellion at once.”By the end of 1863, at Lincoln's direction,
General Lorenzo Thomas had recruited twenty regiments of African
Americans from the Mississippi Valley.
Grant
After the Union victory at Gettysburg, Meade's failure to pursue
Lee and months of inactivity for the Army of the Potomac persuaded
Lincoln that a change was needed. McClellan was seeking the
Democratic nomination for President, and Lincoln worried that Grant
might also have political aspirations. Lincoln convinced himself
that Grant didn't have political aspirations, in the immediate at
least, and made
Ulysses S. Grant commander of the Union
Army.
Grant already had a solid string of
victories in the Western Theater, including the battles of
Vicksburg and Chattanooga
.Responding to criticism of Grant, Lincoln
replied, "I can't spare this man. He fights."
Grant waged his
bloody Overland Campaign in 1864
with a strategy of a war of
attrition, characterized by high Union losses at battles such
as the Wilderness and
Cold
Harbor
, but by proportionately higher Confederate
losses. The high casualty figures alarmed the nation, and,
after Grant lost a third of his army, Lincoln asked what Grant's
plans were. "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer," replied Grant. Lincoln and the Republican party mobilized
support throughout the North, backed Grant to the hilt, and
replaced his losses.
The Confederacy was out of replacements, so
Lee's army shrank with every battle, forcing it back to trenches
outside Petersburg
. In April 1865, Lee's army finally crumbled
under Grant's pounding, and Richmond fell.
Lincoln authorized Grant to target the Confederate infrastructure –
such as plantations, railroads, and bridges – hoping to destroy the
South's morale and weaken its economic ability to continue
fighting.
This strategy allowed Generals Sherman and Sheridan to destroy plantations and towns in
the Shenandoah
Valley
, Georgia
, and South Carolina. The damage caused by
Sherman's March to the
Sea through Georgia totaled more than $100 million by Sherman's
own estimate.
Lincoln grasped the need to control strategic points (such as the
Mississippi River and the fortress city of Vicksburg) and
understood the importance of defeating the enemy's army, rather
than simply capturing territory. He had, however, limited success
in motivating his commanders to adopt his strategies until late
1863, when he found a man who shared his vision of the war in
Ulysses S. Grant. Only then could he relentlessly
pursue a series of coordinated offensives in multiple theaters, and
have a top commander who agreed on the use of black troops.Two days
a week, Lincoln would meet with his cabinet in the afternoon, and
occasionally his wife would force him to take a carriage ride
because she was concerned he was working too hard. Throughout the
war, Lincoln showed an intense interest with the military
campaigns. He spent hours at the War Department telegraph office,
reading dispatches from the field.He visited battle sites
frequently, and seemed fascinated by scenes of war. During
Jubal Anderson Early's
raid on Washington, D.C. in 1864,
Lincoln was watching the combat from an exposed position; captain
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr. shouted at him, "Get down, you damn fool, before you get
shot!"
Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln maintained that the powers of his administration to end
slavery were limited by the Constitution. He expected to cause the
eventual extinction of slavery by stopping its further expansion
into any U.S. territory, and by persuading states to accept
compensated emancipation if
the state would outlaw slavery (an offer that took effect only in
Washington, D.C.). Guelzo says Lincoln believed that shrinking
slavery in this way would make it uneconomical, and place it back
on the road to eventual extinction that the Founders had
envisioned.
In July 1862, Congress passed the Second
Confiscation Act, which freed the slaves
of anyone convicted of aiding the rebellion. Although Lincoln
believed it wasn't in Congress's remit to free any slaves, he
approved the bill. He felt freeing the slaves could only be done by
the Commander in Chief during wartime, and that signing the bill
would help placate those in Congress who wanted to do it through
legislation. In that month, Lincoln discussed a draft of the
Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet. In it, he stated that
"as a fit and necessary military measure" (and according to Donald
not for moral reasons) on January 1, 1863, "all persons held as a
slaves" in the Confederate states will " thenceforward, and
forever, be free."
In a shrewdly penned August reply to an editorial by Horace Greeley
in the influential
New York Tribune, with a draft of the
Proclamation already on Lincoln's desk, the president subordinated
the goal of ending slavery to the cause of preserving the Union,
while, at the same time, preparing the public for emancipation
being incomplete at first. Lincoln had decided at this point that
he could not win the war without freeing the slaves, and so it was
a necessity "to do more to help the cause":
The
Emancipation
Proclamation, announced on September 22, 1862 and put into
effect on January 1, 1863, freed slaves in territories not already
under Union control. As Union armies advanced south, more slaves
were liberated until all of them in Confederate territory (over
three million) were freed. Lincoln later said: "I never, in my
life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in
signing this paper." The proclamation made the abolition of slavery
in the rebel states an official war goal. Lincoln then threw his
energies into passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to permanently
abolish slavery throughout the nation.He personally lobbied
individual Congressmen for the Amendment, which was passed by the
Congress in early 1865, shortly before his death.A few days after
the Emancipation was announced, thirteen Republican governors met
at the
War Governors'
Conference; they supported the president's Proclamation, but
suggested the removal of General
George B. McClellan as commander of the Union's
Army of the Potomac.For some
time, Lincoln continued earlier plans to set up
colonies for the
newly freed slaves. He commented favorably on colonization in the
Emancipation Proclamation, but all attempts at such a massive
undertaking failed. As
Frederick
Douglass observed, Lincoln was, "The first great man that I
talked with in the United States freely who in no single instance
reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the
difference of color."
Gettysburg Address
Although
the Battle of
Gettysburg
was a Union victory, it was also the bloodiest
battle of the war and dealt a blow to Lincoln's war effort.
As the Union Army decreased in numbers due to casualties, more
soldiers were needed to replace the ranks. Lincoln's 1863 military
drafts were considered "odious" among many in the north,
particularly immigrants. The
New
York Draft Riots of July 1863 were the most notable
manifestation of this discontent.Writing to Lincoln in September
1863, the
Governor of
Pennsylvania,
Andrew Gregg
Curtin, warned that political sentiments were turning against
Lincoln and the war effort:
If the election were to occur now, the result would
be extremely doubtful, and although most of our discreet friends
are sanguine of the result, my impression is, the chances would be
against us.
The draft is very odious in the State ... the
Democratic leaders have succeeded in exciting prejudice and
passion, and have infused their poison into the minds of the people
to a very large extent, and the changes are against
us.
The
Gettysburg Address is one of the most quoted speeches
in
United States
history.
It was delivered at the dedication of the
Soldiers'
National Cemetery
in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19,
1863, during the American Civil
War, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of
the Confederacy at the
decisive Battle of
Gettysburg.Abraham Lincoln's carefully crafted address,
secondary to other presentations that day, came to be regarded as
one of the greatest speeches in American history.
In just over two
minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused
by the Declaration of
Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not
merely for the Union
, but as "a
new birth of freedom" that would
bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also
create a unified nation in which states'
rights were no longer dominant.Beginning with the
now-iconic phrase,
Four score and
seven years ago ..., Lincoln referred to the events of the
Civil War and described the
ceremony at Gettysburg as an opportunity not only to consecrate the
grounds of a cemetery, but also to dedicate the living to the
struggle to ensure that "government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth".
1864 election
1864 Presidential election results
After
Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg
, and Chattanooga
in 1863, overall victory seemed at hand, and
Lincoln promoted Ulysses S.
Grant General-in-Chief on March 12,
1864. When the spring campaigns turned into bloody stalemates,
Lincoln supported Grant's strategy of wearing down
Lee's Confederate army at the cost of heavy
Union casualties. With an election looming, he easily defeated
efforts to deny his renomination. At the Convention, the Republican
Party selected
Andrew Johnson, a
War Democrat from the Southern state
of Tennessee, as his running mate in order to form a broader
coalition. They ran on the new
Union Party ticket
uniting Republicans and War Democrats.
Nevertheless, Republicans across the country feared that Lincoln
would be defeated. Acknowledging this fear, Lincoln wrote and
signed a pledge that, if he should lose the election, he would
still defeat the Confederacy before turning over the White
House:
Lincoln did not show the pledge to his cabinet, but asked them to
sign the sealed envelope.While the Democratic platform followed the
Peace wing of the party and
called the war a "failure," their candidate, General
George B. McClellan, supported the war and
repudiated the platform.Lincoln provided Grant with new
replacements and mobilized his party to support Grant and win local
support for the war effort.
Sherman's capture of Atlanta
in September ended defeatist jitters; the
Democratic Party was deeply split, with some leaders and most
soldiers openly for Lincoln; the Union party was united and
energized, and Lincoln was easily reelected in a landslide.
He won all but three states, including 78% of the Union soldiers'
vote.
Second Inaugural Address
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln delivered his
second inaugural address,
his favorite of all his speeches. At this time, a victory over the
rebels was at hand, slavery was dead, and Lincoln was looking to
the future.
Reconstruction
Reconstruction began during the war as Lincoln and his associates
pondered questions of how to reintegrate the Southern states and
what to do with Confederate leaders and the freed slaves. Lincoln
led the "moderates" regarding Reconstruction policy, and was
usually opposed by the Radical Republicans, under
Thaddeus Stevens in the House and
Charles Sumner and
Benjamin Wade in the Senate (though he
cooperated with these men on most other issues). Determined to find
a course that would reunite the nation and not alienate the South,
Lincoln urged that speedy elections under generous terms be held
throughout the war in areas behind Union lines. His
Amnesty Proclamation of December 8, 1863,
offered pardons to those who had not held a Confederate civil
office, had not mistreated Union prisoners, and would sign an oath
of allegiance.Critical decisions had to be made as state after
state was reconquered.
Of special importance were Tennessee, where Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson as governor, and Louisiana
, where Lincoln attempted a plan that would restore
statehood when 10% of the voters agreed to it. The Radicals
thought this policy too lenient, and passed their own plan, the
Wade-Davis Bill, in 1864. When
Lincoln
pocket vetoed the bill, the
Radicals retaliated by refusing to seat representatives elected
from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
Near the end of the war, Lincoln made an extended visit to Grant's
headquarters at City Point, Virginia. This allowed the president to
confer in person with Grant and Sherman about ending hostilities
(as Sherman managed a hasty visit to Grant from his forces in North
Carolina at the same time).Lincoln also was able to visit Richmond
after it was taken by the Union forces and to make a public gesture
of sitting at
Jefferson Davis' own
desk, symbolically saying to the nation that the President of the
United States held authority over the entire land. He was greeted
at the city as a conquering hero by freed slaves, whose sentiments
were epitomized by one admirer's quote, "I know I am free for I
have seen the face of Father Abraham and have felt him." When a
general asked Lincoln how the defeated Confederates should be
treated, Lincoln replied, "Let 'em up easy."
Lincoln arrived back
in Washington on the evening of April 9, 1865, the day Lee
surrendered at Appomattox Court House
in Virginia. The war was effectively over.
The other rebel armies surrendered soon after, and there was no
subsequent guerrilla warfare.
Home front
The last known high-quality photograph
of Lincoln, taken March 1865
Redefining Republicanism
Lincoln's
rhetoric defined the issues of
the war for the nation, the world, and posterity. The
Gettysburg Address defied Lincoln's own
prediction that "the world will little note, nor long remember what
we say here." His second inaugural address is also greatly admired
and often quoted.In recent years, historians have stressed
Lincoln's use of and redefinition of
republican values. As
early as the 1850s, a time when most political rhetoric focused on
the sanctity of the
Constitution, Lincoln shifted
emphasis to the
Declaration of
Independence as the foundation of American political
values—what he called the "sheet anchor" of republicanism.The
Declaration's emphasis on freedom and equality for all, rather than
the Constitution's tolerance of slavers, shifted the debate. As
Diggins concludes regarding the highly influential
Cooper Union speech, "Lincoln presented
Americans a theory of history that offers a profound contribution
to the theory and destiny of republicanism itself."His position
gained strength because he highlighted the moral basis of
republicanism, rather than its legalisms.Nevertheless, in 1861
Lincoln justified the war in terms of legalisms (the Constitution
was a contract, and for one party to get out of a contract all the
other parties had to agree), and then in terms of the national duty
to guarantee a "republican form of government" in every state.That
duty was also the principle underlying federal intervention in
Reconstruction.In
his
Gettysburg Address Lincoln
redefined the American nation, arguing that it was born not in 1789
but in 1776, "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal." He declared that the
sacrifices of battle had rededicated the nation to the propositions
of democracy and equality, "that this nation shall have a new birth
of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for
the people, shall not perish from the earth." By emphasizing the
centrality of the nation, he rebuffed the claims of
state sovereignty. While some critics say
Lincoln moved too far and too fast, they agree that he dedicated
the nation to values that marked "a new founding of the
nation."
Civil liberties suspended
During the Civil War, Lincoln appropriated powers no previous
President had wielded: he used his war powers to proclaim a
blockade, suspended the writ of
habeas corpus, spent money before
Congress appropriated it, and imprisoned between 15,000 and 18,000
suspected Confederate sympathizers without trial.
Domestic measures
Lincoln believed in the Whig theory of the presidency, which left
Congress to write the laws while he signed them; Lincoln only
exercised his
veto power only four times, the
only significant instance being his pocket veto of the Wade-Davis
Bill.Thus, he signed the
Homestead Act
in 1862, making millions of acres of government-held land in the
West available for purchase at very low cost. The
Morrill Land-Grant Colleges
Act, also signed in 1862, provided government grants for state
agricultural colleges in each state. The
Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864
granted federal support for the construction of the United States'
First Transcontinental
Railroad, which was completed in 1869.
Other important legislation involved two measures to raise revenues
for the Federal government: tariffs (a policy with long precedent),
and a Federal income tax (which was new). In 1861, Lincoln signed
the second and third
Morrill Tariff
(the first had become law under
James
Buchanan). In 1861, Lincoln signed the
Revenue Act of 1861creating the first
U.S.
income tax. This created a
flat tax of 3% on incomes above $800 ($ in current
dollars), which was later changed by the
Revenue Act of 1862to a progressive rate
structure.
Lincoln also presided over the expansion of the federal
government's economic influence in several other areas. The
creation of the system of national banks by the
National Banking Acts of 1863, 1864,
and 1865 allowed the creation of a strong national financial
system.
In 1862, Congress created, with Lincoln's
approval, the Department of Agriculture
, although that institution would not become a
Cabinet-level department until 1889. The Legal Tender Act of
1862 established the
United States
Note, the first
paper currency in
United States history since the
Continentals that were issued during
the
Revolution. This was
done to increase the money supply to pay for fighting the
war.
In 1862,
Lincoln sent a senior general, John Pope, to put down the
"Sioux Uprising" in Minnesota
. Presented with 303
death warrant for convicted
Santee Dakota who were
accused of killing innocent farmers, Lincoln ordered a personal
review of these warrants, eventually approving 39 of these for
execution (one was later
reprieved).
Abraham Lincoln is largely responsible for the institution of the
Thanksgiving holiday in
the United States. Prior to Lincoln's presidency, Thanksgiving,
while a regional holiday in New England since the 17th century, had
only been proclaimed by the federal government sporadically, and on
irregular dates. The last such proclamation was during
James Madison's presidency fifty years before.
In 1863, Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November to be a
day of Thanksgiving, and the holiday has been celebrated annually
then ever since.
Assassination
Originally,
John Wilkes Booth, a
well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland, had
formulated a plan to
kidnap Lincoln in
exchange for the release of Confederate prisoners. After attending
an April 11 speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for
blacks, an incensed Booth changed his plans and determined to
assassinate the president.
Learning
that the President and First Lady would be
attending Ford's
Theatre
, he laid his plans, assigning his co-conspirators
to assassinate Vice
President Andrew Johnson and
Secretary of State
William H. Seward.Without his main bodyguard
Ward Hill Lamon, to whom he related his
famous dream regarding his own assassination, Lincoln left to
attend the play
Our American
Cousin on April 14, 1865. As a lone bodyguard wandered,
and Lincoln sat in his state box (Box 7) in the balcony, Booth
crept up behind the President and waited for what he thought would
be the funniest line of the play ("You sock-dologizing old
man-trap"), hoping the laughter would muffle the noise of the
gunshot. When the laughter began, Booth jumped into the box and
aimed a single-shot, round-slug 0.44 caliber Deringer at his head,
firing at point-blank range. Major
Henry
Rathbone momentarily grappled with Booth but was cut by Booth's
knife. Booth then leaped to the stage and shouted "
Sic semper tyrannis!" ( ) and
escaped, despite a broken leg suffered in the leap.A twelve-day
manhunt ensued, in which Booth was chased by Federal agents (under
the direction of
Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton).He was eventually cornered in a
Virginia barn house and shot, dying of his wounds soon after.
An army surgeon, Doctor
Charles Leale,
initially assessed Lincoln's wound as
mortal.
The President was taken across the street
from the theater to the Petersen House
, where he lay in a coma for nine hours before
dying. Several physicians attended Lincoln, including
U.S.
Army Surgeon
General Joseph K. Barnes of the Army
Medical Museum
. Using a probe, Barnes located some
fragments of Lincoln's skull and the ball lodged inside his brain.
Lincoln never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at
7:22:10 a.m. April 15, 1865. He was the first president to be
assassinated or to
lie in
state.Lincoln's body was carried by train in a grand funeral
procession through several states on its way back to Illinois.While
much of the nation mourned him as the savior of the United States,
Copperheads celebrated the
death of a man they considered a tyrant.
The Lincoln Tomb
in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, is tall and,
by 1874, was surmounted with several bronze statues of
Lincoln. To prevent repeated attempts to steal Lincoln's
body and hold it for ransom,
Robert
Todd Lincoln had it
exhumed
and reinterred in concrete several feet thick in 1901.
Administration, Cabinet and Supreme Court appointments
1861–1865
Lincoln
appointed the following Justices to the Supreme
Court of the United States:
| Judge |
Seat |
State |
Began active
service |
Ended active
service |
| Noah Haynes Swayne |
Seat 7 |
Virginia |
18620127January 27, 1862 |
18810124January 24, 1881 |
| Samuel Freeman Miller |
Seat 8 |
Maine |
18620721July 21, 1862 |
18901013October 13, 1890 |
| David
Davis |
Seat 9 |
Maryland |
18621210December 10,
1862 |
18770304March 4, 1877 |
| Stephen Johnson Field |
Seat 10 |
California |
18630520May 20, 1863 |
18971201December 1, 1897 |
| Salmon P. Chase |
Seat 1 |
New Hampshire |
18641215December 15,
1864 |
18730507May 7, 1873 |
States admitted to the Union
Religious and philosophical beliefs
In March
1860 in a speech in New Haven
, Connecticut
, Lincoln said, regarding slavery, “Whenever this
question shall be settled, it must be settled on some philosophical
basis. No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical
public opinion can be permanently maintained." The philosophical
basis for Lincoln's beliefs regarding slavery and other issues of
the day require that Lincoln be examined "seriously as a man of
ideas." Lincoln was a strong supporter of the American
Whig version of
liberal capitalism who,
more than most politicians of the time, was able to express his
ideas within the context of Nineteenth Century religious
beliefs.
There were few people who strongly or directly influenced Lincoln's
moral and intellectual development and perspectives. There was no
teacher, mentor, church leader, community leader, or peer that
Lincoln would credit in later years as a strong influence on his
intellectual development. Lacking a formal education, Lincoln's
personal philosophy was shaped by "an amazingly retentive memory
and a passion for reading and learning." It was Lincoln's reading,
rather than his relationships, that were most influential in
shaping his personal beliefs.
Even as a child, Lincoln largely rejected
organized religion, but the
Calvinistic "doctrine of necessity" would remain a
factor throughout his life. In 1846 Lincoln described the effect of
this doctrine as "that the human mind is impelled to action, or
held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no
control."In April 1864, in justifying his actions regarding
Emancipation, Lincoln wrote, "I claim not to have controlled
events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at
the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what
either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim
it."
As Lincoln matured, and especially during his term as president,
the idea of a divine will somehow interacting with human affairs
increasingly influenced his public expressions. On a personal
level, the death of his son Willie in February 1862 may have caused
Lincoln to look towards religion for answers and solace.After
Willie's death, in the summer or early fall of 1862, Lincoln
attempted to put on paper his private musings on why, from a divine
standpoint, the severity of the war was necessary:
Lincoln's religious
skepticism was fueled
by his exposure to the ideas of the
Lockean Enlightenment and classical liberalism,
especially
economic liberalism.
Consistent with the common practice of the Whig party, Lincoln
would often use the
Declaration of
Independence as the philosophical and moral expression of these
two philosophies.In a February 22, 1861 speech at Independence Hall
in Philadelphia Lincoln said,
He found in the Declaration justification for Whig economic policy
and opposition to territorial expansion and the
nativist platform of the
Know Nothings. In claiming that all men were
created free, Lincoln and the Whigs argued that this freedom
required economic advancement, expanded education, territory to
grow, and the ability of the nation to absorb the growing immigrant
population.
It was the Declaration of Independence, rather than the
Bible, that Lincoln most relied on to oppose any
further territorial expansion of slavery. He saw the Declaration as
more than a political document. To him, as well as to many
abolitionists and other antislavery leaders, it was, foremost, a
moral document that had forever determined valuable criteria in
shaping the future of the nation.
Legacy and memorials
Lincoln's death made the President a national
martyr,regarded by historians in numerous polls as
among the
greatest
presidents in U.S. history, usually in the top three, along
with George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt.A study published
in 2004, found that scholars in the fields of history and politics
ranked Lincoln number one, while law scholars placed him second
after Washington.Among contemporary admirers, Lincoln is usually
seen as personifying classical values of honesty and integrity, as
well as respect for individual and minority rights, and human
freedom in general.Many American organizations of all purposes and
agendas continue to cite his name and image, with interests ranging
from the
gay
rights-supporting
Log Cabin
Republicans to the
insurance
corporation
Lincoln
National Corporation. The
Lincoln automobile brand is also named
after him.
The
ballistic missile
submarine Abraham
Lincoln and the aircraft
carrier Abraham Lincoln 
were named in his honor.During the
Spanish Civil War, the American faction of
the
International Brigades
named themselves the
Abraham
Lincoln Brigade.Lincoln has been memorialized in many town,
city, and county names,
including the capital of Nebraska
.Lincoln, Illinois
, is the only city to be named for Abraham Lincoln
before he became President.
Lincoln's name and image appear in numerous places.
These include the
Lincoln
Memorial
in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Lincoln $5 bill and the
Lincoln cent, and Lincoln's sculpture
on Mount
Rushmore
.
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National
Historical Park
in Hodgenville, Kentucky,Lincoln
Boyhood National Memorial
in Lincoln City, Indiana
,and Lincoln Home
National Historic Site
in Springfield, Illinois,commemorate the
president.
In addition, New Salem,
Illinois (a reconstruction of Lincoln's early adult
hometown),Ford's Theatre, and Petersen House (where he died) are all
preserved as museums.The
state nickname for Illinois is
Land of Lincoln; the slogan has appeared continuously on
nearly all
Illinois license
plates issued since 1954.
Abraham Lincoln's birthday, February 12, was never a national
holiday, but it was observed by 30 states. In 1971,
Presidents Day became a
national holiday, combining Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays,
and replacing most states' celebration of his birthday.As of 2005,
Lincoln's Birthday is a legal holiday in 10 states.The
Abraham Lincoln Association was
formed in 1908 to commemorate the centennial of Lincoln's birth.The
Association is now the oldest group dedicated to the study of
Lincoln.
To commemorate his 200th birthday in February 2009, Congress
established the
Abraham Lincoln
Bicentennial Commission (ALBC) in 2000 to honor
Lincoln.
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and
Museum
is located in Springfield and is run by the State
of Illinois.
Lincoln owned a model 1857
Waltham William Ellery watch, with
serial nmber 67613. This watch is now in the custody of the
Smithsonian Museum.
On March 11, 2009, the National
Museum of American History
found a message engraved inside Lincoln's watch by
a watchmaker named Jonathan Dillon who was repairing it at the
outbreak of the American Civil
War. The engraving reads (in part): "Fort Sumpter
was attacked by the rebels" and "thank God we have
a government."
See also
References
Bibliography
External links
Project Gutenberg eTexts
- List of
- includes major (and minor) state papers, but
not speeches or letters
- to 1856; coverage of national politics. (1832
to 1901); covers 1856 to early 1861; coverage of national politics;
part of 10 volume "life and times" by Lincoln's aides
- (1866 to 1954)
- ; popular
- ; a solid scholarly biography
- ; popular
- ; popular
– June 20, 1863
– October
31, 1864
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Misc
Timeline
Search
