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Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12th, 1809 and passed away on April 15th, 1865. He was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crises - the American Civil War - preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, strengthening the national government and modernizing the economy. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s.
After a series of debates
in 1858 that gave national visibility to his opposition to the
expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost a Senate race to his arch-rival, Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln, a moderate from a swing state, secured the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1860. With almost no support in the South, Lincoln swept the North and was elected president in 1860. His election was the signal for seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederacy.
The departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of
Congress, but no formula for compromise or reconciliation was found.
Lincoln explained in his second inaugural address:
"Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather
than let the Nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than
let it perish, and the war came."
When the North enthusiastically rallied behind the national flag after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter
on April 12th, 1861, Lincoln concentrated on the military and political
dimensions of the war effort. His goal was now to reunite the nation. He
suspended
habeas corpus,
arresting and temporarily detaining thousands of suspected
secessionists in the border states without trial. Lincoln averted
British recognition of the Confederacy by defusing the
Trent affair in late 1861. His numerous complex moves toward ending slavery centered on the Emancipation Proclamation
in 1863, using the Army to protect escaped slaves, encouraging the
border states to outlaw slavery, and helping push through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,
which permanently outlawed slavery. Lincoln closely supervised the war
effort, especially the selection of top generals, including commanding
general Ulysses S. Grant.
Lincoln brought leaders of the major factions of his party into his
cabinet and pressured them to cooperate. Lincoln's Navy set up a naval
blockade that shut down the South's normal trade, helped take control of
Kentucky and Tennessee, gained control of the Southern river system
using gunboats. He tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital
at Richmond, Virginia. Each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another until finally Grant succeeded in 1865.
An exceptionally astute politician deeply involved with power issues in each state, Lincoln reached out to War Democrats and managed his own re-election in the 1864 presidential election.
As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln
found his policies and personality were "blasted from all sides": Radical Republicans demanded harsher treatment of the South, War Democrats desired more compromise, Copperheads despised him, and irreconcilable secessionists plotted his death.
Politically, Lincoln fought back with patronage, by pitting his
opponents against each other, and by appealing to the American people
with his powers of oratory. His Gettysburg Address
of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history. It was an
iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of
nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction,
seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous
reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. Six
days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, however, Lincoln was assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln's death was the first assassination of a U.S. president and sent the nation into mourning. Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12th, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln (née Hanks), in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in Hardin County, Kentucky (now LaRue County). He is descended from Samuel Lincoln, who arrived in Hingham, Massachusetts, from Norfolk, England, in the 17th century. Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake, Abraham,
had moved his family from Virginia to Kentucky, where he was ambushed
and killed in an Indian raid in 1786, with his children, including
Lincoln's father Thomas, looking on. Thomas was left to make his own way on the frontier. Lincoln's mother, Nancy, was the daughter of Lucy Hanks, and was born in what is now Mineral County,
West Virginia, then part of Virginia. Lucy moved with Nancy to
Kentucky. Nancy Hanks married Thomas, who became a respected citizen. He
bought and sold several farms, including Knob Creek Farm. The family attended a Separate Baptists church, which had restrictive moral standards and opposed alcohol, dancing, and slavery.
Thomas enjoyed considerable status in Kentucky - where he sat on juries,
appraised estates, served on country slave patrols, and guarded
prisoners. By the time his son Abraham was born, Thomas owned two
600-acre (240 ha) farms, several town lots, livestock, and horses. He
was among the richest men in the county. However, in 1816, Thomas lost
all of his land in court cases because of faulty property titles.
The family moved north across the Ohio River to free (i.e., non-slave) territory and made a new start in what was then Perry County but is now Spencer County, Indiana. Lincoln later noted that this move was "partly on account of slavery" but mainly due to land title difficulties. In Indiana, when Lincoln was nine, his mother Nancy died of milk sickness in 1818. After the death of Lincoln's mother, his older sister, Sarah,
took charge of caring for him until their father remarried in 1819;
Sarah later died in her 20s while giving birth to a stillborn son.
Thomas Lincoln's new wife was the widow Sarah Bush Johnston, the mother of three children. Lincoln became very close to his stepmother, and referred to her as "Mother".
As a pre-teen, he did not like the hard labor associated with frontier
life. Some in his family, and in the neighborhood, for a time considered
him to be lazy.
As he grew into his teens, he willingly took responsibility for all
chores expected of him as one of the boys in the household and became an
adept axeman in his work building rail fences. He attained a reputation
for brawn and audacity after a very competitive wrestling match to
which he was challenged by the renowned leader of a group of ruffians,
"the Clary's Grove boys".
Lincoln also agreed with the customary obligation of a son to give his
father all earnings from work done outside the home until age 21. In later years, Lincoln occasionally loaned his father money.
Lincoln became increasingly distant from his father, in part because of
his father's lack of education. While young Lincoln's formal education
consisted approximately of a year's worth of classes from several
itinerant teachers, he was mostly self-educated and was an avid reader
and often sought access to any new books in the village. He read and
reread the
King James Bible, Aesop's
Fables, Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress, Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe, and Franklin's
Autobiography.
In 1830, fearing a milk sickness outbreak along the Ohio River, the
Lincoln family moved west, where they settled on public land in Macon County, Illinois, another free, non-slave state. In 1831, Thomas relocated the family to a new homestead in Coles County,
Illinois. It was then that, as an ambitious 22-year-old who was now old
enough to make his own decisions, Lincoln struck out on his own.
Canoeing down the Sangamon River, Lincoln ended up in the village of New Salem in Sangamon County. In the spring of 1831, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods by flatboat
from New Salem to New Orleans via the Sangamon, Illinois, and
Mississippi rivers. After arriving in New Orleans - and witnessing slavery
firsthand - he walked back home.
Lincoln's first romantic interest was Ann Rutledge,
whom he met when he first moved to New Salem; by 1835, they were in a
relationship but not formally engaged. She died at the age of 22 on
August 25, 1835, most likely of typhoid fever.
In the early 1830s, he met Mary Owens from Kentucky when she was
visiting her sister. Late in 1836, Lincoln agreed to a match with Mary
if she 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 suggesting he would not blame her if she ended the relationship.
She never replied and the courtship ended.
In 1840, Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd, who was from a wealthy slave-holding family in Lexington, Kentucky. They met in Springfield, Illinois, in December 1839 and were engaged the following December. A wedding set for January 1st, 1841, was canceled when the two broke off their engagement at Lincoln's initiative. They later met again at a party and married on November 4th, 1842, in the Springfield mansion of Mary's married sister.
While preparing for the nuptials and feeling anxiety again, Lincoln,
when asked where he was going, replied, "To hell, I suppose."
In 1844, the couple bought a house
in Springfield near Lincoln's law office. Mary Todd Lincoln kept house,
often with the help of a relative or hired servant girl. Robert Todd Lincoln was born in 1843 and Edward Baker Lincoln (Eddie) in 1846. Lincoln "was remarkably fond of children", and the Lincolns were not considered to be strict with their children. Edward died on February 1st, 1850, in Springfield, probably of tuberculosis. "Willie" Lincoln was born on December 21st, 1850, and died on February 20th, 1862. The Lincolns' fourth son, Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, was born on April 4, 1853, and died of heart failure at the age of 18 on July 16th, 1871. Robert was the only child to live to adulthood and have children. His last descendant, grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, died in 1985.
The deaths of their sons had profound effects on both parents. Later in
life, Mary struggled with the stresses of losing her husband and sons,
and Robert Lincoln committed her temporarily to a mental health asylum
in 1875. Abraham Lincoln suffered from "melancholy", a condition which now is referred to as clinical depression
In 1832, at age 23, Lincoln and a partner bought a small general store on credit in New Salem,
Illinois. Although the economy was booming in the region, the business
struggled and Lincoln eventually sold his share. That March he began his
political career with his first campaign for the Illinois General Assembly.
He had attained local popularity and could draw crowds as a natural
raconteur in New Salem, though he lacked an education, powerful friends,
and money, which may be why he lost. He advocated navigational
improvements on the Sangamon River.
Before the election, Lincoln served as a captain in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War.
Following his return, Lincoln continued his campaign for the August 6
election for the Illinois General Assembly. At 6 feet 4 inches,
he was tall and "strong enough to intimidate any rival". At his first
speech, when he saw a supporter in the crowd being attacked, Lincoln
grabbed the assailant by his "neck and the seat of his trousers" and
threw him.
Lincoln finished eighth out of 13 candidates (the top four were
elected), though he received 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem
precinct.
Lincoln served as New Salem's postmaster and later as county surveyor,
all the while reading voraciously. He then decided to become a lawyer
and began teaching himself law by reading Blackstone's
Commentaries on the Laws of England and other law books. Of his learning method, Lincoln stated: "I studied with nobody". His second campaign in 1834 was successful. He won election to the state legislature; though he ran as a Whig, many Democrats favored him over a more powerful Whig opponent. Admitted to the bar in 1836, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and began to practice law under John T. Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin.
Lincoln became an able and successful lawyer with a reputation as a
formidable adversary during cross-examinations and closing arguments. He
partnered with Stephen T. Logan from 1841 until 1844, when he began his practice with William Herndon, whom Lincoln thought "a studious young man". He served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives as a Whig representative from Sangamon County.
In the 1835–36 legislative session, he voted to expand suffrage to white males, whether landowners or not. He was known for his "free soil" stance of opposing both slavery and abolitionism.
He first articulated this in 1837, saying, "[The] Institution of
slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but the
promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate
its evils." He closely followed Henry Clay in supporting the American Colonization Society program of making the abolition of slavery practical by helping the freed slaves to settle in Liberia in Africa.
From the early 1830s, Lincoln was a steadfast Whig and professed to friends in 1861 to be, "an old line Whig, a disciple of Henry Clay". The party, including Lincoln, favored economic modernization in banking, protective tariffs to fund internal improvements including railroads, and espoused urbanization as well.
In 1846, Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives,
where he served one two-year term. He was the only Whig in the Illinois
delegation, but he showed his party loyalty by participating in almost
all votes and making speeches that echoed the party line. Lincoln, in collaboration with abolitionist Congressman Joshua R. Giddings, wrote a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia
with compensation for the owners, enforcement to capture fugitive
slaves, and a popular vote on the matter. He abandoned the bill when it
failed to garner sufficient Whig supporters. On foreign and military policy, Lincoln spoke 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 also supported the Wilmot Proviso, which, if it had been adopted, would have banned slavery in any U.S. territory won from Mexico.
Lincoln emphasized his opposition to Polk by drafting and introducing his Spot Resolutions.
The war had begun with a Mexican slaughter of American soldiers in
territory disputed by Mexico and the U.S.; Polk 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 prove that the spot was on American soil.
Congress never enacted the resolution or even debated it, the national
papers ignored it, and it resulted in a loss of political support for
Lincoln in his district. One Illinois newspaper derisively nicknamed him
"spotty Lincoln". Lincoln later regretted some of his statements, especially his attack on the presidential war-making powers.
Realizing Clay was unlikely to win the presidency, Lincoln, who had
pledged in 1846 to serve only one term in the House, supported General Zachary Taylor for the Whig nomination in the 1848 presidential election. Taylor won and Lincoln hoped to be appointed Commissioner of the General Land Office, but that lucrative patronage job went to an Illinois rival, Justin Butterfield, considered by the administration to be a highly skilled lawyer, but in Lincoln's view, an "old fossil". The administration offered him the consolation prize of secretary or governor of the Oregon Territory.
This distant territory was a Democratic stronghold, and acceptance of
the post would have effectively ended his legal and political career in
Illinois, so he declined and resumed his law practice.
By the 1850s, slavery was still legal in the southern United States, but
had been generally outlawed in the northern states, such as Illinois. Lincoln disapproved of slavery, and the spread of slavery to new U.S. territory in the west. He returned to politics to oppose the pro-slavery Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854); this law repealed the slavery-restricting Missouri Compromise (1820). Senior Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois had incorporated popular sovereignty
into the Act. Douglas' provision, which Lincoln opposed, specified
settlers had the right to determine locally whether to allow slavery in
new U.S. territory, rather than have such a decision restricted by the
national Congress. Eric Foner
(2010) contrasts the abolitionists and anti-slavery Radical Republicans
of the Northeast who saw slavery as a sin, with the conservative
Republicans who thought it was bad because it hurt white people and
blocked progress. Foner argues that Lincoln was a moderate in the
middle, opposing slavery primarily because it violated the republicanism principles of the Founding Fathers, especially the equality of all men and democratic self-government as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
On October 16, 1854, in his "Peoria Speech", Lincoln declared his opposition to slavery, which he repeated en route to the presidency. Speaking in his Kentucky accent, with a very powerful voice, he said the Kansas Act had a "
declared indifference, but as I must think, a covert
real
zeal for the spread of slavery. I cannot but hate it. I hate it because
of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it
deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ..."
In late 1854, Lincoln ran as a Whig for the U.S. Senate seat from
Illinois. At that time, senators were elected by the state legislature.
After leading in the first six rounds of voting in the Illinois
assembly, his support began to dwindle, and Lincoln instructed his
backers to vote for Lyman Trumbull, who defeated opponent Joel Aldrich Matteson.
The Whigs had been irreparably split by the Kansas–Nebraska Act.
Lincoln wrote, "I think I am a Whig, but others say there are no Whigs,
and that I am an abolitionist, even though I do no more than oppose the
extension of slavery." 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 1856 Republican National Convention, Lincoln placed second in the contest to become the party's candidate for vice president.
In 1857–1858, Douglas broke with President James Buchanan,
leading to a fight for control of the Democratic Party. Some eastern
Republicans even favored the reelection of Douglas for the Senate in
1858, since he had led the opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state. In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued its decision in
Dred Scott v. Sandford; Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
opined that blacks were not citizens, and derived no rights from the
Constitution. Lincoln denounced the decision, alleging it was the
product of a conspiracy of Democrats to support the Slave Power.
Lincoln argued, "The authors of the Declaration of Independence never
intended 'to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral
developments, or social capacity', but they 'did consider all men
created equal - equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'."
After the state Republican party convention nominated him for the U.S. Senate in 1858, Lincoln delivered his House Divided Speech, drawing on Mark 3:25:
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. 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.
The stage was then set for the campaign for statewide election of the
Illinois legislature which would, in turn, select Lincoln or Douglas as
its U.S. senator.
On May 9th - 10th, 1860, the Illinois Republican State Convention was held in Decatur. Lincoln's followers organized a campaign team led by David Davis, Norman Judd, Leonard Swett, and Jesse DuBois, and Lincoln received his first endorsement to run for the presidency.
Exploiting the embellished legend of his frontier days with his father,
Lincoln's supporters adopted the label of "The Rail Candidate". On May 18th, at the Republican National Convention
in Chicago, Lincoln's friends promised and manipulated and won the
nomination on the third ballot, beating candidates such as William H.
Seward and Salmon P. Chase. A former Democrat, Hannibal Hamlin
of Maine, was nominated for Vice President to balance the ticket.
Lincoln's success depended on his reputation as a moderate on the
slavery issue, and his strong support for Whiggish programs of internal
improvements and the protective tariff.
On the third ballot Pennsylvania put him over the top. Pennsylvania
iron interests were reassured by his support for protective tariffs.
Lincoln's managers had been adroitly focused on this delegation as well
as the others, while following Lincoln's strong dictate to "Make no
contracts that bind me".
Most Republicans agreed with Lincoln that the North was the aggrieved
party, as 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 doubted the prospects of
civil war, and his supporters rejected claims that his election would
incite secession. Meanwhile, Douglas was selected as the candidate of the Northern Democrats. Delegates from 11 slave states walked out of the Democratic convention, disagreeing with Douglas' position on popular sovereignty, and ultimately selected John C. Breckinridge as their candidate.
As Douglas and the other candidates went through with their campaigns,
Lincoln was the only one of them who gave no speeches. Instead, he
monitored the campaign closely and relied on the enthusiasm of the
Republican Party. The party did the leg work that produced majorities
across the North, and produced an abundance of campaign posters,
leaflets, and 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 100,000 to 200,000 copies.
On November 6th, 1860, Lincoln was elected 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 president from the Republican Party. Winning entirely
on the strength of his support in the North and West, no ballots were
cast for him in 10 of the 15 Southern slave states, and he 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. Turnout was 82.2 percent, with
Lincoln winning the free Northern states, as well as California and
Oregon. Douglas won Missouri, and split New Jersey with Lincoln. Bell won Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and Breckinridge won the rest of the South. Although Lincoln won only a plurality of the popular vote, his victory in the electoral college was decisive: Lincoln had 180 and his opponents added together had only 123. There were fusion tickets
in which all of Lincoln's opponents combined to support the same slate
of Electors 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 a majority in the Electoral College.
As Lincoln's election became evident, secessionists made clear their
intent to leave the Union before he took office the next March.
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina took the lead by adopting an
ordinance of secession; by February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed. Six of these states then adopted a constitution and declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America.
The upper South and border states (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, declaring secession illegal. The Confederacy selected Jefferson Davis as its provisional President on February 9th, 1861.
There were attempts at compromise. The Crittenden Compromise would have extended the Missouri Compromise line of 1820, dividing the territories into slave and free, contrary to the Republican Party's free-soil platform.
Lincoln rejected the idea, saying, "I will suffer death before I
consent ... to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the
privilege to take possession of this government to which we have a
constitutional right." Lincoln, however, did tacitly support the proposed Corwin Amendment
to the Constitution, which passed Congress before Lincoln came into
office and was then awaiting ratification by the states. That proposed
amendment would have protected slavery in states where it already
existed and would have guaranteed that Congress would not interfere with
slavery without Southern consent.
A few weeks before the war, Lincoln sent a letter to every governor
informing them Congress had passed a joint resolution to amend the
Constitution. Lincoln was open to the possibility of a constitutional convention to make further amendments to the Constitution.
En route to his inauguration by train, Lincoln addressed crowds and legislatures across the North. The president-elect then evaded possible assassins in Baltimore, who were uncovered by Lincoln's head of security, Allan Pinkerton. On February 23rd, 1861, he arrived in disguise in Washington, D.C., which was placed under substantial military guard. Lincoln directed his inaugural address to the South, proclaiming once again that he had no intention, or inclination, to abolish slavery in the Southern states.
The President ended his address with an appeal to the people of the
South: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies ... The
mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot
grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land,
will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely
they will be, by the better angels of our nature." The failure of the Peace Conference of 1861
signaled that legislative compromise was implausible. By March 1861, no
leaders of the insurrection had proposed rejoining the Union on any
terms. Meanwhile, Lincoln and nearly every Republican leader agreed that
the dismantling of the Union could not be tolerated.
Lincoln understood that the Federal government's power to end slavery
was limited by the Constitution, which before 1865, committed the issue
to individual states. He argued before and during his election that the
eventual extinction of slavery would result from preventing its
expansion into new U.S. territory. At the beginning of the war, he also
sought to persuade the states to accept compensated emancipation
in return for their prohibition of slavery. Lincoln believed that
curtailing slavery in these ways would economically expunge it, as
envisioned by the Founding Fathers, under the constitution. President Lincoln rejected two geographically limited emancipation attempts by Major General John C. Frémont in August 1861 and by Major General David Hunter in May 1862, on the grounds that it was not within their power, and it would upset the border states loyal to the Union.
On June 19, 1862, endorsed by Lincoln, Congress passed an act banning
slavery on all federal territory. In July 1862, the Second Confiscation Act
was passed, which set up court procedures that could free the slaves of
anyone convicted of aiding the rebellion. Although Lincoln believed it
was not within Congress's power to free the slaves within the states, he
approved the bill in deference to the legislature. He felt such action
could only be taken by the Commander-in-Chief using war powers granted
to the president by the Constitution, and Lincoln was planning to take
that action. 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, on January 1, 1863, all persons held
as slaves in the Confederate states will thenceforward, and forever, be
free."
The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on September 22nd, 1862, and put
into effect on January 1st, 1863, declared free the slaves in 10 states
not then under Union control, with exemptions specified for areas
already under Union control in two states.
Lincoln spent the next 100 days preparing the army and the nation for
emancipation, while Democrats rallied their voters in the 1862 off-year
elections by warning of the threat freed slaves posed to northern
whites.
Once the abolition of slavery in the rebel states became a military
objective, as Union armies advanced south, more slaves were liberated
until all three million of them in Confederate territory were freed.
Lincoln's comment on the signing of the Proclamation was: "I never, in
my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing
this paper." 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. A few days after Emancipation was announced, 13 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 Army.
Using former slaves in the military was official government policy
after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. By the spring of
1863, Lincoln was ready to recruit black troops in more than token
numbers. 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 50,000 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 20 regiments of blacks from the Mississippi Valley. Frederick Douglass once observed of Lincoln: "In his company, I was never reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color".
Lincoln was a master politician, bringing together - and holding
together - all the main factions of the Republican Party, and bringing in War Democrats such as Edwin M. Stanton and Andrew Johnson
as well. Lincoln spent many hours a week talking to politicians from
across the land and using his patronage powers - greatly expanded over
peacetime - to hold the factions of his party together, build support for
his own policies, and fend off efforts by Radicals to drop him from the
1864 ticket. At its 1864 convention, the Republican Party selected Andrew Johnson,
a War Democrat from the Southern state of Tennessee, as his running
mate. To broaden his coalition to include War Democrats as well as
Republicans, Lincoln ran under the label of the new Union Party.
When Grant's 1864 spring campaigns turned into bloody stalemates and
Union casualties mounted, the lack of military success wore heavily on
the President's re-election prospects, and many Republicans across the
country feared that Lincoln would be defeated. Sharing 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.
Reconstruction began during the war, as Lincoln and his associates
anticipated questions of how to reintegrate the conquered southern
states, and how to determine the fates of Confederate leaders and freed
slaves. Shortly after Lee's surrender, a general had asked Lincoln how
the defeated Confederates should be treated, and Lincoln replied, "Let
'em up easy."
In keeping with that sentiment, Lincoln led the moderates regarding
Reconstruction policy, and was opposed by the Radical Republicans, under
Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, Sen. Charles Sumner and Sen. Benjamin Wade,
political allies of the president on 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. His Amnesty Proclamation
of December 8th, 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.
After implementing the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not apply to
every state, Lincoln increased pressure on Congress to outlaw slavery
throughout the entire nation with a constitutional amendment. Lincoln
declared that such an amendment would "clinch the whole matter".
By December 1863 a proposed constitutional amendment that would outlaw
slavery absolutely was brought to Congress for passage. This first
attempt at an amendment failed to pass, falling short of the required
two-thirds majority on June 15th, 1864, in the House of Representatives.
Passage of the proposed amendment became part of the Republican/Unionist
platform in the election of 1864. After a long debate in the House, a
second attempt passed Congress on January 31, 1865, and was sent to the
state legislatures for ratification. Upon ratification, it became the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 6th, 1865.
As the war drew to a close, Lincoln's presidential Reconstruction for
the South was in flux; having believed the federal government had
limited responsibility to the millions of freedmen. He signed into law Senator Charles Sumner's Freedman's Bureau
bill that set up a temporary federal agency designed to meet the
immediate material needs of former slaves. The law assigned land for a
lease of three years with the ability to purchase title for the
freedmen. Lincoln stated that his Louisiana plan did not apply to all
states under Reconstruction. Shortly before his assassination, Lincoln
announced he had a new plan for southern Reconstruction. Discussions
with his cabinet revealed Lincoln planned short-term military control
over southern states, until readmission under the control of southern
Unionists.
The successful reunification of the states had consequences for the name
of the country. The term "the United States" has historically been
used, sometimes in the plural ("these United States"), and other times
in the singular, without any particular grammatical consistency. The
Civil War was a significant force in the eventual dominance of the
singular usage by the end of the 19th century.
John Wilkes Booth
was a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland; though he
never joined the Confederate army, he had contacts with the Confederate
secret service. In 1864, Booth formulated a plan (very similar to one of Thomas N. Conrad previously authorized by the Confederacy) to kidnap Lincoln in exchange for the release of Confederate prisoners.
After attending an April 11th, 1865, speech in which Lincoln promoted
voting rights for blacks, an incensed Booth changed his plans and became
determined to assassinate the president. Learning that the President, First Lady, and head Union general Ulysses S. Grant would be attending Ford's Theatre, Booth formulated a plan with co-conspirators to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William H. Seward and General Grant. Without his main bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln left to attend the play
Our American Cousin on April 14th. Grant along with his wife chose at the last minute to travel to Philadelphia instead of attending the play.
Lincoln's bodyguard, John Parker, left Ford's Theater during
intermission to join Lincoln's coachman for drinks in the Star Saloon
next door. The now unguarded President sat in his state box in the
balcony. Seizing the opportunity, Booth crept up from behind and at
about 10:13 pm, aimed at the back of Lincoln's head and fired at
point-blank range, mortally wounding the President. Major Henry Rathbone momentarily grappled with Booth, but Booth stabbed him and escaped.
After being on the run for 10 days, Booth was tracked down and found
on a farm in Virginia, some 70 miles south of Washington, D.C.
After a brief fight with Union troops, Booth was killed by Sergeant Boston Corbett on April 26th.
An Army surgeon, Doctor Charles Leale,
was sitting nearby at the theater and immediately assisted the
President. He found the President unresponsive, barely breathing and
with no detectable pulse. Having determined that the President had been
shot in the head, and not stabbed in the shoulder as originally thought,
he made an attempt to clear the blood clot, after which the President
began to breathe more naturally. The dying man was taken across the street to Petersen House. After being in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15. Presbyterian minister Phineas Densmore Gurley,
then present, was asked to offer a prayer, after which Secretary of War
Stanton saluted and said, "Now he belongs to the ages."
Lincoln's flag-enfolded body was then escorted in the rain to the White
House by bareheaded Union officers, while the city's church bells rang.
President Johnson was sworn in at 10:00 am, less than 3 hours after
Lincoln's death. The late President lay in state in the East Room, and
then in the Capitol Rotunda from April 19 through April 21. For his
final journey with his son Willie, both caskets were transported in the
executive coach "United States" and for three weeks the
Lincoln Special funeral train decorated in black bunting
bore Lincoln's remains on a slow circuitous waypoint journey from
Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois stopping at many cities across
the North for large-scale memorials attended by hundreds of thousands,
as well as many people who gathered in informal trackside tributes with
bands, bonfires and hymn singing or silent reverence with hat in hand as the railway procession slowly passed by.
Source:
Wikipedia
This work is released through CC 3.0 BY-SA -
Creative Commons
Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on December 29th, 1808, to Jacob Johnson
(1778–1812) and Mary ("Polly") McDonough (1783–1856), a laundress. He
had a brother William, four years his elder, and an older sister
Elizabeth, who died in childhood. (Being born in a log cabin
was a political asset in the 19th century, and in the years to come
Johnson would not hesitate to remind voters of his humble birth.)
Jacob Johnson was a poor man, as was his father, William, but became
town constable of Raleigh before marrying and starting a family. He died
of an apparent heart attack while ringing the town bell, shortly after
rescuing three drowning men when Andrew was three.
Polly Johnson had worked as a washerwoman; she continued in that trade
as the sole support of her children. At the time, her occupation was
considered less than respectable as it often took her into others' homes
unaccompanied; the Johnsons were considered white trash,
and there were rumors that Andrew, who did not resemble his siblings,
was fathered by another man. Eventually, Polly Johnson married Turner
Doughtry, who was also poor.
Johnson left North Carolina for Tennessee, traveling mostly on foot. After a brief period in Knoxville, he moved to Mooresville, Alabama. He then worked as a tailor in Columbia, Tennessee,
but was called back to Raleigh by his mother and stepfather, who saw
limited opportunities there and who wished to emigrate west. Johnson and
his party traveled through the Blue Ridge Mountains to Greeneville, Tennessee.
Andrew Johnson fell in love with the town at first sight, and when he
became prosperous purchased the land where he had first camped and
planted a tree in commemoration.
In his first term in the legislature, which met in the state capital of
Nashville, Johnson did not consistently vote with either the Democratic or the newly formed Whig Party, though he revered President Andrew Jackson,
a Democrat and Tennessean. The major parties were still determining
their core values and policy proposals with the party system in a state
of flux. The Whig Party had organized in opposition to Jackson, fearing
the concentration of power in the Executive Branch of the government;
Johnson differed from the Whigs as he opposed more than minimal
government spending and spoke against aid for the railroads, while his
constituents hoped for improvements in transportation. After Brookins Campbell
and the Whigs defeated Johnson for re-election in 1837, Johnson would
not lose another race for thirty years. In 1839, he sought to regain his
seat, initially as a Whig, but when another candidate sought the Whig
nomination, he ran as a Democrat and was elected. From that time he
supported the Democratic party and built a powerful political machine in
Greene County.
Johnson became a strong advocate of the Democratic Party, noted for his
oratory, and in an era when public speaking both informed the public
and entertained it, people flocked to hear him. 
If Johnson considered retiring from politics upon deciding not to seek re-election, he soon changed his mind.
The congressman's political friends began to maneuver to get him the
nomination for governor. The Democratic convention unanimously named
him, though some party members were not happy at his selection. The
Whigs had won the past two gubernatorial elections, and still controlled
the legislature. That party nominated Henry, making the "Henry-mandering" of the First District an immediate issue.
The two men debated in county seats the length of Tennessee before the
meetings were called off two weeks before the August 1853 election due
to illness in Henry's family. Johnson won the election by 63,413 votes to 61,163; some votes for him were cast in return for his promise to support Whig Nathaniel Taylor for his old seat in Congress. 
As military governor, Johnson sought to eliminate rebel influences in
the state, demanding loyalty oaths from public officials, and shutting
down newspapers run by Confederate sympathizers. At that time, much of
eastern Tennessee remained in rebel hands, and the ebb and flow of war
through 1862 sometimes brought Confederate control close to Nashville.
The Confederates did allow his wife and family to pass through the lines
to him.
Johnson undertook the defense of Nashville as best he could; the city
was continually harassed with cavalry raids led by General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Relief from Union regulars did not come until William S. Rosecrans defeated the Confederates at Murfreesboro at the start of 1863. Much of eastern Tennessee was retaken later that year. 
Now Vice President-elect, Johnson was anxious to complete the work of
re-establishing civilian government in Tennessee, although the timetable
for the election of a new governor did not allow it to take place until
after Inauguration Day, March 4. He hoped to remain in Nashville to
complete his task, but was told by Lincoln's advisers that he could not
stay, but would be sworn in with Lincoln. In these months, Union troops
finished the retaking of eastern Tennessee, including Greeneville. Just
before his departure, the voters of Tennessee ratified a new
constitution, abolishing slavery, on February 22, 1865. One of Johnson's
final acts as military governor was to certify the results.
Upon taking office, Johnson faced the question of what to do with the
Southern states. President Lincoln had authorized loyalist governments
in Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee as the Union came to
control large parts of those states. Lincoln had advocated a ten percent plan
that would allow recognized elections after ten percent of the voters
in any state took an oath of future loyalty. Congress considered this
too lenient; its own plan, requiring a majority of voters to take the loyalty oath for a state to be admitted, passed both houses in 1864, but Lincoln pocket vetoed it.
Northerners were outraged at the idea of unrepentant Confederate
leaders, such as Stephens, rejoining the federal government at a time
when emotional wounds from the war remained raw. They saw the Black
Codes placing African-Americans in a position barely above slavery.
Republicans also feared that restoration of the Southern states would
return the Democrats to power.
In addition, according to David O. Stewart in his book on Johnson's
impeachment, "the violence and poverty that oppressed the South would
galvanize the opposition to Johnson" 
Grant, under protest, followed Johnson's order transferring Sheridan and another of the district commanders, Daniel Sickles,
who had angered Johnson by firmly following Congress's plan. The
President also issued a proclamation pardoning most Confederates,
exempting those who held office under the Confederacy, or who had served
in federal office before the war and had breached their oaths. Although
Republicans expressed anger with his actions, the 1867 elections
generally went Democratic. No seats in Congress were directly elected in
the polling, but the Democrats took control of the Ohio General Assembly, allowing them to defeat for re-election one of Johnson's strongest opponents, Senator Benjamin Wade. Voters in Ohio, Connecticut, and Minnesota turned down propositions to grant African-Americans the vote. The adverse results momentarily put a stop to Republican calls to impeach Johnson, who was elated by the elections.
Nevertheless, once Congress met in November, the Judiciary Committee
reversed itself and passed a resolution of impeachment against Johnson.
After much debate about whether anything the President had done was a
high crime or misdemeanor, the standard under the Constitution, the
resolution was defeated by the House of Representatives on December 7th,
1867, by a vote of 57 in favor to 108 opposed. 
On March 3rd, the President hosted a large public reception at the White
House on his final full day in office. Grant had made it known that he
was unwilling to ride in the same carriage as Johnson, as was customary,
and Johnson refused to go to the inauguration at all. Despite an effort
by Seward to prompt a change of mind, he spent the morning of March 4
finishing last-minute business, and then shortly after noon rode from
the White House to the home of a friend. 
.JPG)
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12th, 1809 and passed away on April 15th, 1865. He was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crises - the American Civil War - preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, strengthening the national government and modernizing the economy. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s.
An exceptionally astute politician deeply involved with power issues in each state, Lincoln reached out to War Democrats and managed his own re-election in the 1864 presidential election.
As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln
found his policies and personality were "blasted from all sides": Radical Republicans demanded harsher treatment of the South, War Democrats desired more compromise, Copperheads despised him, and irreconcilable secessionists plotted his death.
Politically, Lincoln fought back with patronage, by pitting his
opponents against each other, and by appealing to the American people
with his powers of oratory. His Gettysburg Address
of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history. It was an
iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of
nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction,
seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous
reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. Six
days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, however, Lincoln was assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln's death was the first assassination of a U.S. president and sent the nation into mourning. Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.
The family moved north across the Ohio River to free (i.e., non-slave) territory and made a new start in what was then Perry County but is now Spencer County, Indiana. Lincoln later noted that this move was "partly on account of slavery" but mainly due to land title difficulties. In Indiana, when Lincoln was nine, his mother Nancy died of milk sickness in 1818. After the death of Lincoln's mother, his older sister, Sarah,
took charge of caring for him until their father remarried in 1819;
Sarah later died in her 20s while giving birth to a stillborn son.
Lincoln's first romantic interest was Ann Rutledge,
whom he met when he first moved to New Salem; by 1835, they were in a
relationship but not formally engaged. She died at the age of 22 on
August 25, 1835, most likely of typhoid fever.
In the early 1830s, he met Mary Owens from Kentucky when she was
visiting her sister. Late in 1836, Lincoln agreed to a match with Mary
if she 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 suggesting he would not blame her if she ended the relationship.
She never replied and the courtship ended.
In 1832, at age 23, Lincoln and a partner bought a small general store on credit in New Salem,
Illinois. Although the economy was booming in the region, the business
struggled and Lincoln eventually sold his share. That March he began his
political career with his first campaign for the Illinois General Assembly.
He had attained local popularity and could draw crowds as a natural
raconteur in New Salem, though he lacked an education, powerful friends,
and money, which may be why he lost. He advocated navigational
improvements on the Sangamon River.
From the early 1830s, Lincoln was a steadfast Whig and professed to friends in 1861 to be, "an old line Whig, a disciple of Henry Clay". The party, including Lincoln, favored economic modernization in banking, protective tariffs to fund internal improvements including railroads, and espoused urbanization as well.
By the 1850s, slavery was still legal in the southern United States, but
had been generally outlawed in the northern states, such as Illinois. Lincoln disapproved of slavery, and the spread of slavery to new U.S. territory in the west. He returned to politics to oppose the pro-slavery Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854); this law repealed the slavery-restricting Missouri Compromise (1820). Senior Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois had incorporated popular sovereignty
into the Act. Douglas' provision, which Lincoln opposed, specified
settlers had the right to determine locally whether to allow slavery in
new U.S. territory, rather than have such a decision restricted by the
national Congress. Eric Foner
(2010) contrasts the abolitionists and anti-slavery Radical Republicans
of the Northeast who saw slavery as a sin, with the conservative
Republicans who thought it was bad because it hurt white people and
blocked progress. Foner argues that Lincoln was a moderate in the
middle, opposing slavery primarily because it violated the republicanism principles of the Founding Fathers, especially the equality of all men and democratic self-government as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
After the state Republican party convention nominated him for the U.S. Senate in 1858, Lincoln delivered his House Divided Speech, drawing on Mark 3:25:
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. 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.
The stage was then set for the campaign for statewide election of the
Illinois legislature which would, in turn, select Lincoln or Douglas as
its U.S. senator.
As Lincoln's election became evident, secessionists made clear their
intent to leave the Union before he took office the next March.
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina took the lead by adopting an
ordinance of secession; by February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed. Six of these states then adopted a constitution and declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America.
The upper South and border states (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, declaring secession illegal. The Confederacy selected Jefferson Davis as its provisional President on February 9th, 1861.
The successful reunification of the states had consequences for the name
of the country. The term "the United States" has historically been
used, sometimes in the plural ("these United States"), and other times
in the singular, without any particular grammatical consistency. The
Civil War was a significant force in the eventual dominance of the
singular usage by the end of the 19th century. 
