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Abraham Lincoln - 16th President March 4, 1861 to April 15, 1865
Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."
Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.
The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:
"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."
Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."
He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.
As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, 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."
Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.
The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "
On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.
Born: February 12, 1809, Hardin (Larue) County, Kentucky
Died: April 15, 1865, Washington, D.C. (Assassinated - 56)
Interred: Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois
52 years old, Lawyer, Republican
Parents: Thomas & Nancy (Hanks) Lincoln
Married: November 4, 1842, to Mary Todd
Children: Robert Todd (1843-1926); Edward Baker (1846-50); William Wallace "Willie" (1850-62); Thomas "Tad" (1853-71)
Also served:
Kentucky State Legislature
U.S. Congress
Vice President: Andrew Johnson of Tennessee
Facts:
First President to receive over 2 million popular votes
Had multiple attempts on his life prior to being assassinated
Tallest President at 6' 4"
Nicknames: "Honest Abe"; "Illinois Rail-Splitter"
Visit Lincoln's Home , in Springfield, Illinois
Visit Ford's Theatre National Historical Site , where President Lincoln was shot
Visit Peterson's Boarding House ,where President Lincoln died
Visit Lincoln's Tomb , where President Lincoln and his family are interred
Visit additional National Park Service sites related to Abraham Lincoln
Read McClellan's Letter to Lincoln on His Evacuation from the Peninsula Campaign
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site
Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial
Lincoln Memorial
Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Richmond National Battlefield Park
Petersburg National Battlefield
Antietam National Battlefield
Gettysburg National Military Park
The White House
Harpers Ferry National Historic Park
Rock Creek Park
Rock Creek--Civil War Defenses
Strange coincidences between President Lincoln and President Kennedy
Consider this...And remember that it's ALL COMPLETELY TRUE...
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both were shot in the head.
Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners.
Both successors were named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
John Wilkes Booth, accused of assassinating Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of assassinating Kennedy, was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names comprise fifteen letters.
Booth ran from the theatre and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theatre.
Booth and Oswald were both assassinated before their trials.
The Emancipation Proclamation
1864
By the President of the United States of America:
A PROCLAMATION
Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:
"That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
"That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such a State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States."
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for supressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
20 Things You Didn't Know About U.S. Presidents
The Debater
Lincoln Memorial
 Photo of Abraham Lincoln Delivering his famous " Gettysburg Address"
Map of Gettysburg Battlefield
Abraham Lincoln Assassinated at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth April 15th 1965
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky. This cabin, similar to the one in which the future president was born, stands in the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site in Kentucky.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln Honored
Workers used drills and dynamite to carve the faces of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln into the granite wall of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota's Black Hills. American sculptor Gutzon Borglum designed and supervised the work on the memorial from 1927 until his death in 1941. Borglum's son, Lincoln, directed the conclusion of the work.
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The U. S. Constitution
