Lincoln As President

       Throughout the war Lincoln displayed that firmness, generosity and foresight which he had disclosed in his previous career. He was tenderhearted, patient and absolutely lacking in malice, but unyielding when it came to a question of principle. Therefore he resolutely refused to come to terms with the South until the idea of secession should be abandoned. Though he hated slavery as an inhuman and undemocratic institution, he stated publicly in August, 1862, ''My paramount object is to save the Union, it is not either to save or to destroy slavery." When he became convinced that the nation could never endure half slave and half free, he decided on one of the most important steps of his career, the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. This decision had the effect of uniting and strengthening the anti-slavery people of the North, and it gave the government increased prestige abroad.

       Though the North had been fighting the first two years of the war without signal success, there were encouraging signs of a turn in the tide in the summer of 1863, when Meade checked Lee at Gettysburg, and Grant captured Vicksburg. In November, 1863, Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the battlefield of Gettysburg, giving a short, simple address that has since become a classic of American literature. (For the full text, see Gettysburg Address.) These stirring events were followed by the appointment of Grant as commander in chief of the Union armies, and the Presidential and Congressional elections of 1864.

       In the light of the universal esteem in which Lincoln is held to-day it seems difficult to realize that he had bitter opponents in the North. His enforcement of the unpopular draft act, his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and certain arbitrary measures which were taken to check Southern sympathizers, aroused much hostile criticism, and he was denounced as a tyrant. A strong faction also clamored for peace on the ground that the war was a failure, and on this platform the Democrats nominated McClellan in 1864. The result showed that the people as a whole trusted Lincoln and knew that he was exercising what seemed to be autocratic power because he had the consent of the people. He was returned to office by an electoral vote of 212, against twenty-one for McClellan. The popular vote was 2,330,552 against 1,835,985. In his second inaugural address Lincoln again rose to heights of simple eloquence and to and idealism rarely equaled in American oratory, and in closing he uttered words that could come only from the mind and heart of a truly great man:

"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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and for his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." 

• The Emancipation Proclamation
• President Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War

Time Line for Lincoln's Administration 1861-1865

Abraham Lincoln - Statue at Entrance to Lincoln Park, Chicago.
Read more about the statue - pdf file from livinghistoryofillinois.com

Administration of Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865

I. The President

• Birth
• Parentage
• Youth
• As a lawyer
• Public career
• Character
• Death

II. Governmental Affairs
1. Domestic

• First call for militia
• Blockade ordered
• Suspension of "habeas corpus" 
• Financial measures
• Emancipation Proclamation
• Thirteenth Amendment
• Nevada and West Virginia admitted

2. Foreign

• Trent affair
• Alabama affair

III. The Civil War
1. Outbreak and campaign of 1861-1862
   a. Fall of Fort Sumter
   b. Campaigns in the east

      1. Bull Run
      2. Army of the Potomac
      3. The Monitor and the Merrimac

   c. Campaigns in the west

      1. Fort Henry and Fort Donelson

      2. Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh

      3. Capture of New Orleans

      4. Missouri saved to the Union

2. Campaigns of 1862-1863

   a. In the East

      1. The Peninsula Campaign

      2. Jackson in the  Shenandoah

      3. Lee's invasion of Maryland

      4. Fredericksburg

   b. In the West

      1. Buell-Bragg in Kentucky

         a. Battle of Perryville

         b. Stone River

3. Campaigns of 1863-1864

   a. In the East

      1. Chancellorsville

      2. Gettysburg

   b. In the West

      1. The Mississippi Campaign

      2. The campaign in Tennessee

4. The last year of the war

   a. The Richmond campaign

      1. Battle of the Wilderness

      2. Sheridan's Campaign

      3. Fall of Richmond

      4. Surrender of Lee at Appomattox

   b. The Atlanta campaign and the March to the Sea

      1. Kenesaw Mountain

      2. Battle of Atlanta

      3. Franklin and Nashville

      4. Capture of Savannah and Charleston

      5. Surrender of Johnston

   c. Death of Lincoln

Questions:

1. When and where was Abraham Lincoln born?
2. Give a brief account of his youth and the character of his education.
3. What public offices had he held before he was elected President?
4. What is meant by the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus?
5. Do you see any reasons why Lincoln should have desired its suspension during the war ?
6. What was the Emancipation Proclamation?
7. How was it justified?
8. When was the Thirteenth Amendment adopted? What are its provisions?
9. What bombardment began the Civil War?

Lincoln's Early Career

Abraham Lincoln portrait.

       When Lincoln was twenty-one his father moved to Macon County, Illinois, settling on a claim on the Sangamon River. The young man helped his father build a house and break fifteen acres of land, and he also split rails for fences. A year later, in 1831, he was hired by John Hanks, a relative, to help take a boatload of goods down the Mississippi to New Orleans. This was Lincoln's first extended journey from home, and it was of some importance in that it gave him his first view of slavery. After his return, in 1832, he enlisted in the Black Hawk War, serving from April to June, made an unsuccessful attempt to enter the state legislature as a Whig, and for a period kept a dry-goods and grocery store at the settlement of New Salem. This venture burdened him with debts which hung over him for the next fifteen years, and it was quickly abandoned. In May, 1833, he was appointed postmaster at New Salem, an office with light duties and lighter pay. During his three years' tenure of this position he studied law and politics to good purpose, and served also as deputy surveyor.

       Lincoln was elected to the lower house of the state legislature in 1834 and retained his seat until 1842. In the campaign of 1836 he went on record as an advocate of woman suffrage, a movement which then was decidedly not popular. He was also forming his views on slavery, to which he was always opposed on principle. He then believed, however, that Congress could not under the Constitution interfere with slavery where it existed. Meantime he had steadily continued his law studies, and in 1837 was admitted to the bar. In 1839 he set up an office with John T. Stuart as his partner, in Springfield, the newly established capital of Illinois. Two years later Lincoln formed another partnership with ex-Judge Stephen T. Logan, but this was dissolved in 1843, when the partners became rival candidates for election to Congress. Lincoln, though defeated this time, won a Congressional seat in 1846, and served one term.

        He gained no particular distinction in Congress, but he consistently voted and talked against slavery Meanwhile, in 1842, he had married Mary Todd, daughter of the Hon. Robert S. Todd, of Lexington, Ky. At the close of his term Lincoln resumed his law practice in Springfield, becoming one of the best known lawyers of the state. An excellent account of his method as a cross-examiner will be found in Edward Eggleston's The Graysons, in which an episode based on fact is narrated.

• Biography of Mary Anne Todd Lincoln
• Mary Todd Lincoln House
• Video about Mary Todd Lincoln's Home

The Ancestry and Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln

One of Lincoln's childhood homes.

       The ancestry of the Lincoln family may be traced to an English weaver named Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated to America in 1637 and settled in Hingham, Mass. His descendants moved southward until they reached Kentucky, where Thomas, the father of Abraham, learned the trade of carpenter. In 1806 he married a girl named Nancy Hanks, and in the course of a year or two they removed to Hardin (now La Rue) County, Kentucky. On February 12, 1809, a son was born to the couple, whom they named Abraham, after the father of Thomas. They were then living in a hut made of rough logs, floorless, and containing only the barest necessities of life. Thomas Lincoln was of a roving disposition, and after one removal in Kentucky, he took his family to a new farm in Spencer County, Indiana, where for a year they lived in a shed open to the weather on one side. Seven-year-old Abraham helped his shiftless father build a more suitable home, but even this was without doors,  windows or floor when they moved into it, and it remained half finished for months. In 1818 the mother died. In that lonely region there was no one to preach the funeral sermon, and the husband himself made the simple coffin and dug the grave.

       A year later, while on a visit to Kentucky, Mr. Lincoln married an old friend, Mrs. Sarah Bush Johnson. She was a widow with three children, a woman of considerable force of character, and her entrance into the family was the beginning of better things for Abraham and his sister. She made the cabin decent by comfortable furnishings, and forced her procrastinating husband to finish it without any more delay. Her stepson was encouraged to study at home, for the only schooling available in that neighborhood, which was still roamed by bears and other wild animals, was the instruction given occasionally by half-educated masters who could only read, write and "cipher to the rule of three." Abraham zealously practiced writing and ciphering at home, using in lieu of pencil and paper, a bit of chalk and the cabin walls, or a piece of wood which he whittled clean when he had covered

it with marks. 

       Such books as he could beg or borrow he read and reread, and his library included the Bible, Aesop's Fables, Pilgrim's Progress and Weems' Life of Washington. How much his reading influenced him is indicated by that clear and illuminating style that characterized all of his state utterances. As time passed he gained a local reputation as a humorist, for he could tell a funny story expertly, and he had, besides, a fund of original humor that made him very human and likable. Before he became of age he had reached his great height of six feet four inches, and his awkward appearance itself was certain to arouse the mirth of his hearers. 

• Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace at Knob Creek
• Lincoln's Indiana Boyhood Home

President Washington's Receptions

In classic Palladian style, on the western side, the main house is flanked by advancing,
single-story secondary wings creating a cour d'honneur. See and read more at Wikipedia.

        He devoted one hour every other Tuesday, from three to four, to these visits. He understood himself to be visited as the "President of the United States" and not on his own account. He was not to be seen by anybody and everybody; but required that everyone who came should be introduced by his secretary, or by some gentleman that he knew himself. He lived on the south side of Market street just below sixth. The place of reception was the dining room in the rear, twenty five or thirty feet in length, including the bow projecting over into the garden. Mrs. Washington received her visitors in the two rooms on the second floor, from front to rear.

       At three o'clock or at any time within a quarter of an hour afterward, the visitor was conducted to this dining room, from which all seats had been removed for the time. On entering, he saw the tall, manly figure of Washington clad in black velvet; his hair in full dress, powdered and gathered behind in a large silk bag; yellow gloves on his hands; holding a cocked hat with a cockade in it, and the edge adorned with a black feather, about an inch deep. He wore knee and shoe buckles; and a long sword with a finely wrought and polished steel hilt. The scabbard was white polished leather.

       He stood always in front of the fireplace, with his face toward the door of entrance. The visitor was conducted to him, and he required to have the name so distinctly pronounced that he could hear it. He had the very uncommon faculty of associating a man's name and personal appearance so durably in his memory, as to be able to call anyone by name who made a second visit.

       He received his visitor with a dignified bow, while his hands were so disposed of as to indicate that the salutation was not to be accompanied with shaking hands. This ceremony never occurred in these visits, even with his most near friends, that no distinction might be made.

       As these visitors came in they formed a circle around the room. At a quarter-past three, the door was closed and the circle was formed for that day. He then began on the right and spoke to each visitor, calling him by name and exchanging a few words with him. When he had completed his circuit, he resumed his first position, and the visitors approached him in succession, bowed and retired. By four o'clock the ceremony was over.

       On the evenings Mrs. Washington received visitors, he did not consider himself as visited. He was then as a private gentleman, dressed usually in some colored coat and waistcoat, often brown with bright buttons, and black on his lower limbs. He had then neither hat nor sword; he moved about among the company conversing with one and another. He had once a fortnight an official dinner, and select companies on other days. He sat,it is said, at the side in a central position, Mrs. Washington opposite; the two ends were occupied by members of his family, or by personal friends. by William Sullivan.

The Real Martha Washington.

• What to See
• Virtual Tour of Mount Vernon 

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

       Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now, we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation - or any nation so conceived and so established - can long endure.

       We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting- place of those who have given their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

       But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add to or to detract. The world will very little note nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.

       It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here, to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from those honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

Young students recite the Gettysburg Address.

Lincoln

 Lincoln

With life unsullied from his youth,

He meekly took the ruler's rod,

And, wielding it in love and truth.

He lived, the noblest work of God.

He knew no fierce, unbalanced zeal.

That spurns all human differings.

Nor craven fear that shuns the steel

That carves the way to better things.

And in the night of blood and grief,

When horror rested on the ark,

His was the calm, undimmed belief

That felt God's presence in the dark;

Full well he knew each wandering star.

That once had decked the azure dome

Would tremble through the clouds of War,

And, like a prodigal, come home.

He perished ere the angel Peace

Had rolled war's curtains from the sky.

But he shall live when wars shall cease -

The good and great can never die;

For though his heart lies cold and still

We feel its beatings warm and grand.

And still his spirit pulses thrill

Through all the councils of the land.

Oh, for the hosts that sleep to-day.

Lulled by the sound of Southern waves;

The sun that lit them in the fray

Now warms the flowers upon their graves-

Sweet flowers that speak like words of love

Between the forms of friend and foe,

Perchance their spirits meet above,

Who crossed their battle-blades below.