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16. ABRAHAM LINCOLN1861-1865

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellowcountrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will notassail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall havethe most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and theUnion. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called onthe states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remainedwithin the Union. The Civil War had begun.The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Fivemonths 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 mytenth 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 inthe woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Stillsomehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting railsfor 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 1858Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating withDouglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in1860.As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he ralliedmost of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued theEmancipation 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 statedmost movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolvethat 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 fromthe 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 laydown their arms and join speedily in reunion.The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed onone wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charityfor all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish thework 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 byJohn Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite wasthe result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

Early LifeBorn on Feb. 12, 1809, in a log cabin in backwoods Hardin co., Ky. (now Larue co.), he grew upon newly broken pioneer farms of the frontier. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a migratorycarpenter and farmer, nearly always poverty-stricken. Little is known of his mother, NancyHanks, who died in 1818, not long after the family had settled in the wilds of what is nowSpencer co., Ind. Thomas Lincoln soon afterward married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow; shewas a kind and affectionate stepmother to the boy. Abraham had almost no formalschoolingâ€”the scattered weeks of school attendance in Kentucky and Indiana amounted to lessthan a year; but he taught himself, reading and rereading a small stock of books. His first glimpseof the wider world came in a voyage downriver to New Orleans on a flatboat in 1828, but little isknown of that journey. In 1830 the Lincolns moved once more, this time to Macon co., Ill.After another visit to New Orleans, the young Lincoln settled in 1837 in the village of NewSalem, Ill., not far from Springfield. There he began by working in a store and managing a mill.By this time a tall (6 ft 4 in./190 cm), rawboned young man, he won much popularity among theinhabitants of the frontier town by his great strength and his flair for storytelling, but most of all by his strength of character. His sincerity and capability won respect that was strengthened by hisability to hold his own in the roughest society. He was chosen captain of a volunteer companygathered for the Black Hawk War (1832), but the company did not see battle.Returning to New Salem, Lincoln was a partner in a grocery store that failed, leaving him with aheavy burden of debt. He became a surveyor for a time, was village postmaster, and did variousodd jobs, including rail splitting. All the while he sought to improve his education and studiedlaw. The story of a brief love affair with Ann Rutledge, which supposedly occurred at this time,is now discredited.

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AN OVERVIEW OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S LIFE

Abraham Lincoln wasbornSunday, February 12, 1809, in a log cabin near Hodgenville,Kentucky. He was the son of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln,and he was named for his paternal grandfather. Thomas Lincoln was a carpenter and farmer. Both of Abraham'sparents were members of a Baptist congregation which had separated from another church due to opposition to slavery.

When Abraham was seven, the family moved to southernIndiana. Abraham had gone toschool briefly in Kentucky and did so again in Indiana. He attended school with his older sister, Sarah (his younger brother, Thomas, had died in infancy). In 1818 Nancy Hanks Lincoln died from milk sickness,a disease obtained from drinking the milk of cows which had grazed on poisonous white snakeroot. Thomas Lincoln remarried the next year, andAbraham loved his new stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln.She brought three children of her own into the household.As Abraham grew up, he loved to read and preferred learning to working in the fields. Thisled to a difficult relationship with his father who was just the opposite. Abraham wasconstantly borrowing books from the neighbors.In 1828 Abraham's sister, who had married Aaron Grigsby in 1826, died during childbirth.Later in the year, Abraham made a flatboat trip to New Orleans. In 1830 the Lincolnsmoved west toIllinois.The next year Lincoln made a second flatboat trip to New Orleans. Afterwards he movedtoNew Salem, Illinois, where he lived until 1837. While there he worked at several jobsincluding operating a store, surveying, and serving as postmaster. He impressed theresidents with his character,wrestledthe town bully, and earned the nickname "HonestAbe." Lincoln, who stood nearly 6-4 and weighed about 180 pounds, saw brief service inthe Black Hawk War ,and he made an unsuccessful run for the Illinois legislature in 1832. He ran again in 1834, 1836, 1838, and 1840, and he won all four times. (Lincoln was amember of theWhigParty; he remained a Whig until 1856 when he became aRepublican.) Additionally, he studied law in his spare time and became a lawyer in 1836.