The man who has held the country together through that war has been felled in his hour of triumph by an assassin's bullet.
During his four years in the While House, the United States has been changed forever. Despite being torn by secession and Civil War, it was a single country again. And slavery, the ultimate cause of the war has been banished into memory.
Now, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President has joined 620,000 of his countrymen as a victim of the War. As his funeral train approached Springfield Illinois, it was completing a great American journey. Once that had begun in complete obscurity.
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"When first my father settle here, twas then the frontier line. The panther's scream filled night with fear, and bears preyed on this line." --Lincoln--
Lincoln and his legend were born in the forbidding frontier woods of Kentucky. His grandfather had brought his family here from Virginia in the 1780s and had been killed by Indians while clearing his land. His son, Thomas stayed on, to raise crops and a family. And on February, 12, 1809 in a small log cabin, his wife, Nancy, gave birth to a son, whom they named after his murdered grandfather, Abraham.
Young Abraham would spent his boyhood in a series of small cabins like this.
As Thomas moved to Kentucky and Indiana, looking for better land. For Abraham and his sister Sarah, life was an endless drudge of hard manual labor. A life young Abe was desperate to escape.
"As he was growing up, I think Lincoln acquired an ambition to better himself, to do better than his own father had done, to achieve education that would enable him to go beyond manual labor."
It wasn't just a manual labor that Lincoln disliked, it was the way his father treated him.
"He used to beat him. Now, he doesn't seem to have been abusive regularly, but he used to smack him around, oftentimes for trivial offenses. He treated him like a slave and one of the main reasons Lincoln hated slavery so much, because he hated the way his father had treated him, when he was a boy, so he could identify with a slave."
Abraham found parental affection from his mother Nancy. But when he was eight, she died from drinking infected milk. He would later describe his loss as the bitterest agony. His father, needing help to raise his two children, married Sarah Bush Johnston.
Seen here in later life.
She had three children of her own, so 7 people were soon sharing an Indiana cabin.
Lincoln's new stepmother was a godsend. They developed a great love for each other, and Sarah later admitted that she preferred Abraham to her own children
"He was the best boy I ever saw. He never told me a lie and never dodged responsibility." --Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln--
She encouraged Abraham in his passion for learning. He already taught himself how to write by about the age of seven, using a turkey - feather "pen" and blackberry "ink".
Lincoln barely saw the inside of the school room because his father kept him busy in the farm. In total, the man, who would later write his country's greatest speeches had less than one year formal education, but he worked furiously to educate himself.
"When he heard that somebody had a book he was interested in then, he walked miles to go and get it, sit down and read it. He is not just absorbing information, he was trying to determine what he thinks about this, and how he would engage that idea or this thought, how it would be useful for him."
"I remember how I got irritated when anybody talked in a way I could not understand, I could not sleep when I got to hunt for an idea, until I had caught it." --Abraham Lincoln--
Lincoln's passion for study was fuelled by his disdain for his father, who could barely sign his own name.
"Lincoln's father served as something of a negative model for him. He regarded his father as lacking ambition, as lazy, as anti - intellectual. All the things that Lincoln wanted to escape from, he saw in his father."
By law, Lincoln had to work for his father until he was 2. One of his last obligations was to split rails to fence in his father's new farm in Illinois, near Decatur. Then Abraham left home for good, to become, as he said, "a piece of floating driftwood."
In 1831, he landed in an Illinois commercial village, New Salem, his first taste of urban life. Although it had only hundred people, it had the intellectual stimulus of a law court and a debating club. Lincoln worked as a clerk at a general store. And soon became enormously popular, for both his honesty and his endless collection f funny stories.
"When Lincoln talked, people listened, whether it was around a pot-bellied stove or in storefronts, at court houses. The man complete learned to tell stories and collected them."
Lincoln story - telling helped to mask the insecurity he left from growing up poor with litte education.\
"He was something as a "loner". He spent a lot of time thinking and brooding. He suffered from what he called melancholy. And at times that came to the verge of real depression, and I think he often tried to compensate for his melancholy by cultivating a sense of humour by telling funny stories."
Lincoln said his aim was "to be truly esteemed by my fellow men".
His first chance came in 1832, when Indians under Chief Black Hawk tried to reclaim tribal homelands by force. Adventurous young men, including Lincoln, rushed to volunteer. The militia men elected their own officers, and Lincoln's company overwhelmingly choose him as their caption. He would later say this gave him more pleasure than any other success.
"To have the esteem of his fellow soldiers, militia men was an enormous ego - boost for this fellow, who feels a little bit uncertain about his identity, and a bit ashamed of his background. And so, I think that gave him a taste of being elected. He didn't run for it, they just chose him! And he thought, this is fun!"
When the Black Hawk war ended after a few months, Lincoln, the civilian would try to get elected to something else. At the age of just 23, he was going to run for the state legislature. Politics had called.!
When the 23 - year - old grocery clerk from New Salem decided to run for the state assembly, it said a lot about his ambition and self-confidence. Only a year before, Lincoln had been in his own words, "friendless, uneducated and penniless".
"Lincoln hadn't met anybody who was as good as Lincoln is, and that, I think, motivated him and let him see, there is a place to go."
Lincoln's first attempt failed, but he stood again two years later, and was elected to the state assembly. His success had little to do with his qualifications and a lot to do with his skills with people.
"He radiated a quality that people liked and respected, and that was a quality of being a wise old man. And people talked about that when he was in his 20s. That's one of the things that make him a successful president. People trusted him as they would trust a benevolent father."
Because being a state legislator was a part - time job with part - time pay, he worked at other jobs, including surveyor and postmaster, and also bought a share in his own general store, which went bankrupt. Despite all this, he found time to teach himself law, and within 3 years, he won his lawyer's license. In the state assembly, most of the policy issues were local, but Lincoln took a lonely stand on one national issue: slavery. Slavery had existed in America for 200 years, but was now mainly confined to the rural South. Abolitionist groups in the North were campaigning for an end to slavery, but they had little support in the North, where racism was still pervasive. In Illinois, the legislature condemned the abolition as trouble - makers, but Lincoln had a colleague dissented, saying the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy."
"It was a gutsy thing to do, given the time, and I think he saw the contradiction that this country was supposed to be a democratic society and yet it held slavery. To him that was a very obvious contradiction and I think maybe in the back of his mind, he thought that maybe this would be his stepping - stone to his political career. This fighting against slavery. No one is really going to draw that much attention defending slavery. Especially where Lincoln was located, up in Illinois. But someone who was opposing slavery, that makes the press.!
Lincoln told friends he feared achieving nothing that would make men remember him.
"His later law partner, William Herndon, said that his ambition was 'a little engine hat knew no rest'. Lincoln was always trying to get ahead in the world, to achieve something greater than he had known in his own childhood."
Although opposing slavery, Lincoln was forced to admit that the constitution allowed it. Like many Northerners, he saw no legal way to eliminate slavery.
"They thought it was wrong, but they didn't know how to get rid of it. They thought that God, in His wisdom, eventually would see to it that slavery was eliminated. But if you tried to accelerate the process, you were going to do more harm than good. And I suppose you might say they were right, in a way, because it took a war."
In 1837, Lincoln left \New Salem for the State capital of Springfield, to practice law.
He rode into town on a borrowed horse, with barely enough money for a place to stay. A store owner, Joshua Speed, who'd admired one of Lincoln's speeches, offered him a share of his own room, above the store, and became his closest friend. Springfield was a dusty frontier town with hogs roaming the streets, but it was still the most sophisticated place Lincoln had ever lived.
"He spent part of his boyhood living in cabins that had dirt floors. He obviously didn't know a lot about the sort of manners that would have counted in Springfield society."
He was particularly awkward around women. "Springfield women avoid me", he complained. It may have had something to do with his habit of wearing rough boots to society functions and his overall physical appearance.
"He was enormously tall, he was 6-4 (6 feet - 4 inches), which by the standards of today would be like being 6-8 inches or so, and he was not very physical coordinated. He was clumsy and awkward and he was not very attracted to the opposite sex.
Lincoln had already known romantic heartache. In New Salem, he had been engaged to an inn -keeper's daughter Ann Rutledge, only to see her die of typhoid. Years later, in the White House, he would still speak of his love for her.
"He spent part of his boyhood living in cabins that had dirt floors. He obviously didn't know a lot about the sort of manners that would have counted in Springfield society."
He was particularly awkward around women. "Springfield women avoid me", he complained. It may have had something to do with his habit of wearing rough boots to society functions and his overall physical appearance.
"He was enormously tall, he was 6-4 (6 feet - 4 inches), which by the standards of today would be like being 6-8 inches or so, and he was not very physical coordinated. He was clumsy and awkward and he was not very attracted to the opposite sex.
He then became to engaged to Mary Owens who immediately began to put on weight. A dismayed Lincoln said, she reminded him of Shakespeare's Obese Character Falstaff. Mary also complained, saying that when they went horseback riding, Lincoln "never bothered looking back to see if my neck was broken." The engagement was emphatically canceled.
"I will never again think of marrying. I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me." Abraham Lincoln - 1837.
"Anybody who was watching what was going on in Springfield in those years knew that this was a fellow, who was going to make a name for himself, in some way. And Mary was attracted to that."
"There was a wonderful story of Lincoln visiting her, unable to speak a word, with his jaw simply hanging slack, white Mary chattered away about everything. She was a wonderful mimic, she was a great gossip, she talked about politics, she could quote Shakespeare, and the Bible, and the Poets."
They were soon engaged. But then Lincoln began to set cold feet about marriage. Saying he feared it maybe something indescribably horrible. His nerves snapped. He called off the engagement. And he fell into a deep depression. His friends removed razors from his room, for fear he would kill himself. It was not until his friend Joshua Speed married, and reported himself happy that Lincoln reconsidered betrothal.
After 18 months apart, friends brought Lincoln and Mary Todd back together.
"A recent historian has argued that she inveigled him into bed. And that, on the next day, he was so guilt - stricken about having had sex outside of marriage, that he said 'we got to get married right away.' And there is no hard evidence for that, but it is striking that they did get married on one day's notice. She was living with her sister, who was a member of the most exalted Springfield aristocracy. And she gave her other sisters big weddings with elaborate parties and all that. But not Mary. Mary was married on one day's notice,"
Her sister, Elizabeth complained that even a free negro would give her family time to bake a ginger cake. And Lincoln's best man said the groom looked like he was going to the slaughter. Lincoln was 33 when he became a husband in November 1842, and he became a father a little less than 9 months later, when Robert Lincoln was born.
It was the start of a Lincoln family life that would be marked by tragedy. Lincoln, along with other lawyers and judges cover a five - hundred - mile circuit, twice a year, on horseback. Lincoln became known for hard work and honesty. The other lawyers called him Honest Abe".
"If you cannot be an honest lawyer, choose some other occupation. A worse man cannot be found than one who stirs up strife to put money in his pocket." -- Abraham Lincoln --
"He cultivated an image of honesty, and I think it was an image based on genuine substance. I think Lincoln believed the best way to win a legal case, or the best way to get ahead in politics, was to level with the jury or the voters." In court, Lincoln deliberately pitched his argument, so that the common people would understand it.
"Lincoln was extremely gifted at convincing juries. He had a very likeable quality, and he would win juries over by the warmth of his personality and his self - deprecating humour, and the quality of his mind, where he could make a very powerful argument."
His law office in Springfield was spare and plain, like Lincoln himself. He kept important papers in his stove - pipe hat. And his partner, Billy Herndon, complained about Lincoln's casualness.
"He would spread himself out over a quarter of the room, and read aloud almost beyond my point of endurance. His explanation was, first I see what I read, and then I hear it. Two senses catch the idea, and I can remember it better."
As his law practice grew, Lincoln was able to buy a house in 1844 for $1500. But what sort of a marriage, did the Lincolns have inside their house? It's a topic that still divides historians today.
"The marriage was unbelievably painful and difficult. William Herndon, his law partner said it was a scorching burning hell. And I think that is true. Abraham Lincoln was an abused husband. She threw things at him, she struck him in the face, she hit him with stove wood, she chased him out of the house with a knife, she chased him out of the house and throwing potatoes at him."
Others historians say William Herndon, who despised Mary, deliberately exaggerated the marriage's problem.
"The Lincolns were exceedingly happy. Most people never saw anything but happiness in the house. When she got angry, she yelled and screamed and had a temper tantrum. And he'd turn on his heel and leave the room, he never bothered to argue. But above and beyond those things, and those difficulties, they were truly in love, they had a physical relationship that was, by all indications excellent."
But Mary was often neurotic, especially when Lincoln was away. She was terrified of dogs and thunderstorms, and suffered from migraines and exhaustion. And even when her husband was at home, he was often moody and distant.
"I think Lincoln tended to be very absorbed in the public life, and didn't give her the emotional support, the emotional attachment that she needed. On a consistent basic he simply locked her out of his life at times."
Lincoln could also be emotionally cool towards his first - born, Robert, in the same way that Lincoln's own father had been distant towards him.
"Their first son, I think didn't see very much of his father, that's Robert. Because Lincoln was beginning to build his career, and that meant going to about every courtroom that he could find and taking as many cases as he possibly could, and riding the circuit.
The Lincoln had a second son, Edward, in 1846 - an important year for Abraham. He entered politics at the national level, winning Whig party nomination for a safe congressional seat. The ambitious man from Illinois was on his way to Washington.
"When he goes to Washington, in his late 30s, he got a tastes of national office, and being in Washington, and he likes it. He finds that very gratifying, and his wife likes it too. she finds it very gratifying. So it stimulates his ambition."
It was in Washington that Lincoln had his first in depth encounter with slavery. He could not walk from his boarding house to the capital without seeing the slave auction houses: "negro livery stables", he called them.
"Think of having a slave auction across from the capitol. That's what occurred. You know, people look out, our foreign visitors look out, and they see men and women being sold like cattle. For Lincoln, I think it was especially intense. Because I think Lincoln believed early in the principles of this country, equality and liberty."
Lincoln proposed a referendum to end slavery in the capital, but dropped the idea when it won almost no support. And after serving just one term in Congress, Lincoln found himself back in Springfield. It had been agreed in advance that the Whig party would rotate his seat. Being out of politics put Lincoln into frequent depressions. His partner, William Herndon, called him "this unfortunate and miserable man". There were personal conflicts, too.Throughout his life, Lincoln was famous for not holding a grudge. But there was one great exception, and that was his father. In 1849, Thomas Lincoln lay dying and asked to see his son one last time. But Abraham had not forgotten, nor forgiven, his childhood beatings.
"Lincoln sent a message back saying: 'tell our father that it would be more painful than pleasant if we were to see each other now,' and he refused to go. And then he refused to attend his funeral. Lincoln and his father were utterly different. Kinds of people Lincoln's father didn't have the kind of ambition that his son had, he didn't have the kind of humour, he didn't have the idealistic values."
But within a few months, there would be another funeral that Lincoln could not avoid. His second son Edward, succumbed to tuberculosis, just short of his fourth birthday. Both parents were devastated. And as it to compensate, Mary became pregnant again, almost immediately. Their third son, Willies was born in 1850, and their fourth, Tad three years later. Lincoln, who'd been somewhat distant as a father, now became the indulgent parent.
"I think when Eddy died, that made Lincoln more sensitive to the next kid, who came along. And he was just profoundly devoted to the children. If you were a younger kid, then you got a lot of affection from the father, an over - indulgence of these children."
Lincoln's law partner complained that the young boys could put the office books into a pile and dance on them, while the father said nothing.
"If they had soiled Lincoln's hat and rubbed it on his boots, he would have laughed and thought it smart." -- William Herndon --
Lincoln, perhaps remembering his own hard childhood, wrote down his thoughts on parenting.
"It is my pleasure that my children are free and happy, unrestrained by parental tyranny. Love is the chain to bind a child to his parents."
Although out of office, Lincoln was keeping a close watch on the political scene, looking to re-enter the fray. That chance would come in 1854, and, again, the issue would be slavery.!
By 1854, slavery was already a hot political topic in America. And then Congress poured gasoline on the fire. At the urging of the South, it voted that the huge federal territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which had been designated as "free", would now, be open to slavery. Lincoln, like many Northerners, was outraged.
"Northerners looked upon slavery as a spreading cancer, because slavery meant power."
The constitution allows Southerners to count their slaves as 3/5 of a person, for the purpose of having representatives in Congress. The fear of many Northerners was that the South was going to use slave power to dominate the federal government, at the Northerners expense.
Lincoln publicly argued against slavery's expansion on moral grounds.
"We call the maxim 'all men are created equal', a self-evident truth. Now we are so greedy to be masters, we called it 'a self-evident lie'." -- Abraham Lincoln, 1854 --
Lincoln believed slavery made true democracy impossible. But he also had political motives for opposing it. He knew many Northern voters feared slavery's expansion, simply because they didn't want negroes coming \North.
"Race prejudice in the North was pervasive, especially in Illinois, as Lincoln well knew. And Lincoln, one of the first things he said on the issue, was that he wanted a policy that would keep the territory free, for white people."
And, although he opposed slavery, Lincoln said publicly that it was impossible to make slaves the political or social equal of whites.
"He didn't believed African Americans should be allowed to vote, hold office, sit on juries, intermarry with whites. It's hard to imagine a more thorough - going statement of white supremacy, than Lincoln made."
Lincoln supported the idea of "colonization" of paying owners to free their slaves, and then shipping them voluntarily to their long-lost fatherland of Africa.
"Lincoln was a politician. And much like politicians today, he was not avove saying things that could help get him elected. He says he's opposed to slavery, then he also says in the same breath, but I think at the same time that free blacks should be "colonized" outside of the United States. That plays very, very well, with the masses."
Northerners, wanting to stop the expansion of slavery, formed a new political party: The Republicans, with Lincoln as a leading light. In 1858, he was named Republican senate candidate challenging the Illinois Democrat Steven Douglas, who argued that any state or territory that wanted slavery, should be allowed to have it. One of the greatest duels in American Political History was about to begin. A struggle over the nation moral and political direction
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. It's will become all one thing, or all the other." -- Abraham Lincoln, 1858 --
As Lincoln began his campaign with those word, the slavery issue had already become violent. Clashes between pro and anti-slavery settlers in the new territories had led to the term: "Bleeding Kansas". Now, the entire country would be listening, as Lincoln and Douglas began a series of 7 debates across Illinois. As a public speaker, Douglas had all the advantages.
"A man of enormous energy, with a deep baritone voice, which had carrying power. He spoke rapidly. He spoke with great energy, he spoke with vigor and force, in a kind of traditional oratorical style."
Lincoln, by contrast, had a high, piercing voice, and lacked Douglas onstage presence.
He had this funny habit of bending his knees down, and then, throwing himself and his arms straight up in the air, when he wanted to emphasize a point. So it was a very strange, awkward kind of presentation. But, the logic of the ideas seemed to make a lot of sense to people. And he had a fine rapport with the crowd.
The debate went to the very heart of race in America: were black Americans entitled to rights under the declaration of independence? Douglas, a slave owner, said were not.
-- Stephen Douglas, 1858 --
"Stephen Douglas is saying that Democracy is compatible with slavery. Lincoln has to undo that idea, or he won't be able successfully to challenge slavery or to protect democracy."
"One class looks upon slavery as wrong, and another class does not. It is the eternal struggle between right and wrong, between the common right of humanity and the divine right of Kings."
-- Abraham Lincoln, final debate --
Despite the intense interest in the debates, Illinois voters never got to choose directly between the two men. Instead, they were voting for a state assembly, which in turn would elect the senator. When the Democrats won a state majority, Douglas kept this senate seat and Lincoln went back to his legal office. Lincoln was crestfallen but philosophical.
Though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for civil liberty long after I am gone. --Abraham Lincoln, 1858 --
But Lincoln was not about to sink out of view. He was now the national figure, and was being mentioned as a candidate for the next great election: to choose a president in 1860.
Lincoln's first reaction to the presidential talk was laughter. He grabbed his knees and chuckled : "Just think of such a sucker as me, as president." But in the coming months, his mood would changed.
"The taste is in my mouth a little," he says. Which means he wants it very badly. He began speaking around the country, including New York in February 1860. There, as elsewhere, he shocked his new audience with his appearance. The New York organizer said his heart went to his boots, when he first saw Lincoln.
"He genuinely was an odd-looking person. He was very tall, quite thin, he had huge hands, he had very big ears, he himself said that he was an ugly man."
When a rival once called him two faced, Lincoln replied: "If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?". But when he began to speak, people saw him differently. In New York his anti-slavery speech was so passionately received that the New York Tribute called him: the greatest man since Saint Paul.
Lincoln authorized supporters to form a campaign committee, and unbeknown to Lincoln, they created a frontier image for him. As a rail-splitter. It didn't matter that Lincoln had hated farm labour, the idea of the humble, self-made man was good politics.
"They wanted to make Lincoln as much of a Western candidate as they possible could. Rail-splitting was, of course an activity everybody knew about in the West. And Lincoln had split a few rails. But there weren't too many calluses on Lincoln hands in 1860.
At the Republican convention in Chicago, Lincoln was not the front-runner. But many delegates believed he was the most electable, because he was regarded as a comparative moderate on slavery.
Lincoln trailed on the delegates first two votes, but won on the third. Lincoln was now the pride of Springfield, but was still not a household name outside. He had to tell Republic officials to spell his name Abraham and not Abram. The election campaign itself would be a virtual referendum on slavery's expansion.
Most Northern voters had become convinced by 1860 that the "slave - power", as they called it, must be curbed. The 1860 election was really a contest over whether the future of the country ought to be one of free labor democratic capitalism or slave-labor plantation agriculture."
The campaign could not have gone better for Lincoln. His pro-South opponents split and fielded three candidates. Lincoln now looked a sure thing for election, and his staff played it safe by keeping him out of the public eye for the whole campaign. Lincoln complained that he was badly bored. But it worked. In November, Lincoln took victory with just 39 percent of the vote. Almost none of it from the slave-states. The South was horrified with one George newspaper saying: The South should arm at once."
"They were afraid of what was gonna happen down the road, if the Republican Party took control of the Federal Government. Chipping away at slavery for example. Limiting some of the political power by cutting off any possibility of additional Southern-oriented states."
Lincoln tried to reassure the South that Slavery would not be touched where it already existed, but to no effect. Just before X-mas, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union and state after Southern state quickly followed.
In January 1861, bullets replaced words. A Northern troop ship route to Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour was fired on by South Carolina, which claimed the North no longer had rights to the fort. The outgoing president, James Buchanan stood-by helplessly unsure what to do. The nation eyes now turned to an untried leader in Springfield.
"He's unknown, in the sense that people aren't quite sure what kind of chief executive he was gona be, because he'd never held an executive post in his entire life."
Lincoln believed Southern tempers would cool down, but if they did not, he said, it was a president's duty to maintain the existing government. Secession was not even debatable.
"Secession, Lincoln says is the essence of anarchy. This is man who built his whole life on devotion to law, to order, to self-discipline. And secession, I think strikes him personally, as well as politically."
But, until he took the oath in March, Lincoln had no power to act. One thing he could change, however, was his appearance. He began to grow a beard, the idea may have come from a letter he received just before the election from a little girl, Grace Bedell.
--- Grace Bedell, Age 11 ---
"I think he became convinced himself that the kind of lanky, raw-boned look of his face would be improved. It would fill out, if he grow a beard. I think he thought it would make him look more mature, more statesman like, and less ugly."
In February 1861, Lincoln roped the family trunks himself labeled them "A.Lincoln, the White House, Washington" and boarded a special train for the capital. Springfield residents came out to see him off.
"I now leave not knowing when or whether ever I may return, the task before me greater than that which rested upon (George) Washington."
Lincoln, with no administrative experience of any kind would have to govern a country that seemed determined to go to war with itself.
Security was heavy, as the Lincoln family made the two-week journey from Illinois to Washington. The President - elect had already written his inaugural speech and gave it to his eldest son, Robert for safe keeping. But Robert was more more interested in learning how to drive the engine, and lost the speech.
A furious Lincoln had to burrow through the luggage to find it. In later life, Robert Lincoln would become President of the Pullman - Train Car company.
During Lincoln 's journey, news came that the Southern States had formed their own nation, The Confederate States of America (CSA), with their President Jefferson Davis, predicting "war, long and bloody". By the time Lincoln reached Philadelphia, word surfaced of a plot to kill Lincoln as he passed through Baltimore. On the advice of colleagues, he donned a disguise, changed trains and was smuggled into Washington at night. It was an unpresidential entry into the capital.
"It made him look cowardly, it made him look ridiculous. Even though the evidence that there was in fact a plan to assassinate him there, is quite strong. I think it convinced him that he must not, in the future, appear to fear assassination, to fear his enemies. And it did make him careless about protecting himself."
As Lincoln's inauguration approached, there was still slim hope for a compromise between North and South. Lincoln's inaugural speech included a plea for maintaining the union.
"We must not be enemies. The mystic chords of memory all over this abroad land will it swell the chorus of union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
-- Abraham Lincoln, March 4th, 1861 --
But the speech had no calming effect in the South. The Charleston Mercury called it "the toxin of babel from the orangutan in the White House". That same day, Lincoln received word from federal troops on Fort Sumter in Charleston that they could last only six more weeks without provisions. Lincoln would have to decide whether to send in union ships and risk war or to surrender Sumter to the Confederacy.
"It was a terribly difficult decision for him to make. Lincoln was a man of peace, he was not a war monger. And yet, he didn't want to give away the store."
"He endured many sleepless nights, as this crisis was building up. One morning he tried to get out of bed, and fell over in a faint. So, clearly, he was suffering a great deal."
Finally, Lincoln decided to reinforce Sumter, but with provisions only, not troops. If there were to be war, he told colleagues "The South would have to fire the first shoot." And that's what happened.
On April 12th, 1861, the South opened fire on Sumter, forcing its troops to surrender. The Civil War had begun. The news was greeted with euphoria by many Northerners, who were anxious o teach the South a lession. But, Lincoln was not so optimistic.
Man - for - man, he warned, the soldier from the South, will be a match for the soldier from the North. Lincoln moved quickly, calling up troops, suspending habeas corpus, to arrest Southern sympathizers, and ordering the blockade of Southern ports.
"Lincoln's attitude was firm and remarkably consistent throughout the Civil War. He said that secession was simply a myth. It was unconstitutional. The Union was older than the constitution, and the Union was indissolvable."
On the question of slavery, Lincoln had to be careful. He did tell Congress that, this was a struggle to elevate the condition of men. But Lincoln was careful not to make the abolition of slavery an official aim of the war. Four strategic border states loyal to the Union: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware still had slavery. And Lincoln could not afford to offend them.
"Lincoln once said, as a joke, "I hope to have God on my side, but I have to have Kentucky." He felt that if the loyal slave - states joined the Confederacy, the Northern cause would be lost."
Lincoln wanted to strike quickly against the South, while Northern optimism remain high. He suggested an attack on a vital rail junction in Northern Virginia, at Manassas, near Bull Run.
When Northern Generals complained that their new soldiers were too green, Lincoln replied, "Yes, but they are green, too." And so in July 1861, General Irvin MCDowell reluctantly led the Union army against the rebel near Manassas. And the Northerners were crushed, retreating in panic to Washington. Lincoln's first foray as Commander - in - Chief, had failed.
"Totally unqualified to be Commander - in - Cheif. He'd only been a captain in the Black Hawk War. Had never been in any kind of combat, was not a graduate of West Point. But Lincoln knew his shortcomings. He checked out books in the library on military rudimentary knowledge, a working knowledge of theory, so that he could at least have a what war was, how it should be fought, how it could be sustained, how it could be won."
"Lincoln visiting McClellan's home one evening, and McClellan coming in to the parlor, going upstairs and going to bed, leaving the President sitting in the parlor. And Lincoln saying: "I will hold his horse, if he gives us a victory." That patience, I think, is an important element in Lincoln's character."
Lincoln told aides he was not concerned with making points of personal dignity. His aim was to win the war and McClellan, a respected strategist and engineer, seemed the best man for the job.
"The secret to Lincoln's success, one of the secrets, was his remarkable ability to get along with difficult people. Even though they did things, and he knew about them, that most of us would have interpreted as insulting demeaning. And we would have flown into a rage. Lincoln was the soul of forbearance, because he realized that it was his job, as President, to win the war."
Lincoln would need all his forbearance, because finding the right General to win the war would be agonizingly difficult.
No sooner was Mary Lincoln in the White House than she began to redecorate it with imported furnishings. Within a few months, she'd overrun the congressional redecorating allowance that was supposed to last four years.
"The war was going to be tragic, but she wanted the world to know, perhaps misguidedly, perhaps in a wrong way, that the United States, as represented by the first family, in the magnificent house, was a grand and a great country, and a powerful country."
Lincoln, furious, said Mary's spending would stink the land when poor, freezing soldiers could not have blankets. He offered to pay the overrun. But Congress quietly took care of it. And while Mary's White House was extravagant, Abraham's was simplicity itself. He was so informal that he sometimes received guests in bare feet, and he liked to do things for himself.
"One of the first things he would do is he'd get up and go out to find a newsboy to buy a newspaper for himself. And it's hard to us to imagine, in this day and age, when you have hundreds of people working in the White House, that his whole White House staff consisted of two young men in their 20s."
Lincoln worked long days, and spent his evenings at the War Department, checking battle reports, Mary said she fell fortunate if he was home by 11. But Lincoln always made time for his sons Willie and Ted, giving them free rein to play their own war games.
"They'd set canons up on top of the White House and bring these toys canons into the cabinet room and shot at the cabinet members, which may have said something about the fact that their father was being taken away from them by war duties."
By early 1862, Lincoln must have wished that his sons enthusiasm would rub off on General McClellan, who'd still not launched a campaign, Lincoln wanted to hit the South on as many fronts as possible, to make use of North's superior troop strength, but McClellan, Lincoln complained, "has the slows".
If General McClellan is not going to use the army of the Potomac, I would like to borrow it."
-- Abraham Lincoln, January 1862 --
McClellan inaction was highlighted by news from Western front, where a Union Commander had driven the Confederates almost entirely out of Tennessee. His name was Ulysses S. Grant. And although Lincoln had never met him, he took on an instant liking to him.
"He said Grant is a very meagre telegrapher and stenographer. He doesn't write to me very much. McClellan used to sent Lincoln these huge reports and arguments as to why he could not do things."
When Grant was widely criticized for his tactics in the bloody Union victory at Shiloh, Lincoln responded, "I can't spare him, he fights." When told that Grant drank too much, the President asked for the brand of Whisky, so he could send it to his other generals.
Grant's success gave Licoln some optimism about the war. And Mary threw a huge, expensive party to show off the refurbished White House.
But, there was little time for mourning. The war would not wait. Grant was becoming bogged down in the West. And in the East, McClelland finallly advanced towards Richmond, Lincoln felt it was time for a drastic change of tactic. To hurt the South, he would act to free the slaves.
The South had four million slaves, who were vital in sustaining the Confederate war effort. Although Lincoln had always said a President had no constitutional right to attack slavery, the war had change all that. As commander-in-chief he could act out of military necessity.
"It doesn't represent a change in his own. He says this is a war measure, because slaves are essential for the South's war effort. If we can encourage slaves to leave the Southern lines to come to our lines, we will reduce their capacity to make war. And it also comported with his own wish to see "All men, everywhere free".
In an office of the War Department, Lincoln asked for some paper, saying he wanted to write something special. He then sat down and began writing the 'Emancipation Proclamation'.
"He would looked out the window a lot then put down a line or two. And then sit quiet for a few minutes" Major Thomas Eckert - War Department.
Lincoln wrote this way for several weeks. Adding and revising each day. Asking Major Eckert to keep it under lock and key. By late July, Lincoln was ready to show it to his cabinet. The Proclamation said that in any state still in rebellion by the start of 1863 all slaves would be declared forever free. Lincoln was careful not to upset the slave-holding border states. The Proclamation did not free slaves in Union-held areas, but it did encourage Southern slaves to flee the plantations.
"Those who are Christians were certain that they were the choosen people, like the Israelites of old, and that they would be free, just as the children of Israel were free. There were a Moses coming."
Lincoln's cabinet strongly supported the Proclamation, but urged him to wait for another Union victory before making it public. So that it didnot soud like a tactic of desperation. As he awaited that victory, Lincoln thought of what to do with all the slaves that might flood into the North. He returned to his old solution of "colonization" and ordered an investigation of Panama as a possible colony site.
Lincoln told black leaders that, although, slavery was the greatest wrong, the two races should live apart.
"Our white men are cutting one-another's throats and, but for your race among us, there could not be war. It is better for us both, therefore, to be seperate." -- Abraham Lincoln, August 1862 --
"And he said 'I don't want to argue the matter with you. Essentially we cannot live as a bi-racial society', is essentially what he said. We suffer from your presence. African Americans were increcdibly offended.
"The tone of frankness and benevolence which he assumes in his speech is too thin a lie not to be seen through." -- Frederick Douglas, abolitionist --
Colonization was one way for Lincoln to make emancipation more applealing to white Northerners. He wanted to convince them that emancipation's main purpose was to help win the war, not to end slavery.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. And if I can save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it." -- Abraham Lincoln - open letter, August 1862 --
He was as brilliant a public relation's strategist just as he was a political and military strategist. And he wanted that emancipation to be couched for the American people, in terms of saving the Union. Because he knew that issuing it as a gesture towards eventual equality, and certainly toward abolition, was going to be very unpopular. And could bring down the Northern Government.
Finally came the battlefield victory victory Lincoln was waiting for. McClellan's army narrowly defeated Robert E.Lee in a bloody battle at Antietam in September 1862. Five days later, Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclaimation. Reaction in the North varied wildly, from jubilation among abolitionists and black leaders to race riots, overfear that runaway slaves would take white jobs. Within the army, some Union officers complained of Lincoln creating a "damm abolition nigger war" and many Union soldiers deserted.
"He suspected that there would be a great deal of opposition. But he was very brave about it. He showed what kind of leader he was. I don't think there is another Commander-in-chief in the history of warfare that changed the direction of a war, changed the principle mission of a war in a middle of a war."
Lincoln defended his proclamation as the one thing that would make people remember that he had lived.
"By giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free. We shall nobly save or meanly lose, the last best hope of America." --- Abraham Lincoln, December 1862 ---
After the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln urged General McClellan to chase Robert E.Lee army and crush it. But again "Little Mark" refused to move. And Lincoln's patience finally snapped. He replaced McClellan, saying "He is an admirable engineer, but he seems to have a special talent for a stationary engine." But changing Commanders didn't help. General Ambrose Burnside led a suicidal charge up the hill at Fredericksburg, in what became the worst defeat in US Army history. Lincoln then replaced Burnside with Joseph Hooker, who led the Eastern Army to another disaster at Chancellorsville. Lincoln's staff said these defeats left him "ghost-like and broken."
"I don't think, though, that he even considered giving up on the war, even when it appeared that victory was going to elude the North. Lincoln again believed that the American experiment in self-government was so valuable, that it offered such promise to the people of the world, that almost any sacrifice to keep it alive was justified."
Lincoln was forced to turn to a source of Union manpower he had tried to avoid: black troops. He once doubted that black soldiers would fight. But now he called them: "The great force for restoring the Union."
"The considerable pressure that was placed on him by abolitionists. They basically told Lincoln: "Look, you are fighting this war with one hand tied behind your back. If you allow blacks to become soldiers, they are gonna make the best soldiers. They have the most to lose."
180,000 African Americans would eventually fight for the Union. And their bravery would help to change Lincoln's stand on black's rights. From political to personal.
"You say you will not fight to free negros. Some of them seem willing to fight for you. In peace, they will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue and well-placed bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation." --Abraham Lincoln, September 1863--
With black men dying in uniform, Lincoln no longer mentioned colonization. Throughout 1863, the war began turning the North's way. At Gettysburg Pennsylvania, in three days of fighting that left 40,000 dead and wounded, Robert E.Lee was given his worst defeat so far. News of the Union Victory reached Lincoln on July 4th, the same day as Ulysses S.Gant took the vital city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Lincoln was impressed that the twin victories had come on an anniversary of the Declamation of Independence. Because he said, the rebels were trying to overthrow the principle that all men were created equal. This, he said, is a glorious theme for a speech. And that speech would come a few months later at Gettysburg itself. A war cemetary was being dedicated there. And Lincoln was invited to make a few appropriate remarks.
At the ceremony in November, the President listened for two hours as the designate orator Edward Everett, recalled the Gettysburg battle. People were expecting another long speech, when Lincoln rose, but he sat down again, just two minutes later, before photographers could capture him speaking. He'd needed only ten sentences to distill the essence of the Union cause, and why the North must keep fighting.
"Four score 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 dedicated, can long endured. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We've come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate it. We cannot consecrate it. We cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add on detract. The World will little note nor longer 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 which they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great test remaining before us. And from the honored dead. We take increased devotion to that cause, for which they gave, here, the last full measure of devotion. If we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, then this nation shall have a new birth of freedom and this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
As he sat down, Lincoln is alleged to have said "that speech won't scour", an uncomplimentary farming term. But the other speaker, Edward Everett, told him "I wish I had come as close to the central meaning of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes. And the Chicago Tribune accurately predicted that the speech will live among the annals of Man (mankind).
Lincoln entered his reelection year, 1864, with his popularity running high in the North, after some important Union Victories. But he knew his chances was tied to the war. And when things started going wrong in the East, Lincoln brought in his favourite General, from the West.
"Grant knew that the way you won the war was to kill Confederate soldiers until they stopped. And Lincoln by that time, had recognized that was the only option, and Grant was the man who know how to do that more efficiently, more effectively, than anybody else.
Grant attacked Robert E.Lee across Virginia and the cost was sickening. In just two weeks, Grant lost a third of his 100,000 men. Northern civilians were horrified. Even Mary Lincoln called Grant a butcher. Lincoln stood by his General, but the body-count had its own effect on him.
"Oh, it was a terrible burden. The picture of Lincoln when he is running for the presidency, when he's 51 years old, make him look to be a young man. Four years later, you look at photographs of him and he looks like your great grandmother."
"Doesn't it strike you as queer, that I, who couldn't cut the head off a chicken should be cast into the middle of great war, with blood, flowing all around. --Abraham Lincoln, june 1864--
Lincoln came under intense pressure in the North to negotiate a peace. But he insisted there would be no cease fire until the rebels agreed to rejoin the Union and abolish slavery. If he gave in on slavery now, Lincoln said, he would not escape the curse of heaven. But in the meantime, it looked as if he could not escape the curse of Northern voters. Even Republican officials were saying Lincoln's re-election was an impossibility, and the president agreed that he might be beaten and beaten badly. Lincoln was not only facing defeat, but defeat by his old nemesis, George B.McClellan, now the likely Democratic nominee.
"Lincoln felt and many other peole felt, that this would probably mean that the South would win its independence. If McClellan became president, there would probably be some kind of a truce or ceasefire."
No one was more fearful of a Lincoln defeat than his wife - now known by Lincoln's staff as "her satanic majesty". Mary had continued to spend wildly behind her husband's back, and to pay the bills, she accepted bribes to whisper in her husband's ear about who should receive goverment appointments.
"She became, there's no other word for it, an influence peddler. She was the flipside of Honest Abe. In this particular respect. She suddenly realized that she could do tremendous political damage to her husband if it ever got out. And there were threats that it was going to come out in the papers.
"If he is re-elected, I can keep him in ignorance of my affairs. But if he is defeated, the bills will be sent in, and he will know all" --Mary Lincoln, 1864--
Just in time for both Lincolns, the election tide turned their way. Union General William Sherman, marching south, took Atlanta. Once again, Northerners were filled with patriotism and they rallied to Lincoln. He defeated McClellan in a landslide.
"I am duly greatful to God for having directive my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good." --Abraham Lincoln, November 1864--
Re-elected for a second term, and with Grant and Sherman pushing towards ultimate victory. Lincoln used his growing influence to end slavery for good. His Emancipation Proclamation applied only during wartime. Now, Lincoln press Congress to pass a 13th Amendment to the constitution banning slavery forever, and he succeeded.
"This is a King's cure for all the evils. Live or die, I give my heart and hand to this nation."
-- Abraham Lincoln, February 1865 --
To the Confederates, Lincoln offered peace at any moment, if they rejoined the Union, and accepted the end of slavery. He even offered to pay compensation to slave owners. But the South rejected the offer, and the fighting continued. The war was four years old when Lincoln rose to make his second inaugural address in March. And he'd been wondering why God had left it go on, so long.
"Before the War, Lincoln had spent very little time thinking about religion. But, as the war went on, he tried to discover what God's purpose might be, in this War. And I think that was part of his effort to come to grips with the enormous loss of life."
Lincoln decided the War might be God's punishment on all Americans, for 200 years of slavey.
"Fervently, do we hope that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God will's that it continue until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid with another, drawn with the sword, so still it must be said. The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous, altogether.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address --
"It's an amazing statement for a President to make. And not in some private conversation or private memo. He says this to the whole country, in an Inaugural Address. It's a radical thing to say."
Lincoln was proud of his speech, and anxious to hear the opinion of the Black Leader, Frederick Douglass.
"There's a wonderful story of Douglass coming into the White House after the Second Inaugural. A huge crowd, standing, shaking Lincoln's hand. And Lincoln calls out across the room: "There's my friend, Douglass, Douglass come here." Douglass walked across this crowded room. And Lincoln says to Douglass 'What did you think of my Inaugural Address? There is no man's opinion that I admire more than yours'. And Douglass says 'It was a sacred effort'. And Lincoln says 'Thank you'."
By early April, Grant's forces had taken the Confederate Capital of Richmond. And Lincoln could not resist visiting there himself. Black citizens mobbed him and sang praises white Southerners stayed indoors. "Thank God, I have lived to see this", Lincoln said, as he viewed Richmond, "Now, the nightmare is over." As he left, he ordered the brand to play "Dixie" saying the tune was one of the best he'd ever heard, and was now Federal property. And "it's good to show the rebels" he added, "that with us in power they will still be free to hear it." Lincoln had visited Richmond despite warnings that there were constant threats to his life, warnings that he seldom heeded.
"He would stroll across from the White House to the War department telegraph office, often alone, at all hours of the day and night, when he was president, without any protection at all. Lincoln told his staff, he must remain accessible to the people. 'If someone wants to kill me', he said, 'No amount of vigilance can stop them.'"
By early April 1865, the Civil War was all but over. The main Confederate commander, Robert E.Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomatax. A jubilant Lincoln appeared at a White House window on April 11, to say a few public words. He said he wanted clemency for the rebels. And then, he dropped a bombshell. He became the first President to recommend the vote for Africa Americans.
"I would myseft prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."
"As the war, uh...wore on, Lincoln became more and more committed to the Emancipation. Lincoln is a very complex person and I really like that. Because I think it is important that we understand that humans are not one-dimensional or two-dimensional people, we grow, we change."
But, for one man, listening, listening to Lincoln outside the White House, the prospect of Black Voting Rights was too much to bear.
"That means nigger citizenship. That's the last speech he will ever make!"
-- John Wilkes Booth, April 11, 1865 --
Booth, who'd grown up in a slave-holding family in Maryland was one of American best-known actors. He was also a fanatic for the Southern cause, and had been, planning, for some time, to kidnap Lincoln. Now, with the Confederate government about to collapse, he decided on a more drastic action.
"John Wilkes Booth beieved that Abraham Lincoln was truly an evil man. And Booth believed that by killing him, he would be doing a service to both his nation and to his race. Booth was a white supremacist."
About the same time, Lincoln spoke of having a strange dream.
"He imagined himself going downstairs in his night shirt and seeing a coffin in the East Room, on a fancy catafalque and mourners gathered all around it, sobbing. And he said something like, in his dream 'who is this?' 'Who lies dead in the White House?' And a person said 'It is the President, he's been shot by an assassin.'"
April 14 was Good Friday, and on a carriage ride to Washington, Lincoln was so upbeat about the end of the War, that Mary told him she was almost startled by his cheerfulness.
"It was a lovely spring day, and Lincoln said to her 'You know Mary, we have been very miserable', what with the loss of Willie and the War. And they started to talk for the first time together, intimately again as husband and wife, of the wonderful things that they would do together, in time of peace."
That night, they went to the theatre, accompanied by a senator's daughter Clara Harris and her fiance, Major Henry Rathbone. At Ford's theatre, the performance of "Our American Cousin" had already started when the Lincolns arrived, the action stopped, "Hail To The Chief" was played.
The audience rose and cheered.
At one point of in the proceedings, Mary leaned toward her husband very affectionately, put her arm through his and smiled up at him and said "What would Miss Harris think of my hanging onto you, so?" And he whispered "She won't think a thing about it."
That would be the last conversation the Lincoln would ever have.
As laughter and applause rang out in the third act, Booth walked up behind Lincoln, pointed a derringer at the back of his head...."BANG"
As Lincoln slumped forward, Major Rathbone tried to seize the intruder.
Booth stabbed him, then jumped down outer the stage, yelling "Sic Semper Tyrannus"... (Thus always to tyrants) before escaping through a back exit.
In the Presidental box, Mary began screaming, "They have shot the President!". An army surgeon, Dr Charles Leale, rushed to the box, and gave artificial respiration. Lincoln's heart was still beating. Soon, four doctors were around Lincoln, and they decided to carry him to the first available bed. A mid the screaming of onlookers outside, they were summoned into a boarding house across the street. Where Lincoln was put on a bed, that was too small for him. He had to be laid down diagonally. The doctors all agreed that the wound was fatal. Through the night, an hysterical Mary Lincoln came in and out of the room screaming loudly, until Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered, "take that woman out and don't let her back in."
Lincoln clung to life, until 7:22 the next morning, April 15. He was 56 years old. "Now", said Stanton, "he belongs to the ages!".
His body was carried back to the White House on what would be called "black Easter". With Lincoln having been shot on Good Friday, many Northerners quickly deified him, as a Christ-like figure.
"Blacks in the South were particularly grief-stricken. Southern slaves were very very religious. They had a lot of trouble seeing God's wisdom in best friend on earth, away from them, like that."
In the white south, however, there was a sense of justice, of God stricking down the cause of all their troubles.
"There was one letter that a Georgian wrote, in which she said that "in all over sorrow and desolation, here is one drop of hope. The fact that Abraham Lincoln won't be here to raise his howl of maniacal triumph over us'".
Twelve days after the assassination, federal officials tracked down John Wilkes Booth in a Virginia tobacco farm, where he was fatally shot. Four of his conspirators, one of whom had badly wounded Secretary of State William Seward on the night of Lincoln's murder, were tried and hanged.
In Washington, Lincoln's body laid in state for three days, in the capital.
"Literally, hundreds of thousands of people walked by the coffin and looked at Lincoln's face, which was apparently still bruised from the impact of Booth's bullet.
One week after the murder, a nine-car funeral train left the capital to carry Lincoln's body back to Illinois, retracing the route that had brought him East, four years earlier. There were riots in some cities, in the crush to see the body. In Springfield, the town to which Lincoln said he owned everything, he was laid to rest. His great American Journey was complete!.
Mary Lincoln saw nothing of the Funeral. Paralyzed with grief, she remained in a White House bed for 40 days, while souvenir hunter plundered her possession. She would live another 17 years, on the edge of sanity, long enough to see her son Ted die of tuberculosis (TB) at 18. And to hate her other son, Robert, for trying to have her institutionalized. She spent her final years in the Springfield house where she had met he husband, never raising the shades in her room.
Abraham Lincoln had lived to see Union Victory in the Civil War. But America lost him just as it was about to begin the painful job of reunification, and the reconstruction of the South. In that task, Lincoln committed to Emancipation might have insisted greater rights for Black Americans than his successors.
"If reconstruction had been a totally different picture, there might not have been a need for the civil rights movements in this country. There might not have been a need for Martin Luther King, Jr. Had Lincoln not been assassinated."
One can only speculate about the possible achievements of a Lincoln second term. And yet, he achieved enough, in just one term, for many present-day historians, to rate him "The country's Finest President Ever".
"I think he was the greatest President, because, facing the greatest crisis the nation has ever faced. He kept the nation together. He brought it through this great testing of whether Republican Government could endure or would perish from the earth. And I think that was largely because of his leadership."
Had the United States not survived intact through the Civil War, there may now be several seperate countries between Canada and Mexico. And the history of the World in the 20th century would have been very different.
Lucas - December 31, 2018.
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