“I am not bound
to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to
live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and
stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.” – Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Few figures in American history are as significant
and memorable as Abraham Lincoln. From his birth in 1809 to his assassination
in 1864 to the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922, the time and legacy
changed American nation profoundly.
Lincoln spent only four of his fifty six years as
president of the United States. He was 16th president of USA and he
was republican. Given the importance of the events that marked his 1861-1865
term of office, the nation’s admiration for him as a man of courage and
principle, and the abundance of photographic images that recorded his
presidency, it is hard for most people to think of him as anything else. But
there were other facets to the career of this man who led the nation through
the Civil War years. Prior to his presidency Lincoln honed his political skills
and aspiration through the practice of law.
In 1982, forty-nine historians and political
scientists were asked by the Chicago Tribune to rate all the Presidents through
Jimmy Carter in five categories: leadership qualities, accomplishments,
political skills, appointments, and character. At the top of the list stood
Abraham Lincoln. He was followed by the Fr. Roosevelt, G. Washington, T.
Roosevelt, T. Jefferson, and Jackson, W. Wilson and H. Truman. None of these
other presidents exceeded Lincoln in any category according to the rate scale.
The judgement of historians and the public tells us that Abraham Lincoln was
the nation’s greatest president by every measure applied.
Lincoln born on February 12, 1809 in Kentucky, his
father owned the farm on which the family lived. When Lincoln was seven, the
family moved from Kentucky to Spencer County in Indiana. As Abraham Lincoln grew
to maturity, his life was that of other pioneer farm boys, chopping wood for
the fireplace, splitting rails for fences, plowing, cultivating and harvesting.
He likes to read over and over Aesop’s Fables, Robinson Crusoe, and biography
of G. Washington. Also he spent time to read the laws of Indiana and the bible.
Until Lincoln was 19, he knew little of the world
beyond his own small corner of Indiana. In the spring of 1828, he and another
young man were hired to take a flat boat filled with country produce down the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Day after, he saw new sights
luxurious river steamers, gracious plantations mansions, towns and cities,
sophisticated society of New Orleans, and also human slavery.
In the spring 1831 Lincoln had another appealing
opportunity: the flatboat trip to New Orleans. The owner of the boat offered
him a job as clerk in a store and mill which he owned in New Salem Illinois.
Lincoln accepted and soon won a place for himself in the community. He was friendly,
frank and honest. In 1832 the Indian Chief Black Hawk brought his tribe from
Iowa in an effort to reclaim their Illinois lands. Lincoln was immediately
elected captain of the local company. He served for three months, the last two
as a private, saw no action, and returned to New Salem unscathed. Facing the
necessity of earning a living, Lincoln decided to become a storekeeper on his
own account. With a partner, he bought a stock of goods on credit.
Good luck and good reputation came to his rescue,
and he was appointed postmaster. An offer of a position as deputy county
surveyor followed. Before the Black Hack broke out, Lincoln had announced
himself a candidate for election to the Illinois House of representatives. He
had received 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem. In 1834 he ran again
for the state legislature. This time he ranked second among Sangamon County’s
for successful candidates for the Illinois House of Representatives. In 1836 he
became the leader of the Whig Party in the House. Also Lincoln had an
opportunity to go on record regarding slavery, asserting his belief that the
institution was founded on both injustice and bad policy.
Before this time, the high point of his career in
the legislature, Lincoln had recognized that his success in life would depend
upon the improvement of his imperfect, or, as he called it “detective
education.” Encouraged by John T. Stuart a successful lawyer, Lincoln borrowed
and studied the leading textbooks, the method of preparation followed by most
lawyers of his time. He obtained a license to practice in the fall of 1836. As
a lawyer, Lincoln sought great opportunity than New Salem offered.
Springfield, to become the state capital in 1839
through his own effort, seemed likely to prosper. Lincoln soon discovered that there was more
to the practice of law than he had found in the books he had read. As he
learned his profession through experience, he continued to progress in the
occupation which he found equally congenial: politics.
In 1838 and 1840 he was re-elected to the
legislature, and 1840 he took an active part in the presidential campaign in
which the Whigs elected their first president William Henry Harrison. On Nov.
4, 1842 Lincoln got married with Mary Todd, a well-educated girl from a
prominent Kentucky family.
After four terms in the Illinois House of
Representatives, Lincoln tried for election to the US House of Representatives.
His ambition was twice thwarted, in 1843 and 1844, by his failure to obtain the
nomination, but in 1846 he succeeded and was elected as a Whig. He took his
seat on Dec. 6, and served until March 4, 1849.
He had a reputation as an effective jury lawyer, but
recent studies indicate that he was at his best in the higher courts, where he
had ample time for study and for the exercise of his mature judgement. An
unexpected event in American political history, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of
1854, sent Lincoln back into politics. Early in 1855 Lincoln narrowly missed being elected
to the US Senate by the Illinois Legislature. In the following year he joined
the new Republican Party and campaigned actively for the first Republican
Presidential candidate John C. Fremont.
When the Republican National Convention met at
Chicago in 1860, the leading contender for the presidential nomination was
senator Willian H. Seward of New York. Delegation after delegation turned to
Lincoln, and on the third ballot, taken on May 18, he was nominated. Lincoln
was a minority president; in the Electoral College he received 180 votes
against 123 for his three opponents. As soon as the election results were know
southern leaders moved to carry out a threat which many northerners had refused
to take seriously: to secede from the Union in the event of Republican victory.
Many southerners believed that their section would be discriminated against by
an administration composed of opponents to the expansion of slavery.
Lincoln refusal to concede to confederate demands
for the evacuation of the federal garrison at Fort Sumter, Charleston, South
Carolina, precipitated the first hostilities of the Civil War. In the
Gettysburg Address, 1863, he declared the aims of preserving a nation conceived
in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Re-elected with a large majority in 1864 on a
national union ticket, he advocated a reconciliatory policy towards the South “with
malice towards none, with charity for all.”
When Lincoln took the oath of office for the second
time, on March 4, 1865, it was obvious that the end of the war was near.
On the evening of April 14, 1865 while attending
Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. he was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth.
Lincoln died at 7.22a.m.April 15, 1865, without having regained consciousness.
He was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield,
Ill, on May 4, 1865.
His words and his example were used and still are,
to justify the most diverse positions and courses of action.
