ID: I46928 Name: Dorothy Taylor Sex: F Birth: 1681 in Surry,King and Queen,VA 1 2 Death: 25 FEB 1754 in Amelia County,Virginia 1 2 IDNO: 554 Note: [401017.ftw] [Gilreath.FTW] Dorothy Taylor, daughter of Thomas Taylor (#2), married William Lee and their daughter, Nancy Anna Lee, married Joseph Hanks. Joseph and Nancy's son, Joseph, Jr., was the father of Nancy Hanks who was the mother of Abraham Lincoln. 3 1 2 Change Date: 18 JUN 2002 at 16:13:08
ID: I46928 Name: Dorothy Taylor Sex: F Birth: 1681 in Surry,King and Queen,VA 1 2 Death: 25 FEB 1754 in Amelia County,Virginia 1 2 IDNO: 554 Note: [401017.ftw] [Gilreath.FTW] Dorothy Taylor, daughter of Thomas Taylor (#2), married William Lee and their daughter, Nancy Anna Lee, married Joseph Hanks. Joseph and Nancy's son, Joseph, Jr., was the father of Nancy Hanks who was the mother of Abraham Lincoln. 3 1 2 Change Date: 18 JUN 2002 at 16:13:08
ID: I621695603 Name: Thomas LINCOLN Given Name: Thomas Surname: LINCOLN Sex: M Birth: 20 Jan 1780 in Rockingham Co., VA 1 Death: 17 Jan 1851 in Beechland Co., KY 1 Burial: Farmington, Coles Co., IL 2 Event: Moved Unknown Abt 1782 Jefferson Co., KY 2 Event: Taxed Unknown 1795 Washington Co., KY 2 Occupation: 1797 Tennessee 2 Event: Moved Unknown 1802 Hardin Co., KY 1 Event: Land Unknown 1803 Hardin Co., KY 1 Event: Moved Unknown 1816 Perry Co., IN 1 Event: Church Membership Unknown 1823 Perry Co., IN 2 Event: Moved Unknown 1830 Logan Co., IL 2 Event: Moved Unknown 1831 Coles Co., IL 1 Event: Moved Unknown 1840 Coles Co., IL 2 Occupation: 1 Religion: 1 Note: THOMAS LINCOLN, Abraham Lincoln's father, was born January 6, 1778, to Bathsheba and Abraham Lincoln. Thomas, who was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, was the 4th of 5 children born to the couple. His older siblings were Mordecai, Josiah, and Mary. Thomas had a younger sister named Nancy. During the early 1780's the family moved to Jefferson County in Kentucky. Thomas' father, Abraham, was killed in an attack by Native Americans in May, 1786. In 1795 Thomas was listed by name in the Washington County tax lists as a white male between the ages of 16 and 21. In c. 1797 Thomas spent a year working as a hired hand for his Uncle Isaac on the Watauga River in Tennessee. Thomas moved to Hardin County, Kentucky, in 1802, and he purchased a 238 acre farm the next year. In 1806 he married Nancy Hanks. The couple had three children: Sarah, Abraham, and Thomas (who died in infancy). Thomas was a farmer and a carpenter and was a responsible citizen living on the frontier. He was at times a jury member, a petitioner for a road, and a guard for county prisoners. In terms of education he lacked ambition, and he never fully understood Abraham's desire to read and learn. He was a good storyteller and was popular with his neighbors. Thomas and Nancy were members of the Little Mount Separate Baptist Church which had broken from the regular church over the issue of slavery. Thomas stood approximately 5-9 or 5-10 and weighed about 190 pounds. His face was well-rounded. He had dark hazel eyes and course black hair. Thomas was compactly built and very strong physically. He was temperate in his drinking habits and generally had an inoffensive personality. Late in 1816 Thomas moved his family to southern Indiana. A homesite was chosen 16 miles north of the Ohio River about a mile from Little Pigeon Creek. By February, 1817, Thomas had built a new log cabin 18 feet square with a packed dirt floor and a stone fireplace used for both cooking and heating. Although Abraham was only 8, he was handed an ax and put to work helping to clear fields, chop wood, and split rails for fences. Sadly, in 1818 Nancy Hanks Lincoln passed away from milk sickness at the age of 34. The next year Thomas went back to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and proposed to Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow whom he had known for many years. On December 2, 1819, the two were married. Soon the couple traveled back to the cabin in Indiana along with Sarah's three children by a previous marriage: Elizabeth (13), Matilda (10), and John D. (9). In 1823 Thomas joined the Little Pigeon Baptist Church. By 1827 Thomas was the owner of 100 acres of land, and in 1829 began building a better cabin. He received news from John Hanks that Illinois had fertile soil and was free of the milk sickness that had killed his first wife. Thomas never finished his new cabin; he decided to move again - this time to Illinois. Thomas sold his Indiana property and moved to Macon County, Illinois, in 1830. In 1831 he moved to Coles County which was also in Illinois. It was here that he lived for the rest of his life. He lived on three farms in Coles County, and he purchased his last one - the Goosenest Prairie farm - in 1840. The Goosenest Prairie home was a double-room style cabin which was essentially two log cabins built close to each other with the space between boarded over. By 1845 18 people were living in the structure. These included Thomas and Sarah, Sarah's son, John, and his wife, Mary, and their 6 children; Sarah's daughter, Matilda, her husband, Squire Hall, and their 6 children. As a farmer Thomas raised corn, oats, and wheat. His livestock included chickens, horses, hogs, milk cows, sheep, and geese. By 1841 Thomas owned 120 acres of land but eventually sold a third of his land to Abraham (now a successful lawyer in Springfield) to get out of financial difficulty. In 1848 he received $20 from Abraham to save the rest of the land from forced sale. Thomas Lincoln 1812 in Hodgenville, Hardin Co., KY Sources: Author: Rhonda R. McClure Title: "Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln Web Site" Publication: 1 Dec 2000 Author: National Park Service Title: "Lincoln Home National Historic Park Web Site" Publication: 5 Dec 2000
ID: I013398 Name: Nancy HANKS Sex: F Birth: 5 FEB 1784 in Campbell Co., Virginia Death: 5 OCT 1818 in Centryville, Spencer, Ind _FA2: 20 APR 1998 Reference Number: 3 Note: Nancy Hanks (1784-1818), mother of Abraham Lincoln, born February 5, 1784 in Fauquier County, Virginia.She was baptised at the Broad Run Baptist Church there. Little is known about her early life, but she was admired as an excellent seamstress. On June 12, 1806, she married Thomas Lincoln. They had three children: * Sarah Lincoln, born February 10, 1807 * Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809 * Thomas Lincoln, born in 1812 who died in infancy In 1816 Nancy Hanks and her family moved to Southern Indiana. On October 5, 1818, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of "milk sickness", a disease contracted from drinking the milk of a cow that has eaten the poisonous white snakeroot. In the same year, several other people also died of "milk sickness" in the small town of Little Pigeon Creek in Spencer County, Indiana, where the Lincolns lived. Nancy Hanks Lincoln was only thirty-four years old when she died, and her son Abraham was only nine. Nancy Hanks Lincoln's grave is located in Nancy Hanks Lincoln Cemetery, on the grounds of Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Lincoln City, Indiana. (she was mixed-raced Melungeon)
ID: I013398 Name: Nancy HANKS Sex: F Birth: 5 FEB 1784 in Campbell Co., Virginia Death: 5 OCT 1818 in Centryville, Spencer, Ind _FA2: 20 APR 1998 Reference Number: 3 Note: Nancy Hanks (1784-1818), mother of Abraham Lincoln, born February 5, 1784 in Fauquier County, Virginia.She was baptised at the Broad Run Baptist Church there. Little is known about her early life, but she was admired as an excellent seamstress. On June 12, 1806, she married Thomas Lincoln. They had three children: * Sarah Lincoln, born February 10, 1807 * Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809 * Thomas Lincoln, born in 1812 who died in infancy In 1816 Nancy Hanks and her family moved to Southern Indiana. On October 5, 1818, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of "milk sickness", a disease contracted from drinking the milk of a cow that has eaten the poisonous white snakeroot. In the same year, several other people also died of "milk sickness" in the small town of Little Pigeon Creek in Spencer County, Indiana, where the Lincolns lived. Nancy Hanks Lincoln was only thirty-four years old when she died, and her son Abraham was only nine. Nancy Hanks Lincoln's grave is located in Nancy Hanks Lincoln Cemetery, on the grounds of Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Lincoln City, Indiana. (she was mixed-raced Melungeon)
ID: I449 Name: James HANKS 1 Sex: M Birth: 1757 in Virginia 1 Death: 1785 1 Reference Number: 1004 Note: [Brøderbund WFT Vol. 1, Ed. 1, Tree #1851, Date of Import: Feb 10, 2000] Joseph and Nancy Shipley Hanks had eight Children; youngest child was a girl born February 5th, 1784, and named Nancy after her mother. In 1789, when Nancy was five years of age, her parents decided to find a new home in the then distant lands of Kentucky. Joseph and Nancy also took along son William III and the other six siblings. Also along with them went their relatives and neighbors: the Shipleys, Berrys, and the Sparrows, and Joseph's brother Abraham Hanks and his family. All these people sold their Virginia property because they had not prospered. The Great Migration in which these families took part had begun when Danile Boone and James Harrod in 1774-1775 succeeded in establishing stations at the points now known as Harrodsbury and Boonesborough. In 1775 Abraham Hanks, uncle of Nancy Hanks, had gone with a company of explorers to the wilderness--he suffered hardships and had adventures that he later told to his nieces and nephews. When Joseph Hanks and his friends started on the journey west, the route was much easier and safer than when Abraham Hanks had made it. The Great Migration into Kentucky at this time, even from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New England, came by the Virginia Valley, thence to Cumberland Gap, and thence by what is now known as the Wilderness Road, running northwest from the Gap to the Ohio River at Louisville. It was a mere bridle path through the forest and over the mountains, but this route was preferred to the one by Pittsburg and the Ohio River. The farm upon which Joseph Hanks and his family settled in Kentucky consisted of 150 acres, in what is now Elizabethtown. Their friends and relatives, the Sparrows, the Mitchells, and the Berrys, farmed a settlement a few miles away in Beachland, near the town of Springfield in Washington County, Kentucky. Joseph Hanks lived but four years on his new property; his will dated January 9th, 1793 and probated May 11th, 1793, has been reporbated in facsimile. His daughter Nancy is therein bequeathed one heifer yearling called "Piedy" and comes in for her one-eighth share of the estate of 150 acres of land, after the death of her mother, to whom the property was willed. Four years later, in 1797, her mother died, leaving this property to be equally divided among the eight children. This settles the question of Nancy Hanks' parentage, as it shows that she was the legitimate daughter of a reputable Kentucky pioneer who remembered her in his will on a basis of equality with her brothers and sisters. Virginia Sources: Title: World Family Tree Vol. 1, Ed. 1 Author: Brøderbund Software, Inc. Publication: Release date: November 29, 1995 Note: Customer pedigree. Repository: Media: Family Archive CD Page: Tree #1851 Text: Date of Import: Feb 10, 2000
HE WAS ASSASSINATED.ID: I26848 Name: ABRAHAM @ LINCOLN Prefix: Pres. Given Name: ABRAHAM @ Surname: LINCOLN Sex: M _UID: EE40DB091F74D811BE490080C8C142CCACAA Change Date: 29 Oct 2004 Note: Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865), 16th president of the United States (1861-1865) and one of the great leaders in American history. A humane, far-sighted statesman in his lifetime, he became a legend and a folk hero after his death. President Lincoln Soon after Abraham Lincoln's election as president of the United States, seven Southern states seceded from the Union because they feared that Lincoln would abolish slavery. Four more states had followed by the time Lincoln delivered his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861. This recording of his 1861 inaugural address is recited by an actor.(p) 1992 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved./Archive Photos Lincoln rose from humble backwoods origins to become one of the great presidents of the United States. In his effort to preserve the Union during the Civil War, he assumed more power than any preceding president. If necessity made him almost a dictator, by fervent conviction he was always a democrat. A superb politician, he persuaded the people with reasoned word and thoughtful deed to look to him for leadership. He had a lasting influence on American political institutions, most importantly in setting the precedent of vigorous executive action in time of national emergency. II EARLY LIFE Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky. This cabin, similar to the one in which the future president was born, stands in the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site in Kentucky.William Bake Abraham Lincoln's ancestry on his father's side has been traced to Samuel Lincoln, a weaver who emigrated from Hingham, England, to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637. The president's forebears were pioneers who moved west with the expanding frontier from Massachusetts to Berks County, Pennsylvania, and then to Virginia. Abraham's father, Thomas Lincoln, was born in Rockingham County in backcountry Virginia in 1778. In 1781 Thomas Lincoln's father, who was also named Abraham, took his family to Hughes Station on the Green River, 32 km (20 mi) east of Louisville, Kentucky. In 1786 a Native American killed the first Abraham Lincoln while he was at work clearing land for a farm in the forest. Thomas Lincoln continued to live in Kentucky. He saw it develop from a frontier wilderness into a rapidly growing state. But like his ancestors he preferred the rugged life on the frontier. In a brief autobiography written for a political campaign, Lincoln said that his father “even in childhood was a wandering labor boy, and grew up literally without education. He never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name.” Despite Thomas Lincoln's apparent shiftlessness, he became a skilled carpenter, and he never lacked the basic necessities of life. At one time he owned title to two farms. He always possessed one or more horses. He paid his taxes, and, like his neighbors, he accepted jury duty and militia duty when called. On June 12, 1806, Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks. Little is known about Abe Lincoln's mother except that she came from a very poor Virginia family. She was completely illiterate and signed her name with an X. After their marriage the Lincolns moved from a farm on Mill Creek in Hardin County, Kentucky, to nearby Elizabethtown. There Thomas Lincoln earned his living as a carpenter and handyman. In 1807 a daughter, Sarah, was born. In December 1808 the Lincolns moved to a 141-hectare (348-acre) farm on the south fork of Nolin Creek near what is now Hodgenville, Kentucky. On February 12, 1809, in a log cabin that Thomas Lincoln had built, a son, Abraham, was born. Later the Lincolns had a second son who died in infancy. When Abraham Lincoln was two, the family moved to another farm on nearby Knob Creek. Life was lonely and hard. There was little time for play. Most of the day was spent hunting, farming, fishing, and doing chores. Land titles in Kentucky were confused and often subject to dispute. Thomas Lincoln lost his title to the Mill Creek farm, and his claims to both the Nolin Creek and Knob Creek tracts were challenged in court. In 1816, therefore, the Lincolns decided to move to Indiana, where the land was surveyed and sold by the federal government. In the winter of 1816 the Lincolns took their meager possessions, ferried across the Ohio River, and settled near Pigeon Creek, close to what is now Gentryville, Indiana. Because it was winter, Thomas Lincoln immediately built a crude, three-sided shelter that served as home until he could build a log cabin. A fire at the open end of the shelter kept the family warm. At this time southern Indiana was a heavily forested wilderness. Lincoln described it as a “wild region, with many bears and other wild animals in the woods.” Later some of Nancy Hanks's relatives moved near the site the Lincolns had chosen, and a thriving frontier community gradually developed. In 1818 an epidemic of the milk sick broke out. This was not actually a disease. It was caused by drinking poisoned milk from cows that had eaten the wild snakeroot plant. One of the first victims of the milk sick was Nancy Hanks Lincoln. She died October 5, 1818. The next year, Thomas Lincoln journeyed to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow with three children. Abe Lincoln was very much attached to his kind stepmother, and he later referred to her as “my angel mother.” One of the most important jobs on a frontier farm was clearing the forest. Young Abe Lincoln quickly became skilled with an axe. In his autobiographical sketch written in the third person, Lincoln stated that “the clearing away of surplus wood was the great task ahead. Abraham, though very young, was large for his age, and had an axe put in his hands at once. From that till within his twenty-third year, he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument.” One of his chores with an axe was to make fence rails by splitting poles. Later, as a presidential candidate, Lincoln was known as the Railsplitter. A Education Reading by Firelight Abraham Lincoln’s desire to learn and his efforts to educate himself have become legendary. Lincoln grew up in poverty in Kentucky and Indiana, where he had little formal education and minimal access to books. As a boy, he would often read at night by the light of the fire in his family’s cabin.THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE When his father could spare him from chores, Lincoln attended an ABC school. Such schools were held in log cabins, and often the teachers were barely more educated than their pupils. According to Lincoln, “no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', writin', and cipherin', to the Rule of Three.” Including a few weeks at a similar school in Kentucky, Lincoln had less than one full year of formal education in his entire life. Abe's stepmother encouraged his quest for knowledge. At an early age he could read, write, and do simple arithmetic. Books were scarce on the Indiana frontier, but besides the family Bible, which Lincoln knew well, he was able to read the classical authors Aesop, John Bunyan, and Daniel Defoe, as well as William Grimshaw's History of the United States (1820) and Mason Locke Weems's Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington (about 1800). This biography of George Washington made a lasting impression on Lincoln, and he made the ideals of Washington and the founding fathers of the United States his own. By the time Lincoln was 19 years old, he had reached his full height of 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in). He was lean and muscular, with long arms and big hands that gave him an awkward appearance. Although he had remarkable strength, he never liked farm work. He preferred instead the easy congeniality that he found at the general store in nearby Gentryville. A neighbor recalled “Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk and crack jokes and tell stories all the time.” The Pigeon Creek farm was near the Ohio River, and Lincoln often earned money ferrying passengers and baggage to riverboats waiting in midstream. In 1828, when he was 19, he was hired by the local merchant James Gentry to take a cargo-laden flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. B Move to Illinois Lincoln on the Mississippi In 1831 Abraham Lincoln and two others were hired to take a flatboat full of cargo down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, Louisiana. Denton Offutt, a Kentucky trader and speculator, paid them 50 cents a day plus a $60 fee. According to popular legend, Lincoln saw his first slave auction while on this trip.Culver Pictures In 1830 another epidemic of milk sick was rumored to be breaking out in Indiana. Already the Hanks family had moved west to Illinois, and their enthusiastic letters describing their new home rekindled the pioneering spirit in Thomas Lincoln. In March 1830 the Lincoln family set out for the Illinois country. They settled at the junction of woodland and prairie on the north bank of the Sangamon River, 16 km (10 mi) west of what is now Decatur, Illinois. Lincoln helped his father build a log cabin and fence in 4 hectares (10 acres) to grow corn. Then he hired out to neighbors, helping them to split rails. That year, Lincoln attended a political rally and was persuaded to speak on behalf of a local candidate. It was his first political speech. A witness recalled that Lincoln “was frightened but got warmed up and made the best speech of the day.” In 1831 Lincoln made a second trip to New Orleans. He was hired, along with his stepbrother and a cousin, by Denton Offutt, a Kentucky trader and speculator, to build a flatboat and take it down the Mississippi with a load of cargo. The pay was 50 cents a day plus a fee of $60. According to legend, Lincoln saw his first slave auction in New Orleans and said, “If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard.” C New Salem Denton Offutt was impressed with Lincoln's abilities. When they returned to Illinois, he hired Lincoln as a clerk in a general store in New Salem, a small community near the growing town of Springfield, Illinois. The pay was $15 a month, plus the use of the store as sleeping quarters. Although he was a newcomer in New Salem, Lincoln soon became one of its most popular citizens. He won the respect and fellowship of the local ruffians by besting their strong man, Jack Armstrong, in a wrestling match. And he soon earned the friendship of the more peaceable citizens of the community by his good humor, intelligence, and integrity. As in all small towns of the day, the general store was an informal meeting place. Customers who came to buy at Offutt's store would usually linger to exchange anecdotes and jokes with his clerk. Lincoln, an avid newspaper reader, enjoyed the popular frontier pastime of discussing politics. Because he could read and write, Lincoln was often called on to draw up legal papers for the less literate citizens of New Salem. Clerking in a store gave Lincoln time to read all the books, newspapers, and political tracts that came his way. Always endeavoring to improve his education, he studied books on grammar and acquired a lifelong taste for the poetry of English poet and playwright William Shakespeare and Scottish poet Robert Burns. Novels, however, held little interest for him, and he later admitted that he never was able to finish one in his entire life. Lincoln also joined the local debating society. A member had this reaction to Lincoln's first debate: “A perceptible smile at once lit up the face of the audience, for all anticipated the relation of some humorous story. But he opened up discussion in splendid style, to the infinite astonishment of his friends. . . . He pursued the question with reason and argument so pithy and forcible that all were amazed.” III EARLY POLITICAL CAREER Abraham Lincoln As the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln helped keep the American Union together during the Civil War and abolished slavery in the United States. Remembered for his honesty, compassion, and strength of character, Lincoln remains one of the most respected presidents in American history.Hulton Deutsch In the spring of 1832, Lincoln decided to run for a seat in the Illinois house of representatives. This was a logical step for Lincoln to take, for on the frontier a young man with ability and ambition could rise rapidly in politics. A month after Lincoln announced his candidacy, Offutt's general store went bankrupt and Lincoln found himself without a job. But almost immediately, Governor John Reynolds of Illinois called for volunteers to put down a rebellion of the Native American Sauk (or Sac) and Fox peoples led by Chief Black Hawk. Lincoln enlisted at once and, because of his popularity, was elected captain of his company. When his term expired, he reenlisted as a private. In all, he served three months, but saw no actual fighting. However, Lincoln took great pride in this brief military career. A First Campaign When Lincoln returned to New Salem in 1832, election day was two weeks away. It was a presidential election year, and political parties had formed around the contending candidates. Followers of Andrew Jackson, who was seeking a second term as president, called themselves Democrats. Followers of U.S. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky called themselves National Republicans and later Whigs. Lincoln supported Clay, who had long been his political idol. He remained a faithful Whig until the party disintegrated over the question of slavery in the 1850s. Lincoln's program, as published in the Sangamon, Illinois, Journal, called for the construction of canals and roads, better schools, and a low interest rate to stimulate local economic growth. In his brief campaign, Lincoln spoke from tree stumps in village squares, visited farmers in their homes and fields, and shook hands and exchanged stories with as many people as he could meet. Nevertheless, he was defeated. There were 13 county candidates running for four legislative seats. Lincoln finished eighth. In his own precinct, however, he got 277 out of 300 votes even though the precinct voted overwhelmingly to support the Democrat, Jackson, for the presidency. B Postmaster After his defeat, Lincoln opened a general store in New Salem with William F. Berry as his partner. But Berry misused the profits, and in a few months the venture failed. Berry died in 1835, leaving Lincoln responsible for debts amounting to $1100. It took him several years to pay them off. After the general store failed, Lincoln was appointed postmaster of New Salem. The appointment came from Jackson's Democratic administration. Lincoln's Whig views were well known, but, as Lincoln explained it, the postmaster's job was “too insignificant to make his politics an objection.” As postmaster, Lincoln earned $60 a year plus a percentage of the receipts on postage. He ran an informal post office, often doing favors for friends, such as undercharging them for mailing letters. The job gave him time to read, and he made a habit of reading all the newspapers that came through the office. To augment his income, he became the deputy surveyor of Sangamon County. C Illinois Legislator In 1834 Lincoln again ran for representative to the Illinois legislature. By then he was known throughout the county, and many Democrats gave him their votes. He was elected in 1834 and reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840. As a member of the Whig minority he became the protégé of the Whig floor leader, Representative John T. Stuart of Springfield. When Stuart ran for a seat in the Congress of the United States in 1836, Lincoln replaced him as floor leader. Stuart also encouraged Lincoln to study law, which Lincoln did between legislative sessions. Lincoln's main achievement as a state legislator was the transfer of the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield. In this effort he acted as the leader of Sangamon County's delegation of seven representatives and two state senators, a group called the Long Nine because they were all tall men. Lincoln devised a strategy whereby the Sangamon delegation supported the projects of other legislators in return for their support of Springfield as the capital city. In American politics this kind of aid is called logrolling, a term derived from frontier families' tradition of helping each other to build log cabins. Lincoln's other votes in the state legislature reflected his Whig background. He supported the business interests in the state and defended the pro-business national platform of Henry Clay. Lincoln's experience in the Illinois legislature sharpened his political skills. He was adept at logrolling, skilled in debate, and expert in the art of political maneuver. In 1837 Lincoln took his first public stand on slavery when the Illinois legislature voted to condemn the activities of the abolition societies that wanted an immediate end to slavery by any means. Lincoln and a colleague declared that slavery was “founded on both injustice and bad politics, but the promulgation of abolitionist doctrine tends rather to increase than abate its evil.” Lincoln was against slavery, but he favored lawful means of achieving its destruction. Throughout his political career, Lincoln avoided extreme abolitionist groups. D Early Law Practice Meanwhile, Lincoln continued his study of law, and in 1836 he became a licensed attorney. The following year he became a junior partner in John T. Stuart's law firm and moved from New Salem to Springfield. Lincoln was extremely poor and arrived in Springfield on a borrowed horse with all his belongings in two saddlebags. A Springfield storekeeper, Joshua Fry Speed, whom Lincoln later called “my most intimate friend,” gave Lincoln free lodging. D1 Courtship and Marriage Mary Todd Lincoln Mary Todd Lincoln has been described as a short, lively woman who came from a prominent Lexington, Kentucky, family of slaveholders. Her husband, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, is supposed to have said that while God made do with one d, the Todds demanded two.THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE According to a now discredited legend, while in New Salem, Lincoln was said to have been in love with Ann Rutledge, the beautiful young daughter of a local innkeeper. When she died in 1835, Lincoln was said to be “plunged in despair.” The frequent lapses into melancholy that marked his adult years were said to be a result of this tragic death. But Lincoln in his later years never referred to Ann Rutledge, and authorities are unanimous in agreeing that the Lincoln-Rutledge romance is a myth. Indeed, less than 18 months after Ann's death, Lincoln proposed marriage to Mary Owens, a Kentucky girl who also lived in New Salem. Theirs was not an ardent love affair, but having made his proposal, Lincoln felt he could not honorably break it off. Much to his relief, Mary turned him down. Later she explained, “I thought Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman's happiness.” In 1840, Lincoln met a cultured, high-strung Kentucky woman named Mary Todd, who was staying with a married sister in Springfield. After a long courtship, they were married on November 4, 1842. A week later, Lincoln wrote a fellow lawyer, “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is a matter of profound wonder.” Late in 1843 the Lincolns moved from their simple rented quarters to a modest frame house in Springfield that Lincoln bought for $1500. Of their four boys, only the eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, reached adulthood. He was born in 1843 and died in 1926. Edward Baker Lincoln was born in 1846 and died at the age of four. William Wallace, called Willie, was born in 1850 and died in the White House, the presidential mansion, shortly before his 12th birthday. Lincoln's favorite son, Thomas, whom he affectionately called Tad, was born in 1853, grew up in the White House, and died at the age of 18. In contrast with the sweet, loving Ann Rutledge of legend, Mary Todd Lincoln has unfairly been pictured as a shrew who made Lincoln's life miserable. Certainly she was spoiled, haughty, and temperamental. The death of her children caused her much anguish, and after Willie's death she was often hysterical. Lincoln was devoted to her, however, and there is no evidence that theirs was not a happy marriage. On those occasions when she became upset, Lincoln treated her with patience and understanding. He, for his part, was careless in his personal habits and subject to extreme depression. What he and his wife had in common was ambition. Mary aided her husband's political career immeasurably. D2 Frontier Lawyer At the time of his marriage, Lincoln was earning $1200 to $1500 a year from his law practice, a good income for the time and place. When the law firm of Stuart and Lincoln dissolved in 1841, Stephen T. Logan, an able and experienced lawyer, took Lincoln in as junior partner. In 1844 the firm of Logan and Lincoln also dissolved, and Lincoln formed a lifelong partnership with a young lawyer named William H. Herndon. Lawsuits on the Illinois frontier usually dealt with such trivial matters as crop damage caused by wandering livestock, ownership of hogs and horses, small debts, libel, and assault and battery. The Springfield courts were in session only a small part of the year. For three months each spring and fall, lawyers and judges rode the circuit, holding court at rural county seats. Lincoln rode the eighth judicial circuit, the largest in the state, covering 15 counties and about 12,900 sq km (about 8000 sq mi). The local sessions of the circuit court were major events on the frontier. The particulars of each case were well known to the townspeople and were subject to heated debate. Courtroom conduct was informal, and more often than not a case was won on a lawyer's speaking ability rather than the legal merits of his case. The judge and the lawyers were treated as celebrities, and Lincoln, because of his storytelling abilities and skill as a lawyer, was popular on the circuit. Ever the politician, he used this opportunity to meet new people and advance his political career. Lincoln still had political ambitions, but he now looked beyond the statehouse to the U.S. Congress. In 1843 he wrote a fellow politician, “Now if you should hear any one say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, would tell him you have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is, I would like to go very much.” The Whigs were a minority party in Illinois, and there was competition among the Whig politicians over the nomination for U.S. representative for the Seventh Congressional District, where Whigs were in the majority. Lincoln sought the nomination in 1842 and 1844 and received it in 1846. He went on to defeat the Democratic candidate, the Methodist preacher Peter Cartwright, in the election of November 1846. E United States Congressman Congressman Abraham Lincoln This is the first known photograph of United States President Abraham Lincoln. It was taken not long after his election, in 1846, to represent the seventh congressional district of Illinois in the U.S. Congress.Culver Pictures Congressman-elect Lincoln was a popular, masterful politician in Illinois. Having succeeded in the rough-hewn Illinois legislature, he was confident that he would make his mark in Congress. Once in Washington, D.C., however, Lincoln became one of many unknown freshman congressmen. The inner councils of government were closed to him, as was the Washington social life that Mary Lincoln was looking forward to. However, Lincoln never lost confidence in himself. He wrote Herndon, “As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do so before long.” The Lincolns, with their two sons, lived quietly in a modest boardinghouse. Lincoln had a small body of friends with whom he could relax and discuss politics. Among them was Alexander H. Stephens, the Whig congressman from Georgia, who later became vice president of the Confederate States of America. E1 Spot Resolutions James K. Polk, a Democrat, was president while Lincoln was in Congress. Lincoln joined other Whigs in attacking Polk for starting the Mexican War. Congress had declared war against Mexico in May 1846 upon Polk's contention that Mexicans had fired on American soldiers in U.S. territory. In December 1847 Lincoln challenged the truth of this contention. He introduced a resolution questioning whether the spot on which the firing took place was actually in U.S. territory. In another resolution he claimed that the American troops were on that spot in violation of the orders of their commanding officer, General Zachary Taylor. The next month, Lincoln supported a Whig resolution declaring that the Mexican War had been “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally . . . begun by the President.” Lincoln's “spot resolutions” made little impression either on Congress or on the president, but they caused an uproar in Illinois, where the war was approved of by most voters. Lincoln was denounced as a traitor, and opposition newspapers gleefully called him Spotty Lincoln. However, despite his opinion of the war, once war was declared, Lincoln voted for all appropriations in support of it. E2 Actions on Slavery The extension of slavery into the territories was an important question during Lincoln's term in Congress. He supported the Wilmot Proviso, which proposed that slavery be prohibited in any territory acquired from Mexico. Lincoln also put forward a program for the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. Although Lincoln's proposal never came up before Congress, it exemplified his opposition to slavery and the moderate means by which he wanted to achieve abolition. The proposal called for the emancipation of children born into slavery after January 1, 1850. These children would be placed in apprenticeship programs to learn a trade. The emancipation of other slaves would be voluntary, and the slaveholders would be compensated for their loss. Finally, the voters of Washington would have to approve the plan before it went into effect. Lincoln believed that Congress did not have the power to abolish slavery in the individual states. But where Congress did have the power, as in Washington, and where the electorate was agreeable, Lincoln thought it should abolish slavery. E3 Whig Politics In the presidential election of 1848, Lincoln decided to back the popular war hero Zachary Taylor, rather than his idol Henry Clay, for the Whig nomination. Lincoln's reasons were wholly practical. “Mr. Clay's chance for an election is just no chance at all,” he wrote. “In my judgment we can elect nobody but General Taylor.” Lincoln campaigned for Taylor in Massachusetts and Illinois. Taylor won the election, but much to Lincoln's disappointment, the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, carried Illinois. Lincoln wanted to run for a second term in Congress, but it was traditional that the Whig candidate from the Seventh Congressional District in Illinois serve only one term. Further, Lincoln's antiwar position made him unpopular at home, and his former law partner Stephen Logan, running on Lincoln's record, was defeated. Lincoln discovered that the incoming Whig administration had little use for his services. He was offered nothing better than the governorship of far-off Oregon Territory. Lincoln rejected the appointment, and, thoroughly dejected and believing that his political career was over, returned to Springfield to renew his practice of law. F Return to Law Practice Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, had kept the firm going while Lincoln was in Congress. Now the two men built up their practice until it was one of the largest in Illinois. As senior partner, Lincoln made frequent appearances before the federal court in Chicago and the state supreme court in Springfield. He also continued to ride the circuit for six months each year. From the fall term of 1849 to the fall term of 1860 he missed only two sessions on the circuit, a record no other lawyer matched. Riding the circuit was an important, if unspectacular, stage in Lincoln's development from partisan politician to statesman. The long solitary journeys between county seats, first by horse or buggy and then by train, gave him opportunity for quiet thought. He reread Shakespeare, and for mental discipline he studied Euclidean mathematics. Politics, national affairs, and abstract ideas occupied his mind. Lincoln also enjoyed the companionship of the other lawyers and of circuit judge David Davis, whom he later appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. The migratory life of the circuit lawyer also enabled Lincoln to renew old acquaintances and make new ones. Because he did not always have enough time to prepare an adequate case in the circuit courts, Lincoln often had to depend on his natural shrewdness and oratorical ability to sway a jury. His most celebrated circuit case was his defense of Duff Armstrong, the son of his New Salem friend Jack Armstrong, on a murder charge. When a witness testified that bright moonlight had enabled him to see Duff commit the murder, Lincoln produced an almanac and proved that the moon had not been shining brightly at the time. In summing up the case, Lincoln described with great emotion his friendship with the boy's father. The jury voted for acquittal. Lincoln soon became one of the most respected lawyers in the state. The briefs he presented before the more formal state and federal courts were carefully documented and marked by unassailable logic. Lincoln argued many important cases. He often represented the interests of the growing corporations in Illinois. In Illinois Central Railroad v. County of McLean he successfully pleaded that a county could not tax a railroad. In another important case, Hurd v. Rock Island Bridge Company, he argued that a railroad had the right to build a bridge across a stream used for navigation. Despite his prominence as a lawyer, however, Lincoln was careless about his dress, and he sometimes carried important papers inside his battered stovepipe hat. F1 Antislavery Leader Lincoln was losing interest in politics when, in 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The act aroused Lincoln, in his words, “as he had never been before.” The act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and stated that each territory could be admitted as a state “with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.” The author of the act, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the leading Democrat of Illinois, called this program popular sovereignty because it allowed the voters in these territories to decide for themselves whether slavery would be allowed. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the old dividing line between free and slave states as set by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a new Lincoln emerged into the world of politics. Although he was as ambitious for political office as ever, he was now, for the first time in his career, devoted to a cause. He became a forceful spokesman for the antislavery forces. F2 Early Contest with Douglas Abraham Lincoln had settled into his Illinois law practice in 1854 when the United States Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This law removed the north-south dividing line between free and slave territory that had been created by the 1820 Missouri Compromise, and allowed the two new states to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Galvanized by the law, Lincoln began to campaign fervently for antislavery Whig politicians in Illinois and against Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who authored the act. Lincoln delivered the speech excerpted here in Peoria, Illinois. In 1854 Lincoln campaigned for the election to Congress of Richard Yates, an antislavery Whig, on a platform of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. However, Lincoln was after bigger game. His target was none other than Douglas himself, whose nickname was “The Little Giant.” In October 1854, Douglas came to Springfield to defend the Kansas-Nebraska Act. After Douglas spoke, Lincoln mounted the speaker's platform and announced that he would answer Douglas's speech the next night. For days, Lincoln had haunted the state library, read congressional documents, and organized his arguments against slavery. The next night, in his shirtsleeves and without a collar or tie, Lincoln spoke. Attacking the Kansas-Nebraska Act itself, he said: “The Missouri Compromise forbade slavery to go north of 36°30'. Our government breaks down that restriction and opens the door for slavery to enter where it could not go. This is practically legislating for slavery, recognizing it, extending it.” Douglas had spoken of slavery only as a political issue. The morality of the institution did not concern him. To Lincoln, however, slavery was both a political and a moral issue. “It is said,” Lincoln continued, “that the slaveholder has the same political right to take his Negroes to Kansas that a freeman has to take his hogs or his horses. This would be true if Negroes were property in the same sense that hogs and horses are. But is this the case? It is notoriously not so.” To Lincoln, slavery was incompatible with American democracy. “When the white man governs himself,” he said, “that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man—that is despotism. If the Negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal,’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.” Lincoln avoided abolitionist doctrine, taking the view that slavery was a national problem, not merely a Southern one. “I think,” he went on, “I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon ....It does seem to me that some system of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.” Lincoln repeated this speech in Peoria, Illinois, 12 days later. It has become known as his Peoria speech. Despite his new role as a spokesman for the antislavery forces in Illinois, Lincoln declined to join the Republican Party, then being formed on an abolition platform. The Whig Party was in rapid decline, but Lincoln remained with it until its death. In 1855 he was the Whig candidate for the U.S. Senate, the upper chamber of Congress. U.S. senators were then elected by the state legislatures. Lincoln led for seven ballots. Then, seeing that he could not win, he threw his support to an anti-Douglas Democrat, Lyman Trumbull, who was elected. G Election of 1856 In 1856 Lincoln publicly identified himself as a Republican, and in May he attended the Republican state convention at Bloomington. The moderate antislavery resolutions of this convention were acceptable to Lincoln. He signified his approval of the new party by giving the main address at the convention. This speech, considered by many to be his most compelling, has been lost. At the Republican national convention, John C. Frémont was nominated for president. The Illinois delegation proposed Lincoln for vice president, but, although he received 110 convention votes, the nomination went to William C. Dayton of New Jersey. Lincoln campaigned for the Republican ticket in Illinois and in Michigan, but Frémont lost Illinois, as well as the election, to his Democratic opponent, James Buchanan. H Candidate for United States Senate Agitation over the slavery issue increased in 1856 and 1857. In the Dred Scott Case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. In Kansas proslavery and antislavery partisans were engaged in a bloody civil war for control of the territorial government. Northern abolitionists demanded the immediate destruction of slavery, while Southern apologists insisted that their “peculiar institution” was beneficial to both slaveowner and slave. In 1858 Senator Douglas came up for reelection. The Republican Party nominated Lincoln to oppose him. In his acceptance speech before the Republican state convention in Springfield, Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” This was Lincoln's most extreme statement against slavery. Although he returned to his more moderate position as expressed in the Peoria speech, his opponents used the militant words of the House Divided speech against him. H1 Lincoln-Douglas Debates Lincoln-Douglas Debates In a series of seven debates in 1858, Abraham Lincoln challenged United States Senator Stephen Douglas’s support of a law allowing slavery in free territory. Lincoln lost his bid for Douglas’s Senate seat, but the debates helped pave the road to the presidency.CORBIS-BETTMANN Both Lincoln and Douglas were excellent speakers. When Douglas was told that Lincoln was his opponent, he said, “I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of the party—full of wit, facts, dates—and the best stump speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West.” HISTORIC SPEECHES "House Divided" At the 1858 state Republican convention in Springfield, Illinois, the Republican Party’s United States Senate candidate for Illinois and future president Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech. Many politicians viewed Lincoln’s speech as radical. Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic Party’s candidate, accused Lincoln of taking an unreasonably hard line against slavery and said he was “advocat[ing] boldly and clearly a war of sections” between North and South over slavery. Excerpts from Lincoln’s speech and Douglas’s reply follow below. The campaign opened in Chicago. Douglas defended popular sovereignty and attacked Lincoln for his “house divided” speech. He accused Lincoln of trying to divide the nation. Lincoln replied by calling for national unity. Recalling the Declaration of Independence, the document on which the United States was founded, he said, “Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race, being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout the land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.” In July, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of face-to-face debates. Douglas accepted. It was arranged that seven three-hour debates would be held in seven different cities between August and October. In the debates, both candidates respected each other and kept to the issues. The crux of the discussion was the morality of slavery. The debates captivated Illinois. About 10,000 people listened to the first debate under a blazing hot sun at Ottawa. Over 15,000 listened in drizzling rain at Freeport. Even in the small towns where the candidates spoke alone, crowds of as many as 6000 were common. The newspapers carried the arguments of each candidate throughout the nation. H2 Freeport Doctrine HISTORIC DOCUMENTS The Emancipation Proclamation Issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, this famous document, printed here in its entirety, granted freedom to more than 3 million United States slaves. Lincoln's decree was later made law by passage of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. In the second debate, at Freeport, Lincoln asked Douglas whether the people of a territory could lawfully exclude slavery prior to the formation of a state constitution. Douglas replied that slavery could be excluded from a territory, despite the Dred Scott decision, if the people refused to enact the necessary local laws for its protection. This opinion, known as the Freeport Doctrine, cost Douglas much of his support among Southern Democrats who were thinking of him as a presidential candidate in 1860. In the last debate, at Alton, Lincoln said, “The sentiment that contemplates the institution of slavery in this country as a wrong is the sentiment of the Republican Party. On the other hand, I have said there is a sentiment which treats it as not being wrong....That class will include all men who positively assert that it is right, and all who like Judge Douglas treat it as indifferent and do not say it is either right or wrong.” Lincoln believed he had a good chance of defeating Douglas. Indeed, the Republicans won a majority of the popular votes, but the lame-duck legislature, which was Democratic, reelected Douglas by a vote of 54 to 46. Lincoln was not too disappointed about the results. He wrote in a letter to a friend, “I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some remarks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.” I Election of 1860 The Lincoln-Douglas debates brought Lincoln national recognition. He accepted invitations to speak in Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and at the Cooper Union college in New York City. I1 Cooper Union Speech HISTORIC SPEECHES Address at Cooper Union Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 debates with Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, which revolved around the issue of slavery, established a national reputation for Lincoln. When he came to speak at New York City’s Cooper Union on February 27, 1860, a large and distinguished audience turned out. Using historical facts and a meticulous legal approach, Lincoln challenged Douglas’s fundamental assertion that the founding fathers who wrote the United States Constitution intended that states or territories could override Congress regarding slavery policies. Logical and compelling in its simplicity, the speech is regarded as one of Lincoln’s most brilliant. It propelled him into the position of the leading Republican candidate for president. On February 27, 1860, at Cooper Union, Lincoln addressed a crowd of 1500 New Yorkers who had braved a snowstorm to hear him speak. The speech was sponsored by the Young Men's Republican Union, a group opposed to the radical antislavery views of U.S. Senator William H. Seward of New York. Seward was then the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Lincoln made a careful speech, moderate in tone and conciliatory to the South. He denied that the Republican Party was a Northern party alone, and he repudiated the violent abolitionist John Brown for his attempt to start a slave rebellion. He also denied that the Republican Party intended to interfere with the existing system in the South. “Wrong as we think slavery is,” he said, “we can yet afford to leave it alone where it is.” It was one of his most stirring speeches, and was met with much applause and cheering. A reporter wrote, “No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.” As a result of this speech, Lincoln became a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. I2 Presidential Nomination In 1860 the Illinois Republican state convention met and named Lincoln as its choice for president. In May the Republican national convention met in Chicago. The chief contenders for the presidential nomination were Seward, Lincoln, Governor Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, Senator Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, and former congressman Edward Bates of Missouri. Because of their strong positions against slavery and the South, Seward and Chase did not have the support of the moderates. As a member of the American, or “Know-Nothing,” Party in earlier years, Bates had offended foreign-born Americans. Cameron was involved with political scandals in his home state. Only Lincoln was acceptable to all factions of the party. On the first ballot, Seward led with 173-1/2 votes. Lincoln had 102, Cameron had 50-1/2, Chase had 49, and Bates had 35. On the second ballot, Cameron withdrew, and most of the Pennsylvania delegation switched to Lincoln. Seward now had 184-1/2 votes, Lincoln 181, Chase 42-1/2, and Bates 35. On the third ballot, four Ohio delegates changed their votes to Lincoln. This started a stampede on his behalf, and when his nomination was secure, the convention voted to make him their unanimous choice for president. To balance the ticket politically and geographically, the convention chose a former Democrat, Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, as its vice presidential candidate. The party's policies, or platform, included a moderate antislavery position designed to appease the South: slavery was not to be extended, but would not be abolished where it existed. Also included were a high tariff (tax on imports) to appeal to the industrial North, and the promise of free land for settlers to satisfy the West. California and Oregon voters were promised a railroad to the Pacific Coast, and support for river and harbor projects carried on the Whig tradition of internal improvements. I3 Opposing Candidates At the Democrats' convention, held in Charleston, South Carolina, the party was split into Northern and Southern factions over the slavery question. The convention nominated Stephen Douglas for president, and this so incensed the Southern delegates that many of them walked out. Later they held a separate convention and nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. A fourth party, the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John Bell of Tennessee on a brief platform calling only for the preservation of the Union. I4 Election Returns Following the custom of the day, Lincoln remained in Springfield while other Republicans campaigned on his behalf. With the Democratic Party split, his victory was virtually assured. He received 180 electoral votes, a majority. Breckinridge, who carried the entire Deep South, was second with 72. Bell received 39 and Douglas 12. However, Lincoln won only 40 percent of the popular vote. Of the total votes cast, he won 1,865,593, Douglas 1,382,713, Breckinridge 848,356, and Bell 592,906. Lincoln failed to win a single electoral vote in ten Southern states. IV PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HISTORIC DOCUMENTS Lincoln's First Inaugural Address Convinced that United States President Abraham Lincoln was a threat to slavery, Southern states began to secede soon after Lincoln’s election in 1860. In his inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1861, Lincoln said he would not interfere with the “institution” of slavery where it already existed. However, Lincoln had long been opposed to extending slavery to new territories in the West. In his speech, Lincoln expressed his unwavering belief that no state had the right to secede from the Union. He promised to maintain and defend all possessions of the federal government, which included property such as forts that the rebellious Southern states had already seized. In April 1861 the American Civil War (1861-1865) began with the battle at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A First Year in Office Even before election day, Southern militants were threatening to secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected. In December, with the Republican victory final, South Carolina seceded. By February, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had followed. These states joined together to form the Confederate States of America, also known as the Confederacy. President Buchanan did nothing to stop the secessionist movement, and President-elect Lincoln was not yet in a position to intercede. Lincoln remained silent on the issue, believing that, in time, Union sentiment would reassert itself in the South and the secession of the seven states would come to an end. On February 11, 1861, Lincoln bade farewell to his neighbors in Springfield and set out for Washington, D.C. He now had a beard, which he had grown at the suggestion of a young girl during the campaign. Alluding to the troubled days ahead, he told his friends, “Today I leave you; Birth: 12 FEB 1809 in near Hodgenville, KY Death: 14 APR 1865 in Washington, DC
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OCCU PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES
ID: I70713 Name: Mary Ann Todd Given Name: Mary Ann Surname: Todd Sex: F _UID: AFF62735B56FA94A948C8F09511ED3516332 Change Date: 29 Oct 2004 Note: Mary Ann Todd (December 13, 1818 - July 16, 1882) was born in Lexington, Kentucky, the daughter of prominent residents of the city, Robert Smith Todd and Eliza Parker. At the age of twenty, Mary Todd moved to Illinois where her sister Elizabeth was living. Her sister, Elizabeth, the fiancee of then-future Illinois Governor Ninian Edwards introduced Mary to a young lawyer, named Abraham Lincoln. On November 4, 1842, she married Abraham Lincoln who later become the 16th president of the United States. Their children were: Robert Todd Lincoln : b. August 1, 1843 in Springfield, Illinois - d. July 26, 1926 in Manchester, Vermont. Edward Baker Lincoln : b. March 10, 1846 in Springfield, Illinois - d. February 1 1850 in Springfield, Illinois William Wallace Lincoln : b. December 21, 1850 in Springfield, Illinois - d. February 20, 1862 in Washington, D.C. Thomas (Tad) Lincoln : b. April 4, 1853 in Springfield, Illinois - d. July 16, 1871 in Chicago, Illinois. Mrs. Lincoln was committed by her son Robert to an insane asylum in Batavia, Illinois in 1875. She was released three months later. Mary Todd Lincoln died at the Springfield, Illinois home of her sister Elizabeth on July 16, 1882. Birth: 13 DEC 1818 in Lexington, KY Death: 16 JUL 1882