William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III, on August 19, 1946 Hope, Arkansas, was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. At 46 he was the third-youngest president. He became president at the end of the Cold War, and was the first baby boomer president. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is currently the United States Secretary of State. Each received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Yale Law School.
His father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before Bill was born. Following Bill’s birth, in order to study nursing, his mother Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923–1994), traveled to New Orleans, leaving Bill in Hope with grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and operated a small grocery store.
Although he assumed use of his stepfather’s surname, it was not until Billy (as he was known then) turned fourteen that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather. Clinton says he remembers his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and half-brother Roger Clinton, Jr., to the point where he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence in order to protect them.
In 2004, he released his autobiography My Life, and was involved in his wife Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign and subsequently in that of President Barack Obama. In 2009, he was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Clinton teamed with George W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.
Clinton’s sexual relationship with a 22-year-old White House intern named Monica Lewinsky led to the Lewinsky scandal. In a lame duck session after the 1998 elections, the House voted to impeach Clinton, based on allegations Clinton lied about his relationship with Lewinsky in a sworn deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit. This made Clinton only the second U.S. president to be impeached after Andrew Johnson.
As Clinton’s presidency was ending, his wife’s political career was beginning. In 2000 Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate representing New York; she was the first wife of a U.S. president to win elected office. She went on to lose narrowly to Barack Obama the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2008, but Obama appointed her secretary of state in his presidential administration. Bill Clinton remained active in political affairs and was a popular speaker on the lecture circuit. In 2001 he founded the William J. Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that addressed various global issues through such programs as the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (established 2002), the Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative (2002), the Clinton Global Initiative (2005), and the Clinton Climate Initiative (2006). In 2004 the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum opened in Little Rock.
Clinton married Hillary Rodham, a fellow law student from Yale, on Oct. 11,1975. The couple had a daughter, Chelsea, in 1980.
Showing posts with label AMERICAN HERO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AMERICAN HERO. Show all posts
Friday, March 28, 2014
BETTY FRIEDAN
Betty Friedan, writer and feminist leader, born in Peoria, Illinois, USA. A summa cum laude graduate from Smith (1942), she was awarded fellowships for working toward a doctorate in psychology, but abandoned this under the influence of what she would later call ‘the feminine mystique’. She married in 1947, and for almost the next 20 years lived the life of a conventional suburban housewife and mother.
(She had three children and was divorced in 1969.) As a result of surveys of female college graduates, she came to identify certain problems that women were experiencing in their lives, and after several years of research she published The Feminine Mystique (1963), an expose of the traditional roles assigned to women in modern industrial societies. Although not an especially profound critique, it became an international best-seller and is credited with generating the so-called second wave of modern feminism. In 1966 she co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and served as its first president (1966-70), moving on to other activities promoting the advancement of women.
Through her writings, lecturing, organizational work, and outspokenness, she became one of the most influential feminist leaders of the late 20th-c. In 1982, feeling that some individuals and elements of the feminist movement had moved off into extreme positions, she published The Second Stage, calling for a more balanced approach in the women’s movement, and in 1993 she published The Fountain of Age about the ways that older people can find satisfaction in their lives.
(She had three children and was divorced in 1969.) As a result of surveys of female college graduates, she came to identify certain problems that women were experiencing in their lives, and after several years of research she published The Feminine Mystique (1963), an expose of the traditional roles assigned to women in modern industrial societies. Although not an especially profound critique, it became an international best-seller and is credited with generating the so-called second wave of modern feminism. In 1966 she co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and served as its first president (1966-70), moving on to other activities promoting the advancement of women.
Through her writings, lecturing, organizational work, and outspokenness, she became one of the most influential feminist leaders of the late 20th-c. In 1982, feeling that some individuals and elements of the feminist movement had moved off into extreme positions, she published The Second Stage, calling for a more balanced approach in the women’s movement, and in 1993 she published The Fountain of Age about the ways that older people can find satisfaction in their lives.
ANDREW JACKSON
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767-June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States, serving from 1829 to 1837. Sometimes nicknamed “Old Hickory,” Jackson was the first president not born an aristocrat. Andrew Jackson’s Scotch-Irish parents Andrew Jackson, Sr. (c. 1730 – February, 1767) and Elizabeth “Betty” Hutchinson (c. 1740 – November, 1781), immigrated to the US from Carrickfergus, in modern-day Northern Ireland, in 1765.
There is a dispute over his place of birth. While he claimed to have been born in South Carolina, he might have done so for political purposes. The two most likely places were Waxhaw, North Carolina or Lancaster, South Carolina which are very close. The line between the states was not yet drawn at the time of his birth.
During the Revolutionary War Jackson and his brother Robert joined the Continental Army as couriers. At one point they were taken prisoner; when they refused to shine the boots of one of their captors, the officer lashed out with his saber, wounding Jackson on the hand and forehead. Along with the scars from the incident, he carried a hatred of the British for the rest of his life. The boys caught smallpox during this period and, although Jackson survived, Robert succumbed to the disease. These hard experiences explain Jackson’s tough, sometimes violent character. When insulted, he was not opposed to resolving the matter with pistols.
Jackson remained in the army and prospered. He became a national hero after defeating the British in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Afterwards, he fought the Creek Wars and the Seminole War, invading Florida and becoming its military governor in 1819 after it was ceded to the United States by Spain in the Adams-Onis Treaty.
In the Presidential Election of 1824 Jackson won both more popular and electoral votes than any other candidate, but did not receive an overall majority. The election went to the House of Representatives, where John Quincy Adams was chosen as President.
Jackson felt that the 1824 election had been stolen from him and the will of the people ignored. Jackson and his supporters were furious and immediately started campaigning for the next election in 1828. Jackson beat Adams with a substantial majority, and took office as President in 1829.
Jackson Wins Election of 1828
Jackson’s humble background and reputation as a national hero helped him win the election of 1828. The expansion of voting rights also helped. Large numbers of Western farmers as well as people in the cities supported him. Many people saw Jackson’s rise to power as an inspirational story. He was the first U.S. President that was not from an aristocratic Massachusetts or Virginia family, and the first from the West. For this reason, Jackson was considered a “friend of the common man,” and “the people’s president.” Jackson’s victory was considered a triumph for the common man. The election of 1828, however, was one of the most negative of its time. Adams’ supporters consistently brought up Jackson’s marriage to Rachel Robards. At the time of the marriage, Rachel was undergoing a divorce. She and Jackson married only to find out that the divorce from her first husband was not final. They separated briefly until the divorce was finalized and were legally married shortly thereafter. Gossip spread during the campaign and it is said that Jackson blamed Adams for Rachel’s death shortly after the election. Jackson never forgave Adams.
Jackson’s influence
Jackson was the first U.S. president who came from outside the original Revolutionary circle. Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison were notable figures in the War of Independence and in the formation of the U.S. Constitution. James Monroe fought in the Revolutionary War. John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams. Jackson’s election represented a significant break from that past. Jackson was a general in the War of 1812 and fought alongside traders and other commonfolk. He was regarded as a “man of the people.” This was the first election in which many states allowed people without land to vote, and they voted for Jackson.
Jackson is remembered for introducing the spoils system, or patronage, to American politics. Upon his election as President, a sizable number of people holding federal offices found that they had suddenly been replaced by supporters of Jackson who had worked to ensure his election. Jackson saw this system as promoting the growth of democracy, as more people were involved in politics. This practice has endured in political circles in the United States ever since. Additionally, Jackson pressured states to lower voting requirements to further the expansion of democracy.
Jackson’s opposition to the National Bank
As President, Jackson worked to dismantle the Second Bank of the United States. The original Bank of the United States had been introduced in 1791 by Alexander Hamilton as a way of organizing the federal government’s finances. This first Bank lapsed in 1811. It was followed by the second Bank, authorized by James Madison in 1816 to alleviate the economic problems caused by the War of 1812. Both Banks were instrumental in the growth of the U.S. economy, but Jackson opposed the concept on ideological grounds. In Jackson’s opinion, the Bank needed to be abolished because -
Jackson followed Jefferson as a supporter of the ideal of an agricultural republic, and felt the Bank improved the fortunes of an elite circle of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs at the expense of farmers and laborers. After a titanic struggle Jackson succeeded in destroying the Bank by vetoing its 1832 recharter by Congress. It was a Pyrrhic victory, however, as the Bank’s money-lending functions were taken over by the legions of local and state banks that sprang up, and the commercial progress of the nation’s economy was not noticeably dented. The United States Senate censured Jackson on March 27, 1834 for his actions in defunding the Bank of the United States.
Another notable crisis of his period of office was the nullification crisis (or secession crisis), 1828-32, which merged issues of sectional strife and disagreements over trade tariffs. High tariffs (the “Tariff of Abominations”) on imports of common goods were seen by many in Southern colonies as unfairly benefiting Northern merchants and industrial entrepreneurs at the expense of those who had to buy the goods subject to the tariffs, mostly Southern farmers. The issue came to a head when the Vice President, John C. Calhoun, in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest of 1832, supported the claim of his home state, South Carolina, that it had the right to ‘nullify’ – declare illegal – the tariff legislation of 1828, and more generally the right of a state to nullify laws which went against its interests. Although Jackson sympathized with the Southern interpretation of the tariff debate, he was also a strong supporter of federalism (in the sense of supporting a strong union with considerable powers for the central government) and attempted to face Calhoun down over the issue, which developed into a bitter rivalry between the two men. Particularly famous was an incident at the April 13, 1829 Jefferson Day dinner, involving after-dinner toasts. Jackson rose first and toasted “Our federal Union: it must be preserved!”, a clear challenge to Calhoun. Calhoun responded with a toast to “The Union: next to our liberty, most dear,” an astonishingly quick-witted riposte.
The crisis was resolved in 1833 with a compromise settlement which, by substantially lowering the tariffs, hinted that the central government considered itself weak in dealing with determined opposition by an individual state.
Indian Removal Act of 1830
Jackson was responsible for the notorious Indian Removal Act of 1830, and thus the Trail of Tears, in unconstitutional defiance of a Supreme Court ruling.
In 1829, American demand for land due to population growth and the discovery of gold on Cherokee land led to pressure on Native American lands. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act that Jackson signed into law. The act was challenged successfully by the Cherokee Nation in 1832 in the US Supreme Court as Worcester v. Georgia. Despite the Supreme Court decision, Jackson took no action to uphold the Court verdict, and in fact would openly defy it; he was quoted as saying “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!” As the court has no executive powers to enforce its decisions, Jackson’s executive disregard of the court marked a time when the Judicial branch of government was very weak.
The state of Georgia held two land lotteries in 1835 to divide the Cherokee land, and Jackson sent military support to oust the Native population. This led to what is now known as the “Trail of Tears”, which killed roughly four thousand Cherokee (25%). The other members of the Five Civilized Tribes were removed in the same period, the Seminole, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw. This involved most of the southern states, including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and especially Florida, where the fierce fighting led by Osceola was met by Zachary Taylor, who would use his ‘Indian Fighter’ reputation to get elected 12th president.
The new homeland was in Indian Territory, which eventually became Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson was a strong supporter of the Indian Removal Act . He immediately set out to enforce the act. He thought his policy was ?just and liberal? and would allow the Native Americans to keep their way of life. Even after the Cherokees appealed to the Supreme Court, Jackson continued to force the Native Americans west without the permission of the Court.
Assassination attempt
On January 30, 1835 an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Jackson occurred in the United States Capitol. This was the first assassination attempt against an American President. While Jackson was leaving a funeral, a mentally ill man named Richard Lawrence came up to him and fired a pistol at point-blank range. The pistol misfired, and before anyone could react, Lawrence pulled another pistol and it too misfired. Instead of running or taking cover, President Jackson proceeded to beat the man over the head with his cane. A print of the assassination attempt made 20 years later became quite popular because it shows the aging president boldly confronting his attacker.
Jackson’s family
Jackson’s wife Rachel died just prior to his taking office as President. She had divorced her first husband, Col. Lewis Robards, but there were some questions about the legality of the divorce, and she was never accepted in polite society. Jackson deeply resented attacks on his wife’s honor; he killed a man in a duel over an insult to his wife on May 30th 1806. Jackson was also injured during the duel and the bullet was so close to his heart that it could not be removed. It caused him considerable pain for the rest of his life. His only child was an adopted son, Andrew. In his will, Jackson left his granddaughter several slaves, his two grandsons each one male slave, and his daughter-in-law four female slaves, one of whom he had bought for her and the other three of whom were household servants.
There is a dispute over his place of birth. While he claimed to have been born in South Carolina, he might have done so for political purposes. The two most likely places were Waxhaw, North Carolina or Lancaster, South Carolina which are very close. The line between the states was not yet drawn at the time of his birth.
During the Revolutionary War Jackson and his brother Robert joined the Continental Army as couriers. At one point they were taken prisoner; when they refused to shine the boots of one of their captors, the officer lashed out with his saber, wounding Jackson on the hand and forehead. Along with the scars from the incident, he carried a hatred of the British for the rest of his life. The boys caught smallpox during this period and, although Jackson survived, Robert succumbed to the disease. These hard experiences explain Jackson’s tough, sometimes violent character. When insulted, he was not opposed to resolving the matter with pistols.
Jackson remained in the army and prospered. He became a national hero after defeating the British in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Afterwards, he fought the Creek Wars and the Seminole War, invading Florida and becoming its military governor in 1819 after it was ceded to the United States by Spain in the Adams-Onis Treaty.
In the Presidential Election of 1824 Jackson won both more popular and electoral votes than any other candidate, but did not receive an overall majority. The election went to the House of Representatives, where John Quincy Adams was chosen as President.
Jackson felt that the 1824 election had been stolen from him and the will of the people ignored. Jackson and his supporters were furious and immediately started campaigning for the next election in 1828. Jackson beat Adams with a substantial majority, and took office as President in 1829.
Jackson Wins Election of 1828
Jackson’s humble background and reputation as a national hero helped him win the election of 1828. The expansion of voting rights also helped. Large numbers of Western farmers as well as people in the cities supported him. Many people saw Jackson’s rise to power as an inspirational story. He was the first U.S. President that was not from an aristocratic Massachusetts or Virginia family, and the first from the West. For this reason, Jackson was considered a “friend of the common man,” and “the people’s president.” Jackson’s victory was considered a triumph for the common man. The election of 1828, however, was one of the most negative of its time. Adams’ supporters consistently brought up Jackson’s marriage to Rachel Robards. At the time of the marriage, Rachel was undergoing a divorce. She and Jackson married only to find out that the divorce from her first husband was not final. They separated briefly until the divorce was finalized and were legally married shortly thereafter. Gossip spread during the campaign and it is said that Jackson blamed Adams for Rachel’s death shortly after the election. Jackson never forgave Adams.
Jackson’s influence
Jackson was the first U.S. president who came from outside the original Revolutionary circle. Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison were notable figures in the War of Independence and in the formation of the U.S. Constitution. James Monroe fought in the Revolutionary War. John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams. Jackson’s election represented a significant break from that past. Jackson was a general in the War of 1812 and fought alongside traders and other commonfolk. He was regarded as a “man of the people.” This was the first election in which many states allowed people without land to vote, and they voted for Jackson.
Jackson is remembered for introducing the spoils system, or patronage, to American politics. Upon his election as President, a sizable number of people holding federal offices found that they had suddenly been replaced by supporters of Jackson who had worked to ensure his election. Jackson saw this system as promoting the growth of democracy, as more people were involved in politics. This practice has endured in political circles in the United States ever since. Additionally, Jackson pressured states to lower voting requirements to further the expansion of democracy.
Jackson’s opposition to the National Bank
As President, Jackson worked to dismantle the Second Bank of the United States. The original Bank of the United States had been introduced in 1791 by Alexander Hamilton as a way of organizing the federal government’s finances. This first Bank lapsed in 1811. It was followed by the second Bank, authorized by James Madison in 1816 to alleviate the economic problems caused by the War of 1812. Both Banks were instrumental in the growth of the U.S. economy, but Jackson opposed the concept on ideological grounds. In Jackson’s opinion, the Bank needed to be abolished because -
- it was unconstitutional
- it concentrated an excessive amount of the nation’s financial strength
- it exposed the government to control by foreign interests
- it exercised too much control over members of Congress
- it favored northeastern states over southern and western (now midwestern) states
Jackson followed Jefferson as a supporter of the ideal of an agricultural republic, and felt the Bank improved the fortunes of an elite circle of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs at the expense of farmers and laborers. After a titanic struggle Jackson succeeded in destroying the Bank by vetoing its 1832 recharter by Congress. It was a Pyrrhic victory, however, as the Bank’s money-lending functions were taken over by the legions of local and state banks that sprang up, and the commercial progress of the nation’s economy was not noticeably dented. The United States Senate censured Jackson on March 27, 1834 for his actions in defunding the Bank of the United States.
Another notable crisis of his period of office was the nullification crisis (or secession crisis), 1828-32, which merged issues of sectional strife and disagreements over trade tariffs. High tariffs (the “Tariff of Abominations”) on imports of common goods were seen by many in Southern colonies as unfairly benefiting Northern merchants and industrial entrepreneurs at the expense of those who had to buy the goods subject to the tariffs, mostly Southern farmers. The issue came to a head when the Vice President, John C. Calhoun, in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest of 1832, supported the claim of his home state, South Carolina, that it had the right to ‘nullify’ – declare illegal – the tariff legislation of 1828, and more generally the right of a state to nullify laws which went against its interests. Although Jackson sympathized with the Southern interpretation of the tariff debate, he was also a strong supporter of federalism (in the sense of supporting a strong union with considerable powers for the central government) and attempted to face Calhoun down over the issue, which developed into a bitter rivalry between the two men. Particularly famous was an incident at the April 13, 1829 Jefferson Day dinner, involving after-dinner toasts. Jackson rose first and toasted “Our federal Union: it must be preserved!”, a clear challenge to Calhoun. Calhoun responded with a toast to “The Union: next to our liberty, most dear,” an astonishingly quick-witted riposte.
The crisis was resolved in 1833 with a compromise settlement which, by substantially lowering the tariffs, hinted that the central government considered itself weak in dealing with determined opposition by an individual state.
Indian Removal Act of 1830
Jackson was responsible for the notorious Indian Removal Act of 1830, and thus the Trail of Tears, in unconstitutional defiance of a Supreme Court ruling.
In 1829, American demand for land due to population growth and the discovery of gold on Cherokee land led to pressure on Native American lands. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act that Jackson signed into law. The act was challenged successfully by the Cherokee Nation in 1832 in the US Supreme Court as Worcester v. Georgia. Despite the Supreme Court decision, Jackson took no action to uphold the Court verdict, and in fact would openly defy it; he was quoted as saying “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!” As the court has no executive powers to enforce its decisions, Jackson’s executive disregard of the court marked a time when the Judicial branch of government was very weak.
The state of Georgia held two land lotteries in 1835 to divide the Cherokee land, and Jackson sent military support to oust the Native population. This led to what is now known as the “Trail of Tears”, which killed roughly four thousand Cherokee (25%). The other members of the Five Civilized Tribes were removed in the same period, the Seminole, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw. This involved most of the southern states, including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and especially Florida, where the fierce fighting led by Osceola was met by Zachary Taylor, who would use his ‘Indian Fighter’ reputation to get elected 12th president.
The new homeland was in Indian Territory, which eventually became Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson was a strong supporter of the Indian Removal Act . He immediately set out to enforce the act. He thought his policy was ?just and liberal? and would allow the Native Americans to keep their way of life. Even after the Cherokees appealed to the Supreme Court, Jackson continued to force the Native Americans west without the permission of the Court.
Assassination attempt
On January 30, 1835 an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Jackson occurred in the United States Capitol. This was the first assassination attempt against an American President. While Jackson was leaving a funeral, a mentally ill man named Richard Lawrence came up to him and fired a pistol at point-blank range. The pistol misfired, and before anyone could react, Lawrence pulled another pistol and it too misfired. Instead of running or taking cover, President Jackson proceeded to beat the man over the head with his cane. A print of the assassination attempt made 20 years later became quite popular because it shows the aging president boldly confronting his attacker.
Jackson’s family
Jackson’s wife Rachel died just prior to his taking office as President. She had divorced her first husband, Col. Lewis Robards, but there were some questions about the legality of the divorce, and she was never accepted in polite society. Jackson deeply resented attacks on his wife’s honor; he killed a man in a duel over an insult to his wife on May 30th 1806. Jackson was also injured during the duel and the bullet was so close to his heart that it could not be removed. It caused him considerable pain for the rest of his life. His only child was an adopted son, Andrew. In his will, Jackson left his granddaughter several slaves, his two grandsons each one male slave, and his daughter-in-law four female slaves, one of whom he had bought for her and the other three of whom were household servants.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky & died on April 15, 1865 in Washington, D.C., sometimes called Abe Lincoln and nicknamed Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter, and the Great Emancipator, was the 16th President of the United States, and the first president from the Republican Party.Lincoln staunchly opposed the expansion of slavery into federal territories, and his victory in the 1860 presidential election further polarized the nation. Before his inauguration in March of 1861, seven Southern slave states seceded1 from the United States, formed the Confederate States of America, and took control of U.S. forts and other properties within their boundaries. These events soon led to the American Civil War.
Lincoln was an adept politician who emerged as a wartime leader skilled at balancing competing considerations and at getting rival groups to work together toward a common goal. He personally directed the war effort, which ultimately led the Union forces to victory over the seceding Confederacy. His leadership qualities were evident in his diplomatic handling of the border slave states at the beginning of the fighting, in his defeat of a congressional attempt to reorganize his cabinet in 1862, in his many speeches and writings which helped mobilize and inspire the North, and in his defusing of the peace issue in the 1864 presidential campaign.
Lincoln had a lasting influence on U.S. political and social institutions. The most important may have been setting the precedent for greater centralization of powers in the federal government and a weakening of the powers of the individual state governments, although this is disputed as the federal government reverted to its customary weakness after Reconstruction and the modern administrative state would only emerge with the New Deal some 70 years later.
Lincoln was also the president who declared Thanksgiving as a national holiday, established the U.S. Department of Agriculture (though not as a Cabinet-level department), revived national banking and banks, and admitted West Virginia and Nevada as states. He also encouraged efforts to expand white settlement in western North America, signing the Homestead Act (1862). However, he is most famous for his role in ending slavery in the United States with the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation as a pragmatic war measure which would set the stage for the complete abolition of the institution.
His assassination, shortly after the end of the Civil War, made him a martyr to millions of Americans. His reputation was forever sealed by the victory that he won, but without the tarnishing that could have resulted from the disorder of Reconstruction in the aftermath of the war. He is usually ranked as one of the greatest presidents, though is criticized by some for overstepping the traditional bounds of executive power.
Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin on a farm in Hardin County, Kentucky (now in LaRue Co., in Nolin Creek, three miles (5 km) south of Hodgenville), to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Lincoln was named after his deceased grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, who was killed by Native Americans. Lincoln’s parents were largely uneducated.
When Abraham Lincoln was seven years old, he and his parents moved to Spencer County, Indiana, “partly on account of slavery” and partly because of economic difficulty in Kentucky. In 1830, after economic and land-title difficulties in Indiana, the family settled on government land along the Sangamon River on a site selected by Lincoln’s father in Macon County, Illinois, near the present city of Decatur. The following winter was especially brutal, and the family nearly moved back to Indiana.
When his father relocated the family to a nearby site the following year, the 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, canoeing down the Sangamon to homestead on his own in Sangamon County, Illinois (now in Menard County), in the village of New Salem. Later that year, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods from New Salem to New Orleans via flatboat on the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers. While in New Orleans he may have witnessed a slave auction that left an indelible impression on him for the rest of his life.
Lincoln began his political career in 1832 at the age of 23 with a campaign for the Illinois General Assembly. The centerpiece of his platform was the undertaking of navigational improvements on the Sangamon in the hopes of attracting steamboat traffic to the river, which would allow sparsely populated, poor areas along and near the river to grow and prosper. He served as a captain in a company of the Illinois militia drawn from New Salem during the Black Hawk War, writing after being elected by his peers that he had not had “any such success in life which gave him so much satisfaction.”
He later tried his hand at several business and political ventures, and failed at them all. Finally, after coming across the second volume of Sir William Blackstone’s four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England, he taught himself the law, and was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1837. That same year, he moved to Springfield, Illinois and began to practice law with Stephen T. Logan.
He became one of the most highly respected and successful lawyers in the state of Illinois, and became steadily more prosperous. Lincoln served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives, as a representative from Sangamon County, beginning in 1834. In 1837 he made his first protest against slavery in the Illinois House, stating that the institution was “founded on both injustice and bad policy.”
Abraham Lincoln shared a bed with Joshua Fry Speed from 1837 to 1841 in Springfield. A recent biography has suggested the controversial theory that their relationship may also have been sexual: See The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.
In 1841, Lincoln entered law practice with William Herndon, a fellow member of the Whig Party. In 1856, both men joined the fledgling Republican Party. Following Lincoln’s assassination, Herndon began collecting stories about Lincoln from those who knew him in central Illinois, eventually publishing a book, Herndon’s Lincoln.
Only Robert survived into adulthood. Of Robert’s three children, only Jessie Lincoln had any children (2 – Mary Lincoln Beckwith and Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith). Neither Robert Beckwith nor Mary Beckwith had any children, so Abraham Lincoln’s bloodline ended when Robert Beckwith (Lincoln’s great-grandson) died on December 24, 1985.
In 1846 Lincoln was elected to one term in the House of Representatives as a member of the United States Whig Party. A staunch Whig, Lincoln often referred to Whig leader Henry Clay as his political idol. As a freshman House member, Lincoln was not a particularly powerful or influential figure in Congress. He used his office as an opportunity to speak out against the war with Mexico, which he attributed to President Polk’s desire for “military glory & that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood.”
Lincoln was a key early supporter of Zachary Taylor’s candidacy for the 1848 Whig Presidential nomination. When his term ended, the incoming Taylor administration offered him the governorship of the Oregon Territory. He declined, returning instead to Springfield, Illinois where, although remaining active in Whig Party affairs in the state, he turned most of his energies to making a living at the bar.
By the mid-1850s, Lincoln had acquired prominence in Illinois legal circles, especially through his involvement in litigation involving competing transportation interests & both the river barges and the railroads. In 1849, he received a patent related to buoying vessels.
Lincoln represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad, for example, in an 1851 dispute with one of its shareholders, James A. Barret. Barret had refused to pay the balance on his pledge to that corporation on the ground that it had changed its originally planned route. Lincoln argued that as a matter of law a corporation is not bound by its original charter when that charter can be amended in the public interest, that the newer proposed Alton & Sangamon route was superior and less expensive, and that accordingly the corporation had a right to sue Mr. Barret for his delinquent payment. He won this case, and the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court was eventually cited by several other courts throughout the United States.
Another important example of Lincoln’s skills as a railroad lawyer was a lawsuit over a tax exemption that the state granted to the Illinois Central Railroad. McLean County argued that the state had no authority to grant such an exemption, and it sought to impose taxes on the railroad notwithstanding. In January 1856, the Illinois Supreme Court delivered its opinion upholding the tax exemption, accepting Lincoln’s arguments.
In addition, Lincoln worked in at least one criminal trial in 1857 when he defended William “Duff” Armstrong pro bono who was on trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker. The case is famous for when Lincoln used judicial notice, a rare tactic at that time, to show an eyewitness perjured himself on the stand claiming he witnessed the crime in the moonlight. Lincoln produced a Farmer’s Almanac to show that the moon on that date was at a low angle and could not have produced enough lumination for the witness to see anything clearly. Based on this evidence, Armstrong was acquitted.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which expressly repealed the limits on slavery’s spread that had been part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, helped draw Lincoln back into electoral politics. It was a speech against Kansas-Nebraska, on October 16, 1854 in Peoria, that caused Lincoln to stand out among the other free-soil orators of the day.
Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, proposing popular sovereignty as the solution to the slavery impasse, had sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Many eastern Republicans had urged the nomination of Douglas for the United States Senate in 1858, since he was a Northern leader who had led the opposition to the Buchanan administration’s push for the Lecompton Constitution which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state.
Accepting the Republican nomination for the Senate in 1858, Lincoln delivered a famous speech in which he stated, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” (This statement is spoken by Jesus in Matthew 12:25.) The speech created a lasting image of the danger of disunion due to slavery. Lincoln was viewed as a heavy underdog against the popular Douglas.
During his unsuccessful 1858 campaign for the Senate, Lincoln debated Douglas in a series of events which became a national discussion on the issues that were about to split the nation in two. During the debates, Lincoln forced Douglas to propose his Freeport Doctrine, which lost him further support among slave-holders and may have forced the eventual dissolution of the Democratic Party. Though Douglas was eventually reelected by the Illinois legislature (this was before the 17th Amendment), Lincoln’s eloquence during the campaign transformed him into a national political star.
Lincoln was chosen as the Republican candidate because his views on slavery were seen as more moderate, because of his Western origins (in contrast to his main rival for the nomination, the New Yorker William H. Seward), and because several other contenders had enemies within the party. During the campaign, Lincoln was dubbed “The Rail Splitter” by Republicans to emphasize Lincoln’s humility and humble origins, though in fact Lincoln was quite wealthy at the time due to his successful law practice.
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the United States, beating Douglas and two other major candidates. Lincoln was the first Republican president. Lincoln won entirely on the strength of his support in the North: he was not even on the ballot in nine states in the South — and won only 2 of 996 counties in the entire South. Even before Lincoln’s election, leaders in the South made it clear that their States would leave the Union in response to a Lincoln victory. A total of seven states seceded before Lincoln took office, forming the Confederate States of America.
President-elect Lincoln survived an assassination attempt in Baltimore, Maryland, and on February 23, 1861 arrived secretly in disguise to Washington, DC. Southerners ridiculed Lincoln for this subterfuge, but the efforts at security may have been prudent. At Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, the Turners formed Lincoln’s bodyguard; and a sizable garrison of federal troops was also present, ready to protect the president and the capital from rebel invasion.
In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln declared, “I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments”, arguing further that the purpose of the Constitution was “to form a more perfect union” than the Articles of Confederation which were explicitly perpetual, and thus the Constitution too was perpetual. He asked rhetorically that even were the Constitution construed as a simple contract, would it not require the agreement of all parties to rescind it?
Also in his Inaugural Address, Lincoln supported the proposed Corwin amendment to the constitution, of which he was a driving force. This proposed amendment would have explicitly protected slavery in those states in which it already existed, and had already passed both houses. Lincoln, however, adamantly opposed the Crittenden Compromise, which would have permitted slavery in the territories, renewing the boundary set by the Missouri Compromise and extending it to California. Despite support for this compromise among moderate Republicans and across the nation, Lincoln declared that were the Crittenden Compromise accepted, it “would amount to a perpetual covenant of war against every people, tribe, and state owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del Fuego.” Lincoln also spurned requests to appoint a Southerner to his cabinet (Sam Houston being a prominent suggestion).
After Union troops at Fort Sumter were fired on and forced to surrender in April, Lincoln called for more troops from each remaining state to recapture forts, protect the capital, and preserve the Union. In response, four more slave states seceded by May 1861, and splinter factions from Missouri and Kentucky joined the Confederacy by December.
Though Lincoln is well known for ending slavery in the USA and he personally opposed slavery as a moral evil, Lincoln’s views of his own Constitutional powers on the subject of slavery are more complicated. He believed that the Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are created equal” should apply also to black slaves, and that slavery was a profound evil which should not spread to the Territories. However, Lincoln maintained that the federal government did not possess the constitutional power to bar slavery in states where it already existed, and he supported colonization, believing that freed black slaves were too different to live in the same society as white Americans. Lincoln addresses the issue of his consistency (or lack thereof) between his earlier position and his later position of emancipation in an 1864 letter to Albert G. Hodges See: Abraham Lincoln on slavery
Lincoln is often credited with freeing enslaved African-Americans with the Emancipation Proclamation. In practice, however, this only freed the slaves in areas of the Confederacy as those areas came under control of Union forces; in territories and states that still allowed slavery but had remained loyal to the Union, slaves were not initially freed. Lincoln signed the Proclamation as a wartime measure, insisting that only the outbreak of war gave constitutional power to the President to free slaves in states where it already existed. He later said: “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.” The proclamation made abolishing slavery in the rebel states an official war goal and it became the impetus for the enactment of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery. Politically, the Emancipation Proclamation did much to help the Northern cause; Lincoln’s strong abolitionist stand finally convinced Britain and other foreign countries that they could not support the South.
Perhaps Lincoln’s most important contribution as President, outside of his military leadership as Commander-in-Chief, was his signing of the Homestead Act in 1862, though Lincoln had little do with the drafting of the act or its passage in Congress. Considered by some to be the most important piece of legislation in American history, the Act made available millions of acres of government-held land in the midwest for purchase at very low cost. Any male over 21 could obtain a Homestead tract of 160 acres (647,000 m²) simply by filing a claim and paying a processing fee of $18. The land had then to be lived upon, built up, and improved, for a period of no less than 5 years. Many were more than willing to take up this challenge.
The Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, also signed by Lincoln in 1862, provided government grants for agricultural universities throughout the American states. Such universities — often founded in Homesteading states — provided education and know-how for masses of local Homesteaders. They helped found the concept of scientific Agriculture and, perhaps more importantly, helped democratize American education. Like the Homestead Act, Lincoln had little to do with this act’s framing or passage in Congress.
After the “Sioux Uprising” of August 1862 in Minnesota, Lincoln was presented with 303 death warrants for convicted Santee Dakota who had taken part. Of these, Lincoln only affirmed 39 men for execution (one was later reprieved). Lincoln was strongly chastised for this action in Minnesota and throughout his administration because many felt that all 303 Native Americans should have been executed. Reaction in Minnesota was so strong concerning Lincoln’s leniency toward the Native Americans that Republicans lost their political strength in the state in 1864. Lincoln’s response was, “I could not afford to hang men for votes.”
The war was a source of constant frustration for the president, and it occupied nearly all of his time. Lincoln had a contentious relationship with General George McClellan, who led the Northern war effort after the retirement of Winfield Scott in late 1861. Lincoln wished to take an active part in planning the Northern war strategy despite his inexperience in military affairs. Lincoln’s strategic priorities were two-fold: First, to ensure that Washington, DC was well-defended; and second, to conduct an aggressive war effort in hopes of ending the war sooner and appeasing the Northern public, who rabidly pushed for an offensive war.
McClellan, a career military man and West Point graduate, took a more cautious approach. McClellan took several months to plan and execute his Peninsula Campaign, which involved invading Richmond by moving the Army of the Potomac by boat to the peninsula between the James and York Rivers. McClellan’s delay irritated Lincoln, as did McClellan’s insistence that no troops were needed to defend Washington, D.C. Lincoln insisted on holding some of McClellan’s troops to defend Washington, a decision McClellan blamed for the ultimate failure of his Peninsula Campaign.
McClellan, a lifelong Democrat who was temperamentally conservative, was relieved of effective control of the Virginia campaign after releasing his Harrison’s Landing Letter, where he offered unsolicited political advice to Lincoln urging caution in the war effort. McClellan’s letter incensed Radical Republicans, who successfully pressured Lincoln to appoint fellow Republican John Pope as head of the new Army of Virginia. Pope complied with Lincoln’s strategic desire for the Union to move towards Richmond from the North, thus guarding Washington, DC. However, Pope was soundly defeated at Second Bull Run during the summer of 1862, forcing the Army of the Potomac to abandon Virginia for the time being, leading to Pope’s being sent West to command against the American Indians.
Lincoln restored McClellan to effective command in time for the Battle of Antietam in September of that year. It was Union victory in that battle that allowed Lincoln to release his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln relieved McClellan of command shortly after the 1862 midterm elections and appointed Republican Ambrose Burnside to head the Army of the Potomac, who promised to follow through on Lincoln’s strategic vision for a sack of Richmond from the North. After Burnside was embarrassingly routed at Fredericksburg, Joseph Hooker assumed command, but was routed at Chancellorsville and also relieved of command.
After Union victory at Gettysburg and months of inactivity for the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln made the fateful decision to appoint a radical and somewhat scandalous army commander: General Ulysses S. Grant, who was disfavored by Republican hardliners because he had been a Democrat. Grant would daringly wage his bloody Wilderness campaign, characterized by shockingly high Union losses at battles such as Cold Harbor and the Crater. Grant’s aggressive campaign, however, would eventually result in the Union taking Richmond and bringing the war to a close in Spring 1865.
Lincoln authorized Grant to used the scorched earth approach to pacify the South. This allowed Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan to destroy and loot homes, farms and cities in Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina. The damage in Georgia alone totalled in excess of 100 million dollars.
Lincoln had a star-crossed record as a military leader, finding little success in his efforts to coordinate troop movements. Eventually, he found in Grant a man who shared his vision of the war and was able to bring that vision into reality with his battlefield daring.
Lincoln, perhaps reflecting his lack of military experience, developed a keen curiosity with military campaigning during the war. Lincoln continually visited battle sites and seemed fascinated by watching scenes of war. During Jubal Early’s raid into Washington, DC, in 1864, Lincoln had to be told to duck his head to avoid being shot observing the scenes of battle.
Lincoln was more successful in giving the war meaning to Northern civilians through his oratorical skills. Despite his meager education and upbringing, Lincoln possessed an extraordinary command of the English language, as evidenced by the Gettysburg Address, a speech dedicating a cemetery of Union soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. While most of the speakerse.g. Edward Everett at the event spoke at length, some for hours, Lincoln’s few choice words resonated across the nation and across history, defying Lincoln’s own prediction that “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” Lincoln’s second inaugural address is also greatly admired and often quoted. In these speeches, Lincoln articulated better than any of his contemporaries the rationale behind the Union effort.
During the Civil War, Lincoln exercised powers no previous president had wielded; he proclaimed a blockade, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, spent money without congressional authorization, and frequently imprisoned accused Southern spies and sympathizers without trial. Some scholars have argued that Lincoln’s political arrests extended to the highest levels of the government including an attempted warrant for Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, though the allegation remains unresolved and controversial (see the Taney Arrest Warrant controversy).
Lincoln was the only U.S. President to face a presidential election during a civil war (in 1864). The long war and the issue of emancipation appeared to be severely hampering his prospects and an electoral defeat appeared likely against the Democratic nominee and former general, George McClellan. Lincoln ran under the Union party banner, composed of War Democrats and Republicans. General Grant was facing severe criticism for his conduct of the bloody Wilderness campaign. However, the Union capture of the key railroad center of Atlanta by William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces in September changed the situation dramatically and Lincoln was reelected.
The reconstruction of the Union weighed heavy on the President’s mind throughout the war effort. He was determined to take a course that would not permanently alienate the former Confederate states, and throughout the war Lincoln urged speedy elections under generous terms in areas behind Union lines. This irritated congressional Republicans, who urged a more stringent Reconstruction policy. One of Lincoln’s few vetoes during his term was of the Wade-Davis bill, an effort by congressional Republicans to impose harsher Reconstruction terms on the Confederate areas. Republicans in Congress retaliated by refusing to seat representatives elected from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee during the war under Lincoln’s generous terms.
“Let ‘em up easy,” he told his assembled military leaders Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Gen. William T. Sherman and Adm. David Dixon Porter in an 1865 meeting on the steamer River Queen. When Richmond, the Confederate capital, was at long last captured, Lincoln went there to make a public gesture of sitting at Jefferson Davis’s own desk, symbolically saying to the nation that the President of the United States held authority over the entire land. He was greeted at the city as a conquering hero by freed slaves, whose sentiments were epitomized by one admirer’s quote, “I know I am free for I have seen the face of Father Abraham and have felt him.”
On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. This left only Joseph Johnston’s forces in the East to deal with. Weeks later Johnston would defy Jefferson Davis and surrender his forces to Sherman. Of course, Lincoln would not survive to see the surrender of all Confederate forces; just days after Lee surrendered, Lincoln was assassinated.
Lincoln had met frequently with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant as the war drew to a close. The two men planned matters of reconstruction, and it was evident to all that they held each other in high regard. During their last meeting, on April 14, 1865 (Good Friday), Lincoln invited Grant to a social engagement that evening. Grant declined (Grant’s wife, Julia Dent Grant, is said to have strongly disliked Mary Todd Lincoln). The President’s eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, also turned down the invitation.
Without his bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, to whom he related his famous dream of his own assassination, the Lincolns left to attend a play at Ford’s Theater. The play was Our American Cousin, a musical comedy by the British writer Tom Taylor (1817-1880). As Lincoln sat in his state box in the balcony, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and Southern sympathizer from Maryland, crept up behind the President and aimed a single-shot, round-slug .44 caliber Deringer at his head, firing at point-blank range. He shouted “Sic semper tyrannis!” (Latin: “Thus always to tyrants,” and Virginia’s state motto; some accounts say he added “The South is avenged!”) and jumped from the balcony to the stage below. Booth managed to limp to his horse and escape, and the mortally wounded President was taken to a house across the street, now called the Petersen House, where he lay in a coma for some time before he quietly expired. Abraham Lincoln was officially pronounced dead at 7:22 AM the next morning, April 15, 1865 (Easter Saturday). Upon seeing him die, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton lamented either “Now he belongs to the angels” or “Now he belongs to the ages”, the latter often repeated.
Booth and several other conspirators had planned to kill a number of other government officials at the same time, but for various reasons Lincoln’s was the only assassination actually carried out (although Secretary of State William H. Seward was badly injured by an assailant). Several of the conspirators were eventually captured. Four people were tried by military tribunal and hanged for the assassination plot (David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell (aka Lewis Payne), and Mary Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the United States government.) Three people were sentenced to life imprisonment (Michael O’Laughlin, Samuel Arnold, and Dr. Samuel Mudd). Edward Spangler (aka Edman aka Ned) was sentenced to six years imprisonment. John Surratt, tried later by a civilian court, was acquitted. The fairness of the convictions, particularly of Mary Surratt, have been called into question, and there are doubts as to the exact degree of her involvement, if any. Booth himself was shot when discovered holed up in a barn (the barn itself collapsed in the 1930s and the site is now the median of a state highway in Virginia).
Lincoln’s body was carried by train in a grand funeral procession through several states on its way back to Illinois. The nation mourned a man whom many viewed as the savior of the United States. He was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, where a 177 foot (54 m) tall granite tomb surmounted with several bronze statues of Lincoln was constructed by 1874. To prevent continued attempts to steal Lincoln’s body and hold it for ransom, Robert Todd Lincoln had Lincoln exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick on September 26, 1901. See Abraham Lincoln’s Burial and Exhumation.
Many medical experts now suspect that Lincoln may have suffered from congestive heart failure and Marfan Syndrome, both of which can be fatal.
Lincoln’s death made the President a martyr to many. Today he is perhaps America’s second most famous and beloved President after George Washington. Among contemporary admirers, Lincoln is usually seen as a figure who personifies classical values of honesty, integrity, as well as respect for individual and minority rights, and human freedom in general. Many American organizations of all purposes and agendas continue to cite his name and image, with interests ranging from the gay rights group Log Cabin Republicans to the insurance corporation Lincoln Financial.
Over the years Lincoln has been memorialized in many city names, notably the capital of Nebraska; with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC (illustrated, right); on the U.S. $5 bill and the 1 cent coin (Illinois is the primary opponent to the removal of the penny from circulation); and as part of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Lincoln’s Tomb, Lincoln’s Home in Springfield, New Salem, Illinois (a reconstruction of Lincoln’s early adult hometown), Ford’s Theater and Petersen House are all preserved as museums, the nickname for the state of Illinois is “Land of Lincoln” named after him.
On February 12, 1892 Abraham Lincoln’s birthday was declared to be a federal holiday in the United States, though in 1971 it was combined with Washington’s birthday in the form of President’s Day. February 12 is still observed as a separate legal holiday in many states, including Illinois.
Lincoln’s birthplace and family home are national historic memorials: Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site in Hodgenville, KY and Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, IL. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is also in Springfield.
The statue of Lincoln that is furthest south is outside the USA – in Mexico. A gift from the United States, dedicated in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, it is a 13 foot high bronze statue in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The USA received a statue of Benito Juárez in exchange, which is in Washington, DC. Juárez and Lincoln exchanged friendly letters, and Mexico remembers Lincoln’s opposition to the Mexican-American War. There are also at least two statues of Lincoln in England, one in London and another in Manchester .
The ballistic missile submarine Abraham Lincoln (SSBN-602) and the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) were named in his honor.
Famous director Steven Spielberg is currently planning a movie on Abraham Lincoln with Liam Neeson in the leading role.
The American Disney theme parks feature an Audio-Animatronics Abraham Lincoln in the show Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and the Hall of Presidents.
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