photo #1334047

July 4 - White History Month - 28th Most Iconic White AmericanAbraham Lincoln changed "these United States" to "the United States"Abraham Lincoln, a self-taught lawyer, legislator, and vocal opponent of the expansion of slavery, served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the War Between the States (it wasn't a civil war which is where two sides compete to control the government, this was a war of independence for the South). He succeeded in preserving the Union and bolstering the federal government. His Gettysburg Address stands as one of the most famous pieces of oratory in American history. He is also well known for his speech upon nomination for US Senate, his House Divided Speech, with the biblical reference Mark 3:25, "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."Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky. His family moved to southern Indiana when he was seven and he grew up on the edge of the frontier. Lincoln’s formal schooling was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he had to work constantly to support his family. Even though he had very little formal education, he read voraciously when not working on his father’s farm. A childhood friend later recalled Lincoln's "manic" intellect, and the sight of him red-eyed and tousle-haired as he pored over books late into the night. In 1828, at the age of nineteen, he accompanied a produce-laden flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, Louisiana and then walked back home. Two years later, trying to avoid health and finance troubles, Lincoln's father moved the family moved to Illinois.Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar examination in 1836. Abraham Lincoln met Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois where he was practicing as a lawyer. They were married in 1842 over her family’s objections and had four sons. Only one lived to adulthood. The deep melancholy that pervaded the Lincoln family, with occasional detours into outright madness, is in some ways sourced in their close relationship with death. Lincoln, a self-described "prairie lawyer," focused on his all-embracing law practice in the early 1850s after one term in Congress from 1847 to 1849. He joined the new Republican party in 1856. A series of heated debates in 1858 with Stephen A. Douglas, the sponsor of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, over slavery and its place in the United States forged Lincoln into a prominent figure in national politics. The Lincoln-Douglas debates are still read till this day. In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln did not hesitate to dispel the notion that he was a champion of racial equality 'I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.'In 1860 Lincoln ran for President. He won the presidential election without the support of a single Southern state. His victory was entirely due to his support in the North and West. No ballots were cast for him in 10 of the 15 Southern states, and he won only two of 996 counties in all the Southern states. The South seceding was not entirely caused by Lincoln’s election, but it certainly was the final straw.Outraged by Lincoln's election, and high tariffs, the South seceded from the union. A last minute compromise to amend the constitution to guarantee slavery was declined by the South.Lincoln’s decision to fight rather than to let the Southern states secede was not based on his feelings towards slavery. Rather, he felt it was his sacred duty as President of the United States to preserve the Union at all costs. As he declared "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."So Lincoln declared war on the South without the approval of the Congress.The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on September 22, 1862, but not signed until January 1, 1863, didn't actually free any slaves since it only freed slaves in areas not under control of the US government. This curiously allowed any area already reconquered to keep their slaves along with all the border states that never seceded. .In the 1862 midterm elections the Lincoln supporters suffered severe losses due to rising inflation, high taxes, rumors of corruption. March 3, 1863, Lincoln signed the first ever military conscription law in the US. This was so offensive that the second largest civil insurrection in American history took place in the middle of the largest, when the city of New York erupted into three days of race riots, brought on by Lincoln’s draft call for more New Yorkers to fight for the Union. In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words or three minutes) at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery. Published widely, the Gettysburg Address eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the pursuit of human equality. Defying his prediction that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here", it became the most famous speech of Lincoln’s presidency, and the most quoted speech in American history.In the speech, Lincoln asserted that the nation was born not in 1789, but in 1776, "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". He defined the war as dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality for all. He declared that the deaths of so many brave soldiers would not be in vain, that slavery would end, and the future of democracy would be assured, that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".Lincoln presided over the expansion of the federal government in many areas. The Revenue Act of 1862 established the United States' first income tax. The Morrill Act of 1862 established the basis of the state university system in this country. The Homestead Act, also passed in 1862, encouraged settlement of the West by offering 160 acres of free land to settlers. The National Banking Act created the system of national banks. The US issued paper currency for the first time, known as greenbacks—printed in green on the reverse side. In 1862, Congress created the Department of Agriculture.Lincoln is largely responsible for the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving had become a regional holiday in New England in the 17th century. It had been sporadically proclaimed by the federal government on irregular dates. The prior proclamation had been during James Madison's presidency 50 years earlier. In 1863, Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November of that year to be a day of Thanksgiving.His belief in God can best be seen in his second inaugural address, considered the greatest such address in American history, and by Lincoln himself as his own greatest speech. Lincoln explains therein the cause, purpose, and result of the war was God's will. On April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln died the following day, and tragically with him died the hope of reconstructing the nation without bitterness.During the war, Lincoln ignored the law by restricting civil liberties, due process, and freedom of the press. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional, that only Congress can suspend Habeas Corpus even in the case of rebellion and invasion, so Lincoln had an arrest warrant written for Taney’s arrest.Lincoln ordered the arrest and imprisonment of everyone who disapproved of his invasion of the South or made the slightest criticism of him. There were mass arrests of citizens and news paper editors of northern states. A minimum of 38,000 citizens of northern states were imprisoned without due process.Other judges both state and federal who attempted to uphold laws were beat bloody and dragged off to prison or placed under house arrest and prevented from performing their judicial duties. Judge Richard Bennett Carmichael in Maryland attempted to enforce due process. Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward sent armed federal soldiers. They pistol-whipped the judge in his chambers, “beat him bloody and unconscious, and dragged him off to Fort McHenry.” US circuit court judge William Merrick issued a writ of habeas corpus for an underaged youth and was put “under house arrest by force of arms without due process.” Lincoln used army troops to break up meetings of the Democratic Party. US Senator Thomas A. Hendricks, for example, was prevented from speaking by Union troops with fixed bayonets who threatened “to make a summary disposal of him.” And in an omen of things to come in the future, Lincoln was the first ruler in modern times to unleash indiscriminate war on civilian populations.