Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Abraham (16th President) LINCOLN
Lincoln, Abraham (Abe, Honest Abe; the Great Emancipator) US lawyer, orator, and Republican politician; member of Illinois state legislature 1834-1842 (Whig); held private law practice in Springfield, Illinois 1837-1865; Representative from Illinois 1847-1849 (Whig); publicly argued against Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854; candidate for Republican vice-presidential nomination 1856; unsuccessfully seeking election to Senate 1858, engaged incumbent Stephen Douglas in
series of debates (Lincoln-Douglas debates), accepting slavery in states where already practiced but criticizing Douglas' willingness to extend slavery into territories; 16th president of US 1861-1865 (1st Republican president); oversaw Union during Civil War 1861-1865; signed Homestead Act 1862 (granting public land to squatters after five years of settlement); issued Emancipation Proclamation 1862 (into effect 1863; as symbolic gesture, freed all slaves in
secessionist states and regions); after battle of Gettysburg, delivered Gettysburg Address 1863 (dedicating Gettysburg battleground as monument to troops killed there); appointed Ulysses Grant as general-in-chief of Union forces 1864; assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while attending play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater. * ABRAHAM LINCOLN, sixteenth President of the United States, b. 12th Feb. 1809, in Hardin Co., Ky.; assassinated in Washington, Good Friday, 14th Apr. 1865, by John Wilkes BOOTH; d. there, 15th Apr. 1865. His ancestors were among the early settlers in New England. His early schooling he received from a teacher named Zachariah RINEY, a Catholic, and from Caleb HAZEL. His further knowledge was acquired through self-instruction. In 1816 his family migrated to Knob Creek, Ill. He was elected Captain of the Sangamon County Company, 21st Apr. 1832, which he commanded in the Black Hawk War, and the oath of office was administered by Lieut. Jefferson DAVIS, afterward President of the Confederate States. He was appointed Postmaster of Salem. He began the study of law and was admitted to practice in 1836, and began his career as a lawyer at Springfield, Ill. He rose rapidly in his profession, and became leader of the Whig party in Illinois, being elected to Congress in 1847, where he was distinguished for his anti-slavery views. He was a candidate for the United States Senate in 1858, and received four thousand more votes than his opponent, Judge DOUGLAS, who, however, was elected by the Legislature. In 1860 and 1864 he was elected President of the United States. On 1st Jan. 1863, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He conducted the office of President with great wisdom during the Civil War, and to-day ranks second only to WASHINGTON in the esteem of the nation. At the Dedication of the National Cemetery on the Gettysburg battlefield, 19th Nov. 1863, President LINCOLN delivered a speech which is immortal, and which is regarded as one of the finest orations over uttered by man. “The greatest statesman and noblest man [p.299] produced by the English-speaking world since Cromwell.” In its issue of 27th Mar. 1912, the London “Spectator”–the staid, restrained, unemotional, conservative old “Spectator”–uses these words with reference to Abraham LINCOLN; and they are a significant tribute, not only to the martyr President, but also to his country. m. 4th Nov. 1842, Mary TODD, b. 12th Dec. 1818, in Lexington, Ky., d. 16th July,1882, in Springfield, Ill., dau. of Robert S. TODD, of Kentuck
* Colonial Families of the United States of America: Volume 3
Biography: Abraham Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."
Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.
The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:
"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."
Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."
He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity.
In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.
As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause.
On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.
The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "
On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.
| HOME | EMAIL | SURNAMES |
Return to The Pennocks of Primitive Hall website.
The information in this database may contain errors. If you find any questionable data, or if you have something to add my findings, please feel free to e-mail me by clicking on the "E-MAIL" link above. Thank you!
Page built by Gedpage Version 2.21 ©2009 on 07 July 2020