John George Nicolay and Charles Crawford Whinery

“ As Lincoln’s first presidential term of four years neared its end, the Democratic party gathered itself for a supreme effort to regain the ascendancy lost in 1860. The slow progress of the war, the severe sacrifice of life in campaign and battle, the enormous accumulation of public debt, arbitrary arrests and suspension of habeas corpus, the rigour of the draft, and the proclamation of military emancipation furnished ample subjects of bitter and vindictive campaign oratory. ”

“ With public opinion thus ripened by alternate defeat and victory, President Lincoln, on the 22nd of September 1862, issued his preliminary proclamation of emancipation, giving notice that on the 1st of January 1863, “all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward and for ever free.” ”

“ Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. ”

“ On the 16th of June 1858 by unanimous resolution of the Republican state convention Lincoln was declared “the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas,” who was the choice of his own party to succeed himself. Lincoln, addressing the convention which nominated him, gave expression to the following bold prophecy:—
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. ”

“ The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. ”

“ It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new—North as well as South.”
In this speech, delivered in the state House of Representatives, Lincoln charged Pierce, Buchanan, Taney and Douglas with conspiracy to secure the Dred Scott decision. ”

“ Congress now acted promptly: on the 31st of January 1865, that body by joint resolution proposed to the states the 13th amendment of the Federal Constitution, providing that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” ”

“ In the east Lee had the second time marched his army into Pennsylvania to suffer a disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of July, though he was able to withdraw his shattered forces south of the Potomac. At the dedication of this battlefield as a soldiers’ cemetery in November, President Lincoln made the following oration, which has taken permanent place as a classic in American literature:—
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ”

“ In the early part of 1863 the French Government proposed a mediation between the North and the South. This offer President Lincoln (on the 6th of February) declined to consider, Seward replying for him that it would only be entering into diplomatic discussion with the rebels whether the authority of the government should be renounced, and the country delivered over to disunion and anarchy.
The Civil War gradually grew to dimensions beyond all expectation. By January 1863 the Union armies numbered near a million men, and were kept up to this strength till the end of the struggle. ”

“ In this year Offutt failed and Lincoln was thus left without employment. He became a candidate for the Illinois House of Representatives; and on the 9th of March 1832 issued an address “To the people of Sangamon county” which betokens talent and education far beyond mere ability to “read, write and cipher,” though in its preparation he seems to have had the help of a friend. Before the election the Black Hawk Indian War broke out; Lincoln volunteered in one of the Sangamon county companies on the 21st of April and was elected captain by the members of the company. ”

“ In April Congress passed and the president approved (6th April) an act emancipating the slaves in the District of Columbia, with compensation to owners—a measure which Lincoln had proposed when in Congress. Meanwhile slaves of loyal masters were constantly escaping to military camps. Some commanders excluded them altogether; others surrendered them on demand; while still others sheltered and protected them against their owners. Lincoln tolerated this latitude as falling properly within the military discretion pertaining to local army operations. ”

“ In this frontier community law and politics claimed a large proportion of the stronger and the more ambitious men; the law early appealed to Lincoln and his general popularity encouraged him as early as 1832 to enter politics. ”

“ At the November election the Republican vote was 126,084, the Douglas Democratic vote was 121,940 and the Lecompton (or Buchanan) Democratic vote was 5091; but the Democrats, through a favourable apportionment of representative districts, secured a majority of the legislature (Senate: 14 Democrats, 11 Republicans; House: 40 Democrats, 35 Republicans) , which re-elected Douglas. Lincoln’s speeches in this campaign won him a national fame. ”

“ On the 9th of May 1862 General David Hunter, commanding in the limited areas gained along the southern coast, issued a short order declaring his department under martial law, and adding—“Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The persons in these three States—Georgia, Florida and South Carolina—heretofore held as slaves are, therefore, declared for ever free.” As soon as this order, by the slow method of communication by sea, reached the newspapers, Lincoln (May 19) published a proclamation declaring it void ”

“ The succeeding three months brought disaster and discouragement to the Union army. M‘Clellan’s campaign against Richmond was made abortive by his timorous generalship, and compelled the withdrawal of his army. Pope’s army, advancing against the same city by another line, was beaten back upon Washington in defeat. The tide of war, however, once more turned in the defeat of Lee’s invading army at South Mountain and Antietam in Maryland on the 14th and on the 16th and 17th of September, compelling him to retreat. ”

“ Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females) ”—a sentiment frequently quoted to prove Lincoln a believer in woman’s suffrage. In this election he led the poll in Sangamon county. In the legislature, like the other representatives of that county, who were called the “Long Nine,” because of their stature, he worked for internal improvements, for which lavish appropriations were made, and for the division of Sangamon county and the choice of Springfield as the state capital, instead of Vandalia. ”

“ In 1859 he made two speeches in Ohio—one at Columbus on the 16th of September criticising Douglas’s paper in the September Harper’s Magazine, and one at Cincinnati on the 17th of September, which was addressed to Kentuckians,—and he spent a few days in Kansas, speaking in Elwood, Troy, Doniphan, Atchison and Leavenworth, in the first week of December. ”

“ Mordecai’s son John (1711–c. 1773) , a weaver, settled in what is now Rockingham county, Va., and was the president’s great-grandfather. ↑ Douglas and Lincoln first met in public debate (four on a side) in Springfield in December 1839. They met repeatedly in the campaign of 1840. In 1852 Lincoln attempted with little success to reply to a speech made by Douglas in Richmond. On the 4th of October 1854 in Springfield, in reply to a speech on the Nebraska question by Douglas delivered the day before, Lincoln made a remarkable speech four hours long, to which Douglas replied on the next day ”

“ Douglas spoke at Bloomington on the 16th of July and Lincoln answered him in Springfield on the 17th. ↑ Without Lincoln’s knowledge or consent, the managers of his candidacy before the convention bargained for Cameron’s votes by promising to Cameron a place in Lincoln’s cabinet, should Lincoln be elected. Cameron became Lincoln’s first secretary of war. ↑ In November 1861 the president drafted a bill providing (1) that all slaves more than thirty-five years old in the state of Delaware should immediately become free ”

“ C. C. W.)
↑ Lincoln’s birthday is a legal holiday in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming. ↑ Samuel Lincoln (c. 1619–1690) , the president’s first American ancestor, son of Edward Lincoln, gent., of Hingham, Norfolk, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1637 as apprentice to a weaver and settled with two older brothers in Hingham, Mass. His son and grandson were iron founders ”