Figure 1.--Tad Linclon is pictured here in a White House photograph taken about 1862. Note the adult looking clothing that Tad, who is only about 11, is wearing.

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th and the most beloved of all American presidents, although at the time he ingendered intense political contversy, in both the north and south. Lincoln was the first strong president since Polk. While his election precitated the Civil War, it was clear by 1860 that the southern states were preparing to seceed and only Federal military force could prevent. Abhorring war, Abraham Lincoln accepted it as the only means to save the Union. President Lincoln's leadership proceeded not only to save the Union, but also emancipate the slaves. This Civil War was no mere domestic struggle. Consider the fate of Europe if a powerful and united American Republic did not exist to confront the NAZIs in 1941 and the Russians in 1945. The amazing historical footnote is that a president with limited formal education as well as poorly schooled farm boys from Maine to Wisconsin so clearly understood this and supported the Union through 4 terrible years of Civil War.

Family

Lincoln's parents were Thomas Lincon (ca1776-1851) and Nancy Hanks (1784-1818). He had a brother and sister who died at a young age.

Father

Thomas' father had been killed by indians while clearing land. The absence of a father to support him left him with few prospects and oportunities. He tried as best he could. He was both a farmer and carpenter. He bought several farms, but there was a poor land system at the time and he was badly cheated. So Thomas kept moving and trying again. Thomas was uneducated and could barely scrawl his name. Thomas is probably the worst presidential father in American history. After his first wife died he abandoned his children, 9-year old Able and a daughter, for 6 months in their backwoods cabin. They nearly starved to death. As he grew up, Abe did not get on well with his father. Thomas who was illiterate, rediculed his son's reading and interest in education. Abraham for his part wanted to be nothing like his father.

Mother

Nancy Hanks was illiterate. She came from a large family of modest means, but thoroughly respectable. Some have claimed that she was ilegitimate, but recent scholarship has demonstrated that she was not. Nancy died when Abe was 8 years old. Abe himself widdled pegs for his mother's coffin. So Lincoln met death at an early age.

Siblings

Lincoln had an older sister Sarah who died in childhood. There was also a younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy and an older sister who died in childhood.

Childhood

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman and carpenter, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Lincoln himself never said much about his childhood. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life biefly at the urging of a campaign manager:

"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."

Physical discription

Lincoln from childhood was very tall. He towered over his friends mates. His clothes never seemed to fit him. As a man he was about a foot taller than the average man.

Few sources

Little is know of Lincoln's hardscrable childhood and very little written has been written on his childhood. He came from such a poor family and they moved so often that there was no one to write about his childhood. His parents couldn't write. No one took much interest in the family at the time. Lincoln himself was a modest man. There are no dairies. No autobiography. One of the few sources of information is the work of William Herdon, Lincoln's law partner. He compiled an account based on oral history. He traveled to Indiana and Kentucky and interviewed anyone he could find who knew the Lincolns. These interviews were conducted 40-50 years after the events and there are huge difficulties in using the often contradictory information.

Hardscrable childhood

Young Abe certainly had a hard childhood. His father put an ax in his hand at age 7. There was work to be done. The land had to be cleared, a major, back breaking chore. His mother, although illiterate, incouraged education. Abraham could read at 7, not an unimpressive accomplishment for a boy at the time with undeducated parents. Despite the limited opportunity for education, both mother and father encouraged the boy to take what ever oportunites existed.

Mother dies

Nancy's willingness to help a sick neihbor led to her untimely death as she drank the same tainted milk that had caushed her neighbor's sickness. It was especially hard for Abraham after Nancy died. He, his sister, and his father lived alone for a year.

Moves

Historians disagree somewhat on the Lincolns in Indiana. Most stress the poverty of the family causing them to eventually move to Illinois. Others claim that the Lincolns were relatively prosperous in Indiana, at least in backwoods terms. Some claim that the family moved to Illinois so she could be with her son by a previous marriage. He was writing home about good the soil was which attracted Thomas' interest. What is clear is that the family's fortunes progressively declined after each of Thomas' many moves.

Stepmother

Lincoln's childhood was frought with great difficulty. His mother died when Abe was only 8. His father remarred to Sarah Bush Johnston, who by all accounts proved to be a wonderful mother. Thomas left the children alone and went home to Kentucky to find another wife. Incredibly he left them alone for 6 months to fend for themselves. They almost died of starvation. Neighbors report they were almost skeletal. Thomas may have courted Sarah before. He brought her back with a chest of drawers. It was the first piece of furniture that Abe ever saw. Sarah was apauled at the conditin of the children when she first saw them. Ane who did not know here, ran to her and buried himself in her skirt. It is notable that he ran to the woman he did not even know rather than to his father. There was no hesitation on Sarah's part. She took to the children immediately. One historian reports, that if she had hesitated or not proved to have been a wonderful mother, Lincoln would have never been president. [Wead, ] I think he is entitely correct. Given the importance of Lincoln in American history, this is a fascinating statement. It also is a remarkable illustration of how history can turn on such seeming unimportant events. Sarah went to work cleaning them up, later recalling that it took almost the entire day to get the caked on mud off Abe. She sewed clothes for them. They moved to Kentucky. Saah played a key role in his life and picked up where his mother left off. She had three children of her own, but never showed any favortism. She also encouraged his education. When she married Thomas, she knew of Abe's love of reading and brought books with her for him. This helped form a bond between the two. Unlike the relationship with his father, Abraham became very close to his step-mother. Books were rare io the frontier and they must have been a rare treat for the boy. Lincoln not only showed an interest in reading, but also the law. As a boy he watched trials at the country court house.

Relationship with father

Lincoln does not seem to have gotten on well with his father, at least as a young man. The family moved to Illinois when Lincoln was 21. He helped his father build a cabin, but then moved away. Some authors believe that his experiences had sapped Thomas' ambitions. Lincoln himself was very ambitious and this difference must have affected the relations between the two men. There was certainly a profound esraingment between the two men. Very little is known how and when this developed. Lincoln went on the live at New Salem. Lincoln as an adult was constantly sending money home to his father. He help prevent forclosure on the farm. Much has been made that he did not come to his father's deathbed. The two were not close, but therewas no bitternes in the relationship. Lincoln did not like his father's friends and may have been exagerating his father's illneses. Also Mary had just given birth.

Story teller

One often under-stressed characteristic of Abraham was his ability to stell stories. This made him popular with his friends and rven adults. It freatly added to his appeal lateer as a politican and helped form friendshios. It was a srtong factor in his key political skill, the ability of getting others to see his point of view. He did not hold grudges and got along easily with others. In this he stood in stark contrast to his southern counterpart, Jefferson Davis who was no consensus builder. These differences were to make a critical difference when these two men were to lead their nations in the Civil War.

Education

Lincoln made some efforts to attain knowledge while working on the family farm. There were few opportunities, however, and Lincoln did not at this time have the same drive for education that he demonstrated in later life. As a boy only had probably less than 1 year of formal education. His parents encouraged him as best they could, especially Nancy, and by the age of 7 he had learned to read. He did not learn proper grammar until much later. Lincoln read and studied as best he could while keeping store or being otherwised employed in New Salem, Illinois. Lincoln was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent 8 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."

Friendships

More books have been written about Lincoln tha any other American president. Yet Lincoln in many ways remains an enigma. Lincoln never wrote about himself in any detail. He had few close friends and even to them he never really opened himself up to decribe his private life. Lincoln appears to have been unable of making intimate friendships. It is unclear why. The loss of his mother, his isolated rural boyhood, and his difficult reltionship with his father all must have affected his ability to relate with others. Lincoln's clest friend was Joshua Speed. The two had very different unbringings. Speed came from a wealthy Kentucky planterfamily. They shared a room in Springfield when Sped arrived in 1837. Speed later advised Lincoln on the political situation in Kentucky which was a critical border state. Keeping Kentucky in the Union was critical to Lincoln's strategy. William H. Herndon was Lincoln's law partner and their relationship was very important in Lincoln's intelectual development. Orville H. Browning who was appointed to serve out Stephen O. Douglas' reamianing senatorial term became close with Lincoln during the early part of the President's term. Secretaey of State William H. Seward has aspired to be president himself and was dismissive of Lincoln's capabilities until he came to recognize them while working together. Lincoln was also close to his two personal secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay. [Donald, We]

Jobs

Linclon had a variety of jobs before becoming a lawyer. He split rails, worked as a store clerk and on a river boat. It was on the Missippi River that his views of slavery were formed, based on what he observed. As a politican, however, he had to mute his views of slavery. While there were abolitionists in the north, even in the North America was a racist nation. He was also a postmaster. This helped him meet people. It also gave him access to newspapers all over the country.

Political Career

Lincoln reversed the usual pattern of studying law and then becoming a politican. He first ran for the state legislature at 23 and won a seat in the second try as a Whig in 1834. There he met people with wider horizons. And he was soon was convinced to study law. Lincoln was a effective young politician and ploitics was his true love. Yet there was no real issue which motivated him. It was Stephen Douglas, the prominent Illinois Senator, that gave Lincoln an issue. Douglas proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and popular soverignity. Now Linclon saw the possibility of slavery expanding. Lincoln did not dare to challenge slavery's existence--it was after all enshired in the Constitution and most Americans accepted or supported it. He had hoped, however, that it would slowly wither away. Now there was the possibility that it would expand. Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator in 1850. Lincoln the speech accepting the nomination made perhaps his most famous speech, questioning whether America coul endure both half slave and half free. The famed Lincoln-Douglas debates framed for the entire country the issue of slavery. Douglas accused Linclon of codeling the blacks. Lincon replie that while blacks may not be equal that they are entiled to the income that they earn from their labor. Douglas also stressed the importance of majority rule. Lincoln evoked moral principles. Lincoln won a small majority, a major accomplishment in heavily Democratic Illinois. He lost the election in the Democratic state legislature. In debating with Douglas, a principal Congressional engineer of the Compromise of 1850 which had postponed Civil War, Lincoln gained a national reputation. He continued speaking out, assuming the middle ground between the abolistionists and the slave holders of the South. The Lincoln-Douglas deabates were a key element that was to enable him to win the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

Character

One of the most intreaging questions about Lincoln seems to be where his monumental character came from. It does not seem to have come from his father. And he had almost no formal education. Yes no president in American history, except perhaps Washington, approaches Lincoln in strength of character. This is a toic many historians have addressed to a greater or lesser degree. And their findings have varied. One historian describes what he sees as a "a basic trait of character evident thrughout Lincoln's life: the essential passivity of his nature". [Donald, Lincoln.] We are not sure what the basis for this assessment is. Perhaps he was referring more to Lincoln's private life. We certainly so not see passivity in his public life. Another historian with more insiht that Lincoln's public life was "mastery rather than pasivity". [McPearson] One of the surprising aspects of Lincoln's character was his personal self-confidence. It was that self-confidence that Lincoln brought to Washington in 1861. Lincoln had no experience at any kind of administration or management. His experience in Washington was limited to a brief time in Congress. Yet he arrived in Washington supremely self confident, despite being confronted with the greatest crisis in American history. Mary Lincoln herself commented on her husband's self-confidence, "He was a terribly firm man when he set his footdown. .... No man or woman could rule him after he had made up his mind." [M. Lincoln]

Civil War

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.

Two American Presidents

America in 1861 had two presidents. Only one of them, however, had the kind of qualifications that we like to see in our presidents--and it was not Lincoln. Jeffereson Davis was well educated with both a university degree and a graduate of West Point. He was a recognized war hero who played a major role in the war with Mexico. He was an important senator and served as Secretary of War. Lincoln had virtually no formal education. He served without destinction in the Black Hawk War. He served one term in Congress and lost arace for the Senate. He had no administratve exprience and his law office was a shambles. But from the onset, it was Lincoln who made the right decisions and it was Davis who repeatedly erred beginning with the decission to fire on Fort Sumter, thus putting the South in the position of initiating the War. Even much of Lincoln's cabinent has little respect for him. Who would have thought in looking at the two men that Lincoln would emerge as arguably our greatest president.

Presidency

Lincoln as President built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause which, considering the horrors of the Civil War, was a major accomplishment. Lincoln on January 1, 1863, issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy. This transformed the War from a struggle to save the Union to a moral crusade to iradicate slavery. 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.

Historical Asessment

Lincoln is now regarded along with Washington and Franklin Roosevelt as the Republic's three greatest presidents, champion of freedom, and hero of the American nation. He is the most beloved of our presidents. In his life time, however, he was one of the most conroversial presdents. In the South his name was an anathema, but there were also stident critics in the North. Overseas journalists in Britain caricatured him mercilessly, making him the butt of public ridicule and scorn. Lincoln's two monumental achievements are saving the Union and Emancipation of the slaves.

The Union

Emancipation

Lincoln's view on slavery were formed at an early age. His mother and father belonged to a Baptist sect that opposed slavery. As a youth he worked on a flat boat taking goods own the Mississppi to New Orleans where he saw slaves being bought an sold. He was active in politics for years, but it was not until Senator Stephen Douglass proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and championed "popular soverignty". The possibility that slavery would be expanded that Lincoln seize an issue that moved him. Lincoln hated slavery, but he was not an abolistionist. Almost certainly this was a matter of political expdedency--abolistionists could not win elections in Illinois. He hoped to contain slavery and hope that it would whither away--this was the best that could be hoped for at the time. Lincoln was a realist. He believed in reason. He hoped that slavery would eventually wither away if it could be contained. Lincoln was a man of his time. He though that blacks were inferior. In fact as President he told a group of black leaders that the solution to the race issue was freed slaves colonizing Africa. (Characteristically this was the first meeting of black leaders with any president. He had no black friends. Interestingly Mary did--her semstress became her closest confident. What Lincoln did believe is that what a man earned by the sweat og his brow should be his to keep. After election he persued the Civil War to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was an act to strike at the economhy of the South and not a moral pronouncement. Lincoln was, however, probably our most private of presidents. He never set down on paper his true feelings, primarily because of the contemporary political ramifications. No competent Lincoln scholar, however, would seny that he hated slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was written as a military act rather than a soaring moral pronounment. Revisionist historians have used this to demonstrate that Lincoln had no strng moral convictiins on slavery. Lincoln realized the nation would accept a military act and because of his concern that the Supreme Court wouls strike it down. (This was a very real possibility. It was the same Court that in the Dead Scott case had ruled that blacks could not be citizens.) A still very rascist country accepted a military actiion against the South, but many had no interst in pursuing the War to emancipate the slaves. One telling incident into Lincoln's soul was in the dark days of mid 1864 when it looked like his re-election was lost, he called in Stephen Douglas to organize a secret mission behind Southerrn lines to encourage slaves to escape to the North while it was still possible. After re-eclectiin his major legilative initiative wa the 13th Amendment, for ever abolishing slavery.

Family

Mary Todd Linclon was not the first woman in Lincoln's life. When he was 26, the love of his life died. It may well be that the marriage with Mary was more of a political step, knowing that to advance he need the help of someone with social graces. What ever his personal feelings, he was a devoted husband and father. Mary Todd Lincoln is beyon doubt the most tragic of all Americ's First Ladies. Other have suffered great losses, but none so many lossess beginning at such an early age. As a result, she was incapable of giving her husband the support that woul have been so valuable for a man undergoing the trials faced by few men. It shooul always be remembered that the bright, vivacious young lady that Lincoln married was a great asset to his Illinois political career and without Mary, he may never have been so successful politically. The Lincolns had four sons. Mary would have certainly liked to have had a little girl to dress up and fuss over, but she loved the boys deeply. It is difficult to imgine two more loving parents. The Lincoln boys had extremely varied personalities. Robert was somewhat dour. Eddie and Taddie bubbly, Willie more contempative. Taddie may have been mildly retarded or aat least had learning difficulties. Willie was a very bright child. They were extremely permissive parents and the antics of Taddie and Willie are legendary. Willie perhaps the most beloved of all the Lincoln children died in the White House.

Summer White House

In the era before air conditioning, the White House was an extremely unpleaant place to live. Soldier's Home was a retirement community for indigent soldiers. It was located a few miles from the White House in Washington it was at a higher elevation and st among many trees. The air was fresher and coller than the swampy area around the White House. Soldier's Home provided cottages for senior government officials. President Buchanan was the first president to retire to Soldier's Home during the Summer. He recommended to Lincoln that he take advantage of the facilities. The crush of events prevented the Lincoln's from doing so in 1861, but they did set up a Summer Whiye House in the susequent years. No only was it more pleasant, but they were away from the official tunmault of the White Houuse which was as much an office as a home. [Pinsker]

Sources

Donald, David Herbert. We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends (Simon & Schuster, 2003), 269p.

Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln (1995).

Lincoln, Mary.

McPherson, James M. This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (Oford University, 2007), 260p.

Pinsker, Matthew. Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home (Oxford University, 2003), 256p.

Wead, Doug. The Raising of a President.