The sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) was born in Kentucky and studied law in Illinois, earning the nickname “Honest Abe” for his upright moral character. In 1858, he ran for US Senate against Stephen A. Douglas, catapulting him to national fame even though he lost the race. He was elected to the presidency in 1860, just before the Civil War began. Lincoln did not accept the secession of the Confederacy, declaring the states to be in a state of rebellion. Assassinated in 1865, Lincoln would be remembered as a great wartime leader who was deeply devoted to maintaining the national union. His Gettysburg Address of 1863 is one of the most quoted speeches in American history.
Abraham Lincoln
How do we American citizens develop attachment to and affection for the United States? What role do our founding documents (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) and principles play in making patriots?
Abraham Lincoln
The First Inaugural Address was delivered ten days after Abraham Lincoln’s arrival in Washington, DC. Several southern states had already seceded from the Union, and Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated as the president of the Confederacy just two weeks before. Ignoring advice to the contrary, the former Illinois congressman (1809–65) rode with outgoing President James Buchanan in an open carriage to the Capitol, where he took the oath of office from the East Portico steps on March 4, 1861.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln’s most famous defense of equality appears in the Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863, in the midst of a civil war whose deepest cause was the institution of slavery. Here Lincoln revisits the Declaration of Independence, summoning the nation to achieve a “new birth of freedom” through renewed dedication to the founding proposition of human equality.
Abraham Lincoln
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) delivered his most memorable speech at a ceremony dedicating the cemetery for the Union dead at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, site of the great victory in July of that year which marked a turning point in the Civil War. Lincoln used the occasion to offer his interpretation of the war and the reasons for which it was being fought.
Abraham Lincoln
Less well known than his letter to Mrs. Bixby, a grieving mother, is this painfully beautiful letter of condolence that President Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) wrote to a teenage girl, Fanny McCullough, the daughter of an old friend from Illinois who had been killed in action.
Abraham Lincoln
This letter has gone down in Lincoln lore, yet its origins remain cloudy. To start, it appears that the Mrs. Bixby in question did not actually lose all five of her sons in battle. It was first printed in the Boston Transcript, but no legitimate copy of it survives in Lincoln’s handwriting.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (1809–65), who presided over the successful prosecution of the Civil War, also gave deep thought to the war’s cause, meaning, and purpose, and also to what would be required to heal the nation after the war was over. Here, in his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865), invoking theological speculation and quoting Scripture, Lincoln offers an interpretation of the meaning of the war, which enables him to summon all Americans to a new and more difficult public purpose.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) issued this proclamation for a day of national thanksgiving in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, not long after the battle of Gettysburg and several other Union successes seemed to have turned the tide toward a Union victory. Like so many of his famous speeches, this modest presidential proclamation displays the extraordinary understanding, statesmanship, and generosity of soul that distinguished the 16th President of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln
According to its Preamble, the United States Constitution has as one of its aims to “establish justice.” Understanding law as the path to justice, “We the people of the United States” bound ourselves to a fundamental law that would organize our polity and guide the statutory laws. Half a century later, on January 27, 1838, an aspiring young politician named Abraham Lincoln gave a speech on “the perpetuation of our political institutions,” in which he worried that Americans were increasingly inclined to take the law into their own hands.
