February 12, 2019 (Tuesday)
Today we celebrate the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was 51 years old when he ran for president in 1860. There were several candidates. In those days, the inauguration took place on March 4 after the election in November of the previous year. Between the day of his election and the day of his inauguration (a period of 4 months), seven states seceded from the union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana and Texas Others were Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. The territories of Arizona and New Mexico were pro-confederate. One month after the inauguration, the Civil War began.
The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate shore batteries under General Pierre G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort, and on April 13 U.S. Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union garrison, surrendered. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to help quell the Southern “insurrection.” Four long years later, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate dead.
One might say that Lincoln’s entire tenure as president took place during the Civil War. Lincoln won re-election in 1864, was inaugurated on March 4, 1865, was shot on April 14, 1865 and died on April 15, 1865, at the age of 56, four years to the day from his call for volunteer soldiers.
Many believe it was Lincoln’s oratorical talents that won elections for him. One of the best known speeches is the 1863 Gettysburg Address:
Four score 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.
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 battle-field 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. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate–we can not consecrate–we can not hallow–this ground. 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 is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–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 took only 2 minutes to deliver this speech of only 10 sentences and 272 words. Yet it is well-known and deeply loved as one of the greatest speeches of human history.
Abraham Lincoln was born the year that James Madison became president. He grew up under presidents Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan. He was the sixteenth president, the third to die in office and the first to be assassinated. He will always be remembered.