By Elaine Rassel
Thursday evening, (Oct. 7) the Marcus Public Library had a very distinguished gentleman, Abraham Lincoln, come to speak. Kevin Wood came as Abraham Lincoln to
speak on one of his programs, “New Birth of Freedom” that led to Lincoln being the 16th President of the United States. Wood was dressed as Lincoln would have been dressed. He told the audience that he had had a problem with getting insurance as his weight was below what the insurance company recommended. Lincoln was tall and thin and Wood as 6’4” tall and very slim did fit the description of Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky. Lincoln ‘s parents had three children: Sarah, Abraham, and Thomas, who died as an infant. Thomas Lincoln bought or leased farms in Kentucky before losing all but 200 acres of his land in court disputes over property titles. In 1816, the family moved to Indiana where the land surveys and titles were more reliable. Indiana was a “free” (non-slaveholding) territory, and they settled in Perry County, Indiana. In Kentucky and Indiana, Thomas worked as a farmer, cabinetmaker, and carpenter. He and Nancy were members of a Separate Baptists church, which forbade alcohol, dancing, and slavery.
On October 5, 1818, Nancy Lincoln succumbed to milk sickness, leaving 11 year- old Sarah in charge of her father, 9 year-old Abraham, and Nancy’s 19 year-old orphan cousin, Dennis Hanks. (It was 10 years later that Sarah died while giving birth to a stillborn son, devastating Abe Lincoln.
December 2, 1819, Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow from Kentucky, who brought three children of hers into the marriage. Abraham was very appreciative of his step-mother. She understood that Abraham disliked any labor associated with farm life and acknowledged and encouraged the fact that he was a “reader” and all that went with reading.
Lincoln was self-educated. His formal schooling was from itinerant teachers. He learned to read while in Kentucky but probably not to write. At age 7, in Indiana, he went to school “whenever” due to farm chores for a total of less than 12 months. By the age of 15, he was an avid reader, but didn’t have much access to many books other than the Bible, or what other books he could borrow from neighbors. As a teen, Lincoln took responsibility for chores and gave his father all his earnings from outside the home until he was 21 years old.
In March of 1830, fearing another milk sickness outbreak, several members of the extended Lincoln family, including Abraham, moved west to Illinois, a free state, and settled in Macon County. Abraham now became more distant from Thomas, probably because of his father’s lack of education. 1831, Thomas and other family prepared to move to a new homestead in Illinois, and Abraham went his own way. He made his home in New Salem, Illinois for six years. He was first exposed to slavery when he and some friends took goods by flatboat to New Orleans, Louisiana and witnessed a slave auction.
Lincoln’s first romantic interest was Ann Rutledge, whom he met when he moved to New Salem. By 1835, they were in a relationship but not formally engaged. She died on August 25, 1835, probably from typhoid fever. In the early 1830’s, he had met Mary Owens from Kentucky. It was late in 1836 that she returned to New Salem. He courted her for a time, but then wrote her a letter saying he would not blame her if she ended the relationship. She never replied back to him.
In 1839 he met Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois. The first time he saw her he told her he wanted to dance with her in the worst way. After the dance ended she told him that he got his wish. He danced with her in the “worst” way! In spite of his bad dancing, they did marry on November 4, 1842 in the Springfield mansion of Mary’s sister. The couple bought a house in Springfield near his law office where Mary kept house with the help of a hired servant and a relative.
They were parents to four sons: the oldest, Robert, was born in 1843 and was the only child to live to maturity. Eddie was born in 1846 but died Feb. 1, 1850 probably of tuberculosis. “Willie” was born on Dec. 21, 1859 and died of a fever at the White House on February 20, 1862. “Tad” so named because he reminded them of a tad pole, was born on April 4, 1853, but died of heart failure at age 18 on July 16, 1871.
The deaths of their sons, Eddie and Willie, had profound effects on both parents. Lincoln suffered from “melancholy”, a condition now thought to be clinical depression. Later in life, Mary struggled with the stress of losing her husband and sons, and Robert committed her for a time to an asylum in 1875.
Lincoln was a person that was not always satisfied with what he was doing and moved on to something else. In 1832 he purchased a general store with a partner. When the business was struggling, he sold out. Then he entered politics, running for the Illinois General Assembly advocating better improvements on the Sangamon River. His lack of money and formal education that was necessary for this election caused him to lose the election. From there he went on the serve as a captain in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War. After that he went on to served as New Salem’s postmaster, and later as county surveyor. However, he continued his reading (borrowing legal texts from other attorneys) to become a lawyer.
Wood spoke on slavery at this time of Lincoln’s life. Lincoln had witnessed slavery earlier with a slave auction but the more he became involved in politics, the more he saw what was happening in the states that permitted slavery. He read part of the Gettysburg Address to us. He belonged to the “Whig” party at this time. On foreign and military policy, he spoke against the Mexican-American War. He supported a failed proposal to ban slavery in any U.S. territory won from Mexico.
The debate over the status of slavery in the territories failed to alleviate tensions between the slave-holding South and the free North, with the failure of the Compromise of 1850, a legislative package designed to address the issue. The legislation alarmed many Northerners, who sought to prevent the resulting spread of slavery, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act narrowly passed Congress in May of 1854. Lincoln did not comment on the act until months later in his “Peoria Speech” in October of 1854. Now he declared his opposition to slavery which he repeated en route to the presidency. He said the Kansas Act had a real zeal for the spread of slavery and he hated it.. He hated it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. He hated it because it deprived our republican example of its just influence in the world. Lincoln’s attacks on the Kansas-Nebraska Act marked his return to political live.
The new Republican Party was formed as a northern party dedicated to antislavery, drawing from the Whig Party those who opposed slavery. In 1856, Lincoln joined the Republicans. The convention platform endorsed Congress’s right to regulate slavery in the territories and backed the admission of Kansas as a free state. Lincoln gave the final speech of the Bloomington Convention supporting the party platform and called for the preservation of the Union. Violent political confrontations in Kansas continued, and opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act remained strong throughout the North.
In 1860 he was nominated for president. He was running against Senator Douglas who he had lost to before. Now he received letters from old and new friends giving him encouragement. One letter was from Grace Bedell, an eleven year old girl. She said she had 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you anyway and if you let your whiskers grow, I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you. You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. He took her advice and started growing a beard.
He traveled around the country giving speeches, but on election night, November 6, 1860 he was in Springfield when he heard the good news that he was elected President. The people of Springfield might have been happy with the news but not everyone else was. He was the first Republican president and his victory was entirely due to his support in the North and West. No ballots were cast for him in 10 of the 15 Southern slave states, and he won only two of 996 counties in all the southern states, an omen of the impending Civil War. He won votes in California and Oregon, western states. (Because of the “gold rush” people were moving West.) His victory in the electoral college was decisive: he had 180 votes to 123 for his opponents.
The South was outraged by Lincoln’s election, and in response made plans to leave the Union before he took office in March 1861. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina took the lead by adopting an ordinance of secession; by Feb, 1861, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed. Six of these states declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America, and adopted a constitution. The upper South and border states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas) initially rejected the secessionist appeal. President Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy. The Confederacy selected Jefferson Davis as its president on Feb. 9, 1861.
Lincoln cited his plans for banning the expansion of slavery’s in his first inaugural address. He said the expansion of slavery was the key source of conflict between North and South, stating “One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.” He ended his address with an appeal to the people of the South. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
The Civil War was now to be a reality. Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union’s Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, sent a request for provisions to Washington, and Lincoln’s order to meet that request was seen by the secessionists as an act of war. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter and began the fight. Washington, D.C was surrounded by slave states.
On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to send a total of 75,000 volunteer troops to recapture forts, protect Washington, and “preserve the Union”, which in his view, remained intact despite the seceding states. This call forced states to choose sides. Virginia seceded and was rewarded with the designation of Richmond as the confederate capital. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas followed over the following two months. Even though secession sentiment was strong in Missouri and Maryland, it did not prevail. Kentucky remained neutral. The Fort Sumter attack rallied Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line to defend the nation.
Wood went on to tell how Lincoln related to this war where brother went against brother. Bloody battle after bloody battle, by the end of the spring of 1863, Lincoln was optimistic about upcoming military campaigns to think the end of the war could be near. The plans included attacks on Lee north of Richmond, Rosecrans on Chattanooga, Grant on Vicksburg (gaining control of the Mississippi River, splitting the far western rebel states), and a naval assault on Charleston.
The Federal government’s power to end slavery was limited by the Constitution, which before 1865 delegated the issue to the individual states. Lincoln sought to persuade the states to agree to compensation for emancipating their slaves in return for their acceptance of abolition. In June 1862, Congress passed an act banning slavery on all federal territory, signed by Lincoln. July, the Confiscation Act of 1862 was enacted, providing court procedures to free the slaves of those convicted of aiding the rebellion.
The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on Sept. 22, 1862, and effective Jan. 1, 1863, affirmed the freedom of slaves in 10 states not under Union control, with exemptions specified for areas under such control. Lincoln spent the next 100 days preparing the army and the nation for emancipation, while Democrats rallied their voters by warning of the threat that freed slaves posed to northern whites. With the abolition of slavery in the rebel states now a military objective, Union armies advanced south and liberated three million slaves.
Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery on Nov. 19, 1863. In 272 words, and three minutes, Lincoln asserted that the nation was born not in 1789, but in 1776, “conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” He defined the war as dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality for all. He declared that the deaths of so many brave soldiers would not be in vain, that slavery would end, and the future of democracy would be assured, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (This is when Wood finished reading the Gettysburg Address to us.) This Civil War was responsible for the deaths of 600,000 soldiers who had died of wounds or starvation.
John Wilkes Booth was a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland; though he never joined the Confederate army, he had contacts with the Confederate secret service. After attending an April 11, 1865 speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks, Booth hatched a plot to assassinate the President. He learned that the Lincolns’ were planning to attend a play with General Grant at Ford’s Theatre. At the last minute, Grant decided to go to New Jersey to visit his children.
At 10:15 p.m., Booth entered the back of Lincoln’s theater box, crept up from behind, and fired at the back of Lincoln’s head, mortally wounding him. Booth was grabbed by a man but Booth stabbed him and escaped. Lincoln was taken across the street to Petersen House. After remaining in a coma for 8 hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15. Lincoln’s body was placed in a flag-wrapped coffin, which was loaded into a hearse and escorted to the White House by Union soldiers. President Johnson was sworn in the next morning. Two weeks later, Booth was tracked to a farm in Virginia, and refusing to surrender, he was mortally shot and died on April 26.
The late President lay in state, first in the East Room of the White House, and then in the capitol Rotunda from April 19 through April 21. The caskets containing Lincoln’s body and the body of his son, Willie traveled for three weeks by train. The train followed a route from Washington, D.C to Springfield, Illinois, stopping at many cities for memorials attended by hundreds of thousands. Many others gathered along the tracks as the train passed with bands, bonfires, and hymn singing, or in silent grief. In a sense, this reaction was in response to the deaths of so many men in the Civil War. Yes, there were some Lincoln haters who celebrated his death. Lincoln’s body was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield and now lies within the Lincoln Tomb.
Wood closed with facts about Lincoln’s health before his assassination. Lincoln is believed to have had depression, small pox, and malaria. He took blue mass pills, which contained mercury, to treat constipation. It is unknown to what extent he may have suffered from mercury poisoning.
Several claims have been made that Lincoln’s health was declining before the assassination. These are often based on photographs of Lincoln appearing to show weight loss and muscle wasting. It is also suspected that he might have had a rare genetic disease such as Marfan syndrome or multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B.
Going back in time to Abraham Lincoln, Wood’s presentation was informative and very interesting.