LITTLE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS LIFE

(These Thoughts are added to twice a week)

1,500,000 moved by the casket of Abraham Lincoln before he was laid to rest. From that time on many who had seen his patience as a weakness began to truly see the great man they had had for a President.

With him as President our nation was finally one and those who had before called themselves Virginians or Pennsylvanians slowly began, more and more, to call themselves Americans. They began to realize what had almost been lost.

Four million slaves were free. Europe had a new respect for America. Washington was venerated. Lincoln would come to be loved.

He almost didn’t live long enough to be President. He was kicked by a horse and so severely injured for a time no one was sure he would survive. He almost drowned. He was attacked by pirates who were set out to kill him as he guided a flat boat down the Mississippi.

His ability to survive comes not completely as a surprise. He was amazingly strong; having once lifted a 1000 pound parcel and able to hold a fifty pound ax straight out in front of him without wavering.

When he was in his mid-twenties he was postmaster for his area which stretched for 125 miles from end to end. For such exertions he was paid an annual salary of $35.

As a surveyor he was so poor he could not afford a metal chain and used instead a grapevine. For traveling he sometimes walked and at other times rode on a $50 rented horse.

His early life was a series of successes and failures; his largest success coming when finally he was elected President with 180 electoral votes and a popular vote of 1,866,452. Stephen Douglas received lesser electoral and popular votes.

When he arrived in Washington its population was 40,000 and its only paved street was Pennsylvania Avenue. When he went for a walk he had to share space with both pigs and cows.

On the day he was inaugurated it had rained 10 inches of rain and looked as if it wasn’t going to stop. Not long before time for this event it stopped raining and as he began to speak the sun broke forth.

When the Civil War began there were 18 free states and 15 slave states and to this problem Lincoln made his famous biblical based comment “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

In the early days of the war if Lincoln had tried to abolish slavery he would have lost not only the vital Border States (Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Kansas and Missouri) but also a significant portion of his Northern support. Most Northern radicals failed or refused to acknowledge this and gave him a hard time for not coming down harder on the issue of slavery.

Gettysburg was the turning point in the war and his Gettysburg address of 272 words summed it all up in a manner that even those who were present could not immediately understand. There were 25,000 to 50,000 people present who had sat for four hours before Lincoln rose to speak. There had been a marathon wait for Edward Everett the speaker, a marathon prayer and Everett’s two hour speech. What he had to say was well worth the wait.

The war took the lives of 623,000 soldiers and based on the 30 million Americans at that time as against our present 300,000 million population…to lose the same percentage today would equal (by comparison) a loss of 6.2 million.

When President Lincoln was elected for a second time it was the first time in 32 years.

At 7:22 Am April 15th. Lincoln died. A scant fifteen years earlier President Taylor had walked the streets of Washington safe and unguarded. More assassinations of Presidents would continue.

As his breathing came to an end, it is said that Edwin Stanton, his Secretary of War, commented; “Now he belongs to the ages.” Peace that he had not known for quite some time finally came.

After it happened, lawlessness wore a general’s hat and was in complete control. Washington, D.C. was engulfed in riots. A soldier shot a man for saying of the assassination, “It served him right.”

Lincoln had seen a house of cards about to fall and realized how it could establish a precedent that would truly destroy what the Founding Fathers had created. If our nation was divided by two, it might well have become a division of three. The Northeast, once not sure if it even wanted to be part of the original thirteen colonies, might then have pulled out. A few years down the road, some state in the Confederacy, unhappy with the new uniting, might have done the same. Bad habits come easily and are slow to leave.

The Confederacy, this government of eleven states, had almost brought down a nation.

Now that the war was over there was no shortage of solutions. Many conservative Democrats and Republicans simply wanted to revert back to the status quo with slavery still a viable option. It made little sense to have sacrificed over 600,000 lives and end up with the old Southern ruling class in power, but it was seriously proposed. It was just as seriously rejected.

It is a wonder things turned out as well as they did. It was obvious some miracles needed to take place. The Confederate States infrastructures were totally destroyed. The economy was in shamble. Schools and churches lay empty or demolished. Black and white poverty was rampant. The work force and style of living could never be the same.

It is little wonder that once the war was over, wretched memories fed anger loud and long. Neither side could be proud of some things that happened during the war or at their many prison camps. The meanness in some men had multiplied. They felt their uniforms allowed it.

If Lincoln had not died he would have given the South back its pride as soon as possible. Remember, this was the man who said “With malice toward none. With charity toward all.”

The United States has endured to celebrate its bicentennial anniversary and move into a third century of democratic survival. The memory of Lincoln has survived equally as well. There should be little doubt his belief-driven attitudes, words and actions were monumental in their impact, even after his assassination.