Lincoln's Second Inagural Address

March 4, 1865.

Fellow-Countrymen:


AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Mary Lincoln Portrait Not the Real Thing

A portrait formerly hanging in the Illinois governor's mansion, one long believed to be that of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, has been relieved as a forgery. Previously said to be painted specifically for Mrs. Lincoln to give to her husband, and tragically never presented to him because of his murder, the painting is now thought to be the work of an early 20th-century con man who fooled the Lincoln family into buying it not long after Todd Lincoln's death in 1926.

The fraudster, one Lew Bloom, apparently had enough painting skills to modify an existing portrait of an unknown woman to resemble the First Lady. He then invented a chain of ownership dating back to Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a painter who lived at the White House for a time in 1864 while he painted "First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln."

Carpenter did not, however, paint the First Lady, as a conservator recently discovered when cleaning the painting. Lew Bloom apparently sold the fake to Jessie Lincoln, the president's granddaughter, for $2,000 or $3,000 -- a great deal of money at the time -- and Lincoln's great-grandson, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, ultimately gave the portrait to the Illinois State Historical Library in 1976.

In the late 1980s, the painting was sent to the governor's mansion. Now that it's known to be a fake, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum will keep the painting. It might not be the artifact it was thought to be, but it still has an interesting Lincoln-inspired back story.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Each age gets the Lincoln it deserves. So the early 21st century clearly deserves a vampire-killing, action-hero Abe. The trailer for the upcoming Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was released today.

Note that in one of the panning shots of the trailer, the Washington Monument is visible -- the completed monument that we know today. It might be too much to ask a fantasy like Vampire Hunter to get such niggling details right, but in Lincoln's day the monument wasn't finished. It looked like this.

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, born February 12, 1809

"Lincoln" by Mark Lundeen, located in Springfield, Illinois.

In his campaign biography, Lincoln said of his early days: "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."

Lincoln's Farewell to Springfield

In early February 1861, President-elect Lincoln gave a short speech at the railroad station in Springfield, before leaving for Washington and an uncertain future. Lincoln's eloquence did not fail him.

My friends: One who has never been placed in a like position cannot undestand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than twenty-five years I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here the most cherished ties of earth were assumed. Here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. To you, my friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange checkered past seems to crowd upon my mind. To-day I leave you.

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with and aid me I cannot prevail; but if the same almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me I shall not fail; I shall succeed. Let us pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. To Him I commend you all. Permit me to ask that with equal sincerity and faith you will all invoke His wisdom and goodness for me.

With these words I must leave you; for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now wish you an affectionate farewell.

Lincoln and the Dakota Uprising

In the summer of 1862, President Lincoln had a great deal on his mind. The distant Minnesota frontier probably wasn't a high priority, considering everything else that was going on. Then in August the frontier along the Minnesota River exploded in a spasm of violence known as the Dakota War, or the Dakota Uprising, or the Sioux Uprising. Several bands of eastern Sioux, angered by Indian agent swindles and broken treaty promises, attacked settlers along the Minnesota River, killing as many as 800 before the U.S. army, along with Minnesota volunteers and allied Indians, crushed the uprising in the fall.

Unjust treatment of the Indians might have been a proximate cause of the fighting, but in The Dakota War: The United States Army Versus the Sioux, 1862-1865 (1998), Michael D. Clodfelter posits a more fundamental clash. "Central to the culture of the Plains tribes and ingrained in their history and philosophy was the warrior ethos," he writes. "Boundaries between tribes had rarely been negotiated without prior recourse to war. The introduction of white settlers to the Plains amounted to, in effect, a new tribe entering the arena of an ancient war. The white intruders, in turn, were used to a history of fighting for land.

The Siege of New Ulm, Minn., by Henry August Schwabe.

"The two cultures were ultimately irreconcilable. Even though there were individuals on both sides who argued for reason rather than violence, theirs were minority voices. Even if those had belonged to people in power, the individuality and democracy of both societies guaranteed that the young men of both cultures, reared on tales of glory of war, would ignore the concerns of their elders and seek their idea of justice in battle.

"Young braves were enraged as they witnessed their weary old chiefs sell their birthrights for beads and booze. Young officers and frontier commanders were infuriated by a government policy of sanctuary, whereby Indian marauders could return to government-protected reservations after they had tired of a season of raiding and scalping. The series of minor conflicts on the frontier in the 1850s was only a harbinger: a greater clash between the cultures was inevitable."

At the end of the fighting in 1862, more than 1,000 Indians were taken prisoner, and by early December, 303 Sioux were sentenced to death by military tribunals, mostly in swift trials that many of the defendants probably did not fully understand.

President Lincoln himself read the trial records. Minnesota Gov. Alexander Ramsey, among others, argued against clemency for the Indians; others, notably Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, argued for clemency.

In the end, Lincoln authorized the execution of 39 Indians, and 38 of those (with one more reprieved) were duly hanged in public on December 26, 1862, at Mankato, Minnesota. It was the largest mass hanging in U.S. history.

Later, then-Sen. Ramsey told Lincoln that the Republican Party would have received more votes in 1864 had the president hanged more Indians in 1862. ""I could not afford to hang men for votes," Lincoln reportedly said.

The text of President Lincoln's letter authorizing the executions reads: "Ordered that of the Indians and Half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the military commission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lt. Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain Bailey, and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December, instant, the following names, to wit [39 names listed by case number of record]. The other condemned prisoners you will hold subject to further orders, taking care that they neither escape, nor are subjected to any unlawful violence.

Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States."

Brooklyn Statue of Lincoln to be Relocated

The Wall Street Journal has reported on a plan to move a statue of Abraham Lincoln now standing in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to Grand Army Plaza, the borough's monument to the Union war victory. Actually, move the statue back to the plaza, after it was removed in the 1890s.

"It should be noted that it isn't easy for a statue to find a place to park in Brooklyn, and this one of Lincoln has been circling the block since 1869," writes Barry Newman. "That's when it was put up in the plaza — the first time — by Calvert Vaux and his partner Frederick Law Olmsted, the Lincoln partisan and landscaper of Prospect Park. It was the nation's very first monument to Lincoln, 20 feet tall and paid for by donations of $1 apiece from 13,000 Brooklynites. Olmsted placed it on the commanding northern edge of his plaza's ellipse."

But later, "a grandiose triumphal arch went up in the plaza in 1892, trolley tracks were laid. 'The boys,' said the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, began making Lincoln 'a target for every kind of missile.' The dour president was out of place. In 1895, he was hauled to a Prospect Park lakeside..."

With the current renovation of Prospect Park to its original Olmsted design, moving the Lincoln statue back to its original location seems like the thing to do. But it would mean dislocating a statue of pioneering gynecologist Dr. Alexander Skene at the site, and not everyone is happy about that.

The article continues: "Tony Horwitz, whose new book, Midnight Rising, carves a warts-and-all Lincoln figure, puts it like this: 'He's on the penny, he's on the Mall. Enough Lincoln, already. It's time gynecologists get their due.' "

The Twilight of the Lincoln Penny?

One C.G.P. Grey, who posts educational videos on YouTube, has it in for the Lincoln cent, a coin minted by the United States since 1909, though the history of the U.S. one-cent piece goes back to the founding of the Republic.

"The U.S. sure has Lincolnified the penny within an inch of its life," he says at the end of the video. [But] sooner or later, even the most ardent Lincoln-lovers will have to give up the penny. They cost more than they're worth, they waste people's time, they don't work as money, and because of inflation, they're less valuable every year, making all the other problems worse. Sorry, Abe, but it's time to kill the penny."

The Bixby Letter

This is the text of the famed "Bixby Letter," sent to one Lydia Bixby of Boston:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

It's the best of Victorian sentiment without an excess of verbal ornamentation that era was also known for, and has been acclaimed as a Lincoln masterpiece. But did he or his secretary John Hay (pictured) actually write it? This argument as been going on for some years, and each side has its partisans. There's no dispute that such a letter was sent from the White House to a Mrs. Bixby, but the writing itself could plausibly be the work of either Lincoln or Hay.

Another thing: It's fairly clear that Mrs. Bixby did not, in fact, lose five sons, but two of five. A sad loss, certainly, but not quite the decimation described in the letter.

As Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame put it in the Spring 1999 volume of the Abraham Lincoln Association newsletter: "Although extravagant praise has been lavished on this document, it is surrounded by ironies. Mrs. Bixby was deemed 'the best specimen of a true-hearted Union' ever seen, yet she was in fact a Confederate sympathizer who ran a whorehouse. In addition, Mrs. Bixby lied about her sons; despite her claim that five of them had been killed, she had really lost only two boys in the war."

In Unsolved History: Investigating Mysteries of the Past, author Joe Nickell is a little more sympathetic to Mrs. Bixby, whom he describes as a "nurse" and "widow," though he agrees that only two Bixby sons died for the Union (and two others deserted to the Confederacy). But Nickell says it isn't clear who gave Lincoln the erroneous information, Adjutant-General William Schouler, Bixby or someone else.

Presidential Relics

They might be dead, but that doesn't keep dead presidents from making money -- for purveyors of their relics, that is. On December 1, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions will be selling five architectural drawing tools once belonging to Thomas Jefferson, which the company says are expected to fetch $45,000 or more.

The pieces have been consigned by descendants of James Monroe. “The Monroe and Jefferson families were closely intertwined in Virginia society and politics, and the Monroes became the custodians of various items originally owned by Thomas Jefferson,” notes Tom Slater, director of historical auctions at Heritage, in a statement. “A number went to Monticello and other Virginia museums, but this choice grouping remained in private hands, which has afforded us this amazing opportunity to bring it to auction.”

Besides the Jefferson items, also for sale at the same time are the last rocking chair John F. Kennedy was known to have sat in; a pair of glass decanters owned by George Washington; a portrait cameo brooch of Zachary Taylor, owned by Taylor and consigned by a direct descendant; James Monroe's own ceramic meat platter in the "Landing of Lafayette" pattern, commemorating Lafayette's triumphal visit to America in 1824, while Monroe was president; and several china pieces belonging to Mary Todd Lincoln, which she sold to pay off debt after her husband's death.

Separately, the Raab Collection, a historic documents dealer in Philadelphia, is selling a reel-to-reel tape made aboard Air Force One the day John Kennedy was assassinated, which it says is more than 30 minutes longer than a version at the National Archives. The Raab Collection bought the tape from the estate of Army Gen. Chester "Ted" Clifton Jr., who served as the senior military aide to Kennedy, and now wants to sell it for $500,000.

Documents from Lincoln's Illinois Militia Service Discovered

The Illinois National Guard reports that "previously unknown Black Hawk War documents written and signed by Capt. Abraham Lincoln while on duty in 1832, and an affidavit signed by Lincoln in 1855, have recently been discovered at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and their authenticity confirmed by researchers at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill."

Lincoln is one of 19 presidents to serve in a state national guard (or as it would have been called in his time, state militia). Lincoln enrolled in 1832 on the occasion of a number of clashes known to history as the Black Hawk War. He was elected captain in the 31st Regiment of Militia of Sangamon County, 1st Division and in command of the 4th Regiment of Mounted Volunteers, a rifle company. Lincoln and his men saw no combat, though they arrived at the site of the Battle of Stillman's Run in present-day Ogle County, Illinois, not long after that battle, and helped bury the dead.

Later, Lincoln (as his wont) joked about this time in the militia: "I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never fainted from the loss of blood."

The Illinois National Guard explains that "private researcher Anne Musella recently brought a previously discovered Certificate of Discharge signed by Lincoln to the attention of Papers of Abraham Lincoln staff who are working at the National Archives Building in downtown Washington. That led Assistant Editor David Gerleman to delve further in the Bounty Land Warrant files at the National Archives, where he found two more Certificates of Discharge written and signed by Lincoln.

"Together with other documents previously discovered, it appears that Lincoln, like other officers, filled out and signed dozens of these Certificates of Discharge. Given to soldiers as they mustered out to return home, the veterans later submitted these documents as proof of service when they claimed the bounty lands allotted to them by Congress. The certificates located at the National Archives more than double the number of surviving discharge certificates written and signed by Captain Abraham Lincoln, and likely others still await discovery."

Item Stolen From Lincoln's Tomb

Thieves have desecrated the tomb of Abraham Lincoln, according to a report by the Springfield Journal-Register over the weekend.

"Not even Lincoln’s Tomb is immune to the spree of copper thefts that have hit the Springfield area," wrote Jason Nevel. "A copper sword brandished by a statue of a Civil War artillery officer atop the tomb was stolen sometime between September and early November."

It was the first time in more than 100 years that anything had been stolen from the site, according to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. In fact, in 1910 the same sword was stolen, though that would have been a bronze item, rather than a copper one.

Back in 1870s, a impromptu gang of criminals plotted not merely to steal an item from Lincoln's grave site (the fancy monument hadn't been built yet), but to steal the body itself and hold it for ransom. They failed, but ultimately the fear of a repeat attempt inspired Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's only surviving son, to have the body reburied in a steel cage under several tons of concrete in 1901.

The Wigwam: Gone, But Not Quite Forgotten

Few temporary structures in U.S. history -- in this case, it stood only about seven years -- saw a more momentous event than the Wigwam, erected near the Chicago River in Chicago in 1860. The still-new Republican Party met in the building and nominated its second presidential candidate, a certain railroad attorney from Springfield.

A sizable office building now stands on the site on Wacker Drive. In 2002, the city of Chicago recognized the Wigwam site with a plaque in front of the building, easily visible from the sidewalk, though partly obscured by plants in the warm months.

Chicago Landmark

Site of the Sauganash Hotel/Wigwam

On this site stood the Sauganash Hotel, built in 1831 by pioneer Mark Beaubien, which was the location of the frontier town's first village board election in 1833. The Wigwam, an assembly hall built in 1860 (destroyed c. 1867) on the site of the hotel, was home to the 1860 Republican National Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln as a candidate for president. Lincoln's nomination and subsequent election set in motion a series of events that ultimately led the United States into the Civil War and brought about the abolition of slavery.

Lincoln's Only House

"By May 1844, Abraham and Mary Lincoln needed more living space for their growing family and decided to buy a house," the National Park Service's Lincoln Home leaflet says. "They selected a Greek Revival-style cottage at the corner of Eighth and Jackson streets owned by Rev. Charles Dresser, who had married the Lincolns in 1842. Lincoln paid $1,500 for the home that the family would occupy for the next 17 years."

This is the house in our time.

The house and the entire neighborhood surrounding it are now part of the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois.

Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

December 22, 1937:The Lincoln Tunnel Opens

A lot of things are named after the 16th President of the United States, such as the capital of Nebraska, 16 counties, mountains in New Hampshire, Colorado and four other states, and many towns, streets, schools, federal facilities and miscellaneous places and things -- including Lincoln automobiles, Lincoln Logs, the Lincoln Brigade, and the Lincoln Tunnel, which began as a Depression-era public works project, and opened 70 years ago today.

According to nycroads,com: "Just after the Port of New York Authority (later the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) acquired jurisdiction of the Holland Tunnel, the states of New York and New Jersey authorized the Authority to construct the "Midtown Hudson Tunnel" - later known as the Lincoln Tunnel - between Weehawken, New Jersey and midtown Manhattan.

Plans for the tunnel were first announced in 1930, when the Port Authority proposed a $62 million, twin-tube tunnel under the Hudson River between West 38th Street and Weehawken, New Jersey... Robert Moses, who was appointed chairman of the New York State Emergency Public Works Commission in 1933 under Governor Lehman, obtained funds for the Port Authority to construct the tunnel after negotiations with the federally run Reconstruction Finance Corporation in Washington. Ole Singstad, who oversaw construction of the Holland Tunnel, consulted on the project under Port Authority chief engineer Othmar Ammann.

"The work of the sandhogs was dangerous, claustrophobic and tedious. Just entering and exiting the tunnel took a long time. Crews entered air locks, one at a time, after which the doors at each end were sealed. An air pipe started hissing, and the men's ears would pop as the air pressure climbed until it equaled that of the adjoining lock. The workers were then able to safely open the connecting door and crowd into the next section, where the entire ordeal would be repeated. Once at the forward end of the tunnel, the men had to work swiftly because they could handle the pressure only briefly. Compression and decompression had to be reached in safe, short increments.

"While one work crew progressed from the Manhattan side, another progressed from the Weehawken side. The first 'hole through' occurred on August 3, 1935, when a hydraulic engineer from the New Jersey crew was pushed by his feet through an opening to meet the New York crew. The first tube (today the center tube) of the Lincoln Tunnel was opened on December 22, 1937, at a cost of $75 million."

December 13, 1818:Mary Todd Lincoln's Birthday

Among first ladies, Mary Todd Lincoln's story is one of the most melancholy. And for good reasons. Firstladies.org puts it this way: "With the difficulty of making medical conclusions about Mrs. Lincoln long after she lived, precise assessment of what mental and physical problems she may have suffered is impossible. She did manifest behavior that suggests severe depression, anxiety and paranoia, migraine headaches, even possibly diabetes. Certainly all of her ills were exacerbated by a series of tragic circumstances during her White House tenure: the trauma of Civil War, including the allegiance of much of her family to the Confederacy and their death or injury in battle; an 1863 accident which threw her from a carriage and knocked her unconscious; the accusations by northerners that she was sympathetic to the Confederacy and the ostracizing of her as a "traitor" by Southerners; the sudden death of her son Willie in 1862; and, of course, the worst incident of all, the assassination of her husband as she sat beside him in the Ford's Theater.

"Mary Lincoln viewed her expensive 1861 White House redecoration and her extravagant clothing purchases (the former over-running a federal appropriation of $20,000 by $6,000, and the latter driving her family into great debt) as a necessary effort to create an image of the stability that would command respect not only for the President but the Union. She felt this most keenly in light of the uncertain neutrality of France and England. Public and press reaction, however, was ridicule and anger. She instead conveyed the image of a selfish and indulgent woman inconsiderate of the suffering that most of the nation's families were enduring as a result of the war her husband was managing. In time, she would even press Republican appointees to pay her debts, since they owed their positions to her husband.

"By April 1861, Union soldiers were decamped at the White House and would remain for the endurance of the Administration. The war overshadowed all of Mary Lincoln's activities. She worked as a volunteer nurse in the Union hospitals, offered intelligence she had learned as well as her own advice to the President on military personnel, recommended minor military appointments to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, toured Union Army camps and reviewed troops with her husband. She was largely successful in her objective of using entertaining as a means of raising Union morale. It is difficult to assess the influence she had on the President, if any, but there is no record of his asking her to stop her flow of advice, recommendations and observations to him. She was not successful in her efforts to oust Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase, Secretary of State William Seward, General George McClellan and General Ulysses Grant...

"Deeply traumatized by her husband's murder, Mary Lincoln did not move out of the White House until May 23, 1865. She relocated to Chicago and there began her effort to settle her husband's estate. In 1868, she moved with her two sons, Robert and Tad, to Germany and from there commenced her battle with Congress for award of a presidential widow's pension. In 1871, a year after receiving the annual pension of $3,000, she returned to the United States. The sudden death that year of her son Tad left her spirit broken; she soon began behaving in what her son Robert considered to be signs of mental instability and he successfully had her tried for insanity.

"In 1875, she was committed to the Bellevue Insane Asylum, in Batavia, Illinois. Later in the day after the verdict was made, she twice attempted suicide by taking what she believed to be the drugs laudanum and camphor - which the suspicious druggist had replaced with a sugar substance. One of the nation's first women lawyers, Myra Bradwell believed Mrs. Lincoln was not insane and being held against her will. She filed an appeal on Mrs. Lincoln's behalf and after four months of confinement, the former First Lady was released to the care of her sister Elizabeth Edwards in Springfield. Once a second trial on June 19, 1876 declared her sane, she moved to France. After four years abroad she returned to live again in the Edwards home, in October 1880."

December 1, 1862:Lincoln's Second State of the Union

Lincoln's second Message to Congress, or State of the Union, is best remembered for its closing paragraph:

"Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.”

But that's hardly the entire scope of the document, which, unlike modern State of the Union speeches, was delivered in writing to Congress (Jefferson began that practice, and it lasted until Wilson again began delivering the speeches himself, which Washington and Adams had done). Lincoln's second State of the Union -- when the union was indeed in a bad way -- includes a lot of other information, some of it unexpected, except to Lincoln scholars and enthusiasts: trade matters, the settlement of the West and the building of a railroad to the Pacific, relations with other countries, the financial condition of the US Post Office and much more. He even proposed this a constitutional amendment:

ART.--. Every State wherein slavery now exists which shall abolish the same therein at any time or times before the 1st day of January, A. D. 1900, shall receive compensation from the United States as follows...

ART.--All slaves who shall have enjoyed actual freedom by the chances of the war at any time before the end of the rebellion shall be forever free; but all owners of such who shall not have been disloyal shall be compensated for them at the same rates as is provided for States adopting abolishment of slavery, but in such way that no slave shall be twice accounted for.

ART.--Congress may appropriate money and otherwise provide for colonizing free colored persons with their own consent at any place or places without the United States...

There's also discussion of the future population of the United States. Lincoln reckoned it to be about 251 million by 1930, by extrapolating growth rates from 1790 to 1860. (The US population didn't reach that level till about 1990.) The entire speech is here.

November 28, 1866:Henry Bacon's Birthday

Today is the birthday of Henry Bacon, architect of the Lincoln Memorial. He was one of the best-known architects of his day, known especially for designing settings for sculpture. The Lincoln Memorial was his final project, now known the world over. He died in 1924, two years after the memorial was dedicated.

The April 17, 1912 edition of The New York Times noted that "the Lincoln Memorial Commission by a close vote decided to-day to recommend to Congress the design for a memorial to Abraham Lincoln submitted by Henry Bacon, a New York architect.

"Mr. Bacon's design, already approved by the Commission of Fine Arts, calls for a rectangular marble structure surrounded by Doric columns, each forty feet high, not unlike the Treasury Building here except that there is to be only one story. The statue of Lincoln, designs for which are yet to be submitted, will stand on a pedestal at one end of the structure. On one wall will be Lincoln's Gettysburg address, probably in bronze, and on the opposite wall his second inaugurate address....

"Russell Pope, another New York architect, was the only other architect whose design was considered at to-day's meeting."

John Russell Pope might have lost that commission, but he too eventually designed a major presidential memorial: the Jefferson Memorial, dedicated in 1943, six years after he died.

October 21, 1861: Edward Baker Dies at Ball's Bluff

Edward Dickinson Baker was an Illinois lawyer, politician and friend of Abraham Lincoln. On the day he died, October 21, 1861, he was also a US Senator from Oregon, having moved west some years before. He was also leading Union soldiers in battle at Ball's Bluff, Virginia. In taking bullets for the Union cause that day (illustrated below), he became the only sitting Senator to die in action in the conflict.

"When Baker was defeated for the United States Senate in California he moved to Oregon, where he was at once elected to fill an unexpired term," notes San Francisco Geneaolgy's web site (Baker is buried in that city). "In route to Washington he stopped over in San Francisco and delivered a political speech on October 26, 1860. 'We are running a man now by the name of Lincoln,' he said. 'He is an honest, good, simple-minded, true man, who is a hero without knowing it. If he recommends a railroad -- and he will --he won't twaddle about it.'

This pleased the people of California, for the Western States at that time were becoming more and more eager to obtain an appropriation from Congress for the completion of the proposed Pacific Railroad, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast. It was on the occasion of this political speech that Baker won aloud and long applause when he uttered his oft-quoted words: 'Long years ago, I took my stand by Freedom, and where in youth my feet were planted, there my manhood and my age shall march.'

"The Civil War came on. Baker... raised a regiment in Illinois, and went again to the front. In his first fight, and Bull's Bluff, Virginia, October 21, 1861, he fell. In 1861 the transcontinental telegraph had just been completed, and the melancholy news of Baker's death in Virginia was sent by telegraph to San Francisco. The message was read by Junius Brutus Booth, from the stage of the American Theater, and was received by the audience with a demonstration of genuine grief.

"On a day of President Lincoln's inauguration in Washington, in the east portico of the unfinished Capitol, it was Colonel E. D. Baker, then Senator from Oregon, who introduced Lincoln to the audience. A warm friendship existed between President Lincoln and Colonel Baker, and President Lincoln's second son, born in 1846, was named Edward Baker Lincoln. "