Abraham Lincoln: Railsplitter for President
Elect Honest Abe
1848
1862
One witness declares he was equal to three men, having on a certain occasion carried a
load of six hundred pounds. At another time he walked away with a pair of logs which
three robust men were skeptical of their ability to carry. "He could strike with a maul a
heavier blow - could sink an axe deeper into wood than any man I ever saw." is the
testimony of another witness.“ Billy Herndon, law partner
Actual Signature
The 33 Star Union Flag
The Beginning of the Story
Part One
"...he'll never come to much, fur I'll tell you he wuz the puniest,
cryin'est little youngster I ever saw." Said by Dennis Hanks
This was my birth day, February 12, 1809. I was born in a
drafty rough hewn log cabin in Kentucky. I always kind of
wondered if I could ever amount to anything. I so much wanted
to read and write, and get out of hard labor on a farm.
The Lincolns' rough-hewn cabin on Nolin Creek near
Hodgenville, Kentucky
The original is now gone…
Lincoln Birthplace National Memorial, near Hodgenville, Ky
A young Abraham reading by the “light of the fire,” in his Indiana
Family Cabin. Drawing by Lloyd Ostendorf
Lincoln said:
Mostly, I learned on my own by stealing any moment I could find,
including by the “light of the fire,” at night-time reading all the
books I could get my hands on. I especially liked Aesop’s Fables,
The Life of George Washington, and the Holy Bible. I know them
from cover to cover.
The Indiana Cabin
Lincoln and his family moved to
Indiana. It was a wild country full of
animals and big trees. In order for a
family to make a farm in Spencer
County, a lot of wood cuttin’ had to be
done. At age nine, I was very tall and
strong. I could weal an axe as any
man could. To survive in the
wilderness of Indianny, the whole
family had their duties and chores. I
knew the arts of log building, fence
building, and making a crop. I did not
like any of them. My father tried to
prevent his me from becoming an
“eddicated” person, and leaving the
profession.
Abraham the “rail splitter” and log
builder
Lincoln the young man
Part Two
"By the time he had reached his seventeenth year he had attained the
physical proportions of a full-grown man.”
Lincoln at
New Salem,
and the
things he did
Flatboat Operator
The many jobs of Lincoln
Post Master
Store Clerk and Owner
Captain, Illinois Militia
Blackhawk War
Land Surveyor
Abraham Lincoln invention Patent # 6469 A
buoyancy device to help flatboats navigate the
rivers
Inside the 1830’s
Macon County
Courthouse at
Decatur
Abraham Lincoln, lawyer
From log courthouses to the Illinois Supreme
Court at Springfield
Abraham Lincoln in the
1840’s
The Lincoln family during the Civil War
President Lincoln and Tad looking
at a family scrapbook
Willie
Eddie
Those Lincoln
boys!
Tad, as a teenager
Robert
Abraham and Mary’s home at Springfield, Illinois
“We have been elected!
Part Four
Politician and Presidential
Candidate, 1860
I became a national candidate for
the Republican Party after a speech
in New York. I did have many
friends and supporters who worked
the delegations at the Republican
convention in Chicago. My cousin
Dennis Hanks and brother in law
John Hanks entered the convention
carrying actual wood fence rails
from Indiana, and the name “rail
splitter” would go with me
throughout my election. I actually
did very little in the election
process. I did not travel at all. My
helpers and friends got the word out
for me. My Illinois friend Stephen
Douglas would be my opponent.
First Inauguration: “and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed
force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as
among the gravest of crimes.”
…the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the Union itself.
The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact,
by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued
by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured
and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and
engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation
in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining
and establishing the Constitution, was "to form a more perfect Union."
But if [the] destruction of the Union, by one, or by a part only, of the
States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the
Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.
It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion,
can lawfully get out of the Union, -- that resolves and ordinances to
that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence, within any State
or States, against the authority of the United States, are
insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
The U.S. capitol and Washington
Monument was under construction
in 1861. The new president
decided to finish the capitol dome
during the war. It was finished. He
did not allow the secessionists to
control the Union capitol.
A Great Civil War
Part Five
CIVIL WAR WHEN LINCOLN BECOMES
PRESIDENT, 1861
The Commander and Chief
Needed: One Great General
Part Six
Gen. Philip
Sheridan
Gen. Benjamin Butler
Gen. Winfield
Scott
The many Union
Generals under Lincoln
Ulysses S. Grant
Gen. Ambrose
Burnside
William Tecumseh
Sherman
Pres. Lincoln and Gen.
George McClellan
Pres. Lincoln and Generals in the White House
Field Commanders, Antietam
Lincoln often made horse trips to the battle front to see first
hand what was going on. He also would use the new telegraph
system to communicate with battlefield commanders and others
much like our modern E-mails.
Slavery was not the original
issue in this war
Part Six
Emancipation
Slavery was not the original issue in this war:
1.Lincoln took the Union to war after Confederates blasted Ft. Sumter. The
purpose of the war in the beginning years was to maintain the Union. Lincoln
considered secession illegal. All the confederate state stars remained on the
Union flag.
2.After Emancipation of the southern state slaves, slavery would become the
big issue.
President Lincoln would write the Emancipation Proclamation months before
releasing it. He wanted to wait for a Union victory. Finally that occurred and
he freed the slaves in the Confederate states. The slaves in Missouri,
Maryland and Kentucky were not freed.
Slavery and then Emancipation
Lincoln’s cabinet had to approve and support the Emancipation Proclamation.
The First Modern War
Part Seven
Telegraph
Ironclads
Repeater Rifles
Air Balloons for
Surveillance
The Railroads
The First “Modern War”
A New National Cemetery
Needs Dedicated
Part Eight
The President riding into Gettysburg to give
his short speech
A very recently discovered “second”
photograph of President Lincoln arriving at
Gettysburg by horseback. The photo was
discovered by a Library of Congress
technician. It is the only other picture in
existance. Lincoln’s very short address did
not give the old-time photographers time
enough to get pictures of him presenting it.
The President was a very good horseman.
The Gettysburg Cemetery
THE 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
battlefield 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 cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.
A General is Found
Part Nine
U.S. Grant, new
General of Union
Forces
General William Tecumseh Sherman
President Lincoln entering Richmond
Ford Theatre in 1865
Villain of the century,
John Wilkes Booth
Our Nation Mourns
Part Ten
President Lincoln’s Funeral Train
One morning several days after the assassination, Tad faced
up to his new situation in life. He said to a White House
servant,
"Pa is dead. I can hardly believe that I shall never see him
again. I must learn to take care of myself now. Yes, Pa is
dead, and I am only Tad Lincoln now, little Tad, like other
little boys. I am not a president's son now. I won't have many
presents anymore. Well, I will try and be a good boy, and will
hope to go someday to Pa and brother Willie, in heaven."
A Tomb and Five National
Memorials
Lincoln’s tomb, Springfield, Illinois
Gutzon Borglum’s Mt. Rushmore National
Memorial
Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
“Now he belongs to the Ages”
as Secretary Edward Stanton stated at Lincoln’s
deathbed, after the President’s last breath.
Part Twelve
The Conclusion
“. . . Now he belongs to the ages,” or the angels, as some historians
think was said by Secretary of War Edward Stanton at the death of the
16th President
Abraham Lincoln’s 200th Bi-Centennial birthday will be celebrated
starting February 9, 2009.
Learn from Abraham. He was not perfect. He was a politician, but
always was honorable and truthful as far as we can tell.
Historians like to write new history to say otherwise, but the results of
the 16th President’s actions will stand positive in history.
Thank you for watching and listening to my Lincoln Powerpoint.
Howard Taylor, Illinois Teacher and Lincoln Scholar