Read Abe Lincoln Articles from History Magazines. Our Site Has Information on President Lincoln and the Civil War.
There, to a coterie of Lincoln addicts on Abe’s 131st birthday, U.S. Patent Commissioner Conway P. Coe displayed a model of a device Lincoln patented in 1849, when he was still an unknown congressman from Illinois. Commissioner Coe read the patent application, in Lincoln’s own handwriting, for a gadget to float flatboats in shallow water.
Abraham Lincoln: Inventor (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940) Read More »
Jesse W. Weik (1857 – 1930) was one of the earliest of Lincoln scholars.
In preparation for Herndon and Weik’s Life of Lincoln
A Study of the Gettysburg Address (The Outlook, 1913) Read More »
Before his 1860 address at the Cooper Institute (presently known as Cooper Union) Abraham Lincoln was known in the East chiefly as a rather obscure western lawyer who had gained some prestige a little over a year earlier in the debates with Douglas during the Illinois senatorial contest. The day after the address Horace Greeley’s NEW YORK TRIBUNE remarked:
No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.
This speech put within Lincoln’s grasp a chance for the Presidency.
Attached, you will find his very powerful conclusion to the address.
Click here to read about the Confederate conscription laws.
Lincoln’s Address at Cooper Union (The National Park Service, 1956) Read More »
As far as culture critic and all-around nay-sayer H.L. Mencken was concerned, Abraham Lincoln was simply another opportunist who fed at the federal trough and he found himself at a loss when it came to understanding the American deification of the man. It seemed that even Jefferson Davis might have had an easier time uttering a few sweet words to describe Lincoln then did the Bard of Baltimore. Yet, there was one contribution Lincoln made that Mencken applauded, the Gettysburg Address:
It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection –the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it [in other speeches]. It is genuinely stupendous.
(Although, like any unreconstructed Confederates, he thought the argument was all a bunch of rot.)
H.L. Mencken: Not Impressed with Lincoln (The Smart Set, 1920) Read More »
These four paragraphs first appeared on the pages of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE and were written by a reporter named of Horace White at the conclusion of Lincoln – Douglas debates of 1858. The journalist did a fine job in describing the excitement at the debates and the spirit of the participating candidates.
Douglas ended in a whirlwind of applause…and Lincoln began to speak in a slow and rather awkward way. He had a thin tenor, or rather falsetto voice, almost as high pitched as a boatswain’s whistle.
The debates resulted in a close election that returned Douglas to the U.S. Senate and Lincoln to his law practice.
The Lincoln – Douglas Debates Observed (The National Park Service, 1956) Read More »
Here is the brief text to President Lincoln‘s very eloquent second inaugural address, that was delivered during the closing weeks of the Civil War.
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (National Park Service, 1956) Read More »
Shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, William H. Herndon (1816 – 1891), Lincoln’s law partner, devoted much of his life to collecting as much original source material on the man as he could possibly find. Indeed, scholars have pointed out that there never would have been an accurate word written about Lincoln if not for the efforts of Herndon. The following description of Lincoln is from a lecture delivered by Herndon in 1865.
Lincoln Remembered (National Park Service, 1956) Read More »
The Republican Party, which developed rapidly as a new political force following the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, gathered its strength chiefly from those who opposed the extension of slavery into the territories. In the Lincoln – Douglas Debates this issue was paramount. Perhaps nowhere can a more concise and explicit statement of the position of the Republican Party on this issue be found than in Mr. Lincoln’s opening speech at Quincy [Illinois] in the sixth of the joint debates.
The Lincoln – Douglas Debates: Defining Slavery (National Park Service, 1956) Read More »
Stephen Douglas (1813 – 1861), Lincoln’s Democratic rival in the contest for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois, was a popular figure with a great deal of political capitol who enjoyed wide spread fame throughout much of the fruited plain; this all contributed to a robust ego which would not suffer anything less than traveling to the debates in a grand style. By contrast, Honest Abe traveled in economy class, packed among the masses (although as a railroad lawyer, he certainly could have afforded better).
This short paragraph (accompanied by a photograph of both men) was written by a friend of Lincoln who recalled his train ride with the (losing) candidate as he made his way to Ottawa, Illinois, the site of the first debate.
Traveling to the Lincoln – Douglas Debate (National Park Service, 1956) Read More »
President Abraham Lincoln told many parables during the Civil War; he told this one to General A.J. Cresswell on the last day of his life.
To read the story behind Lincoln’s beard, click here.
Lincoln’s Reconstruction Parable (Harper’s Weekly, 1907) Read More »
