Abraham Lincoln - A Little History

In a past post I reviewed George Santayana's theory of the importance of knowing history.  On that subject, what could be better than studying Abraham Lincoln?  I think the first thing people either do not remember or never knew is that he was a Republican.  He stood for human rights and the Constitution.  He believed in States rights with the country being ruled of the people, by the people, and for the people.

A little history...

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address, "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life.  "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 made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. He rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg,  "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."

President Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C., "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.... "

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

The Homestead Act of May 20, 1862

In an effort to populate the Western part of the United States,  President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862.

There had been several earlier attempts to pass this Act.  The Southern Democrats were slave owners and feared that the settlement of the West by small farmers would create an agricultural alternative to the Southern slave system.  The Northern Republicans brought the Act up for vote in 1858 where it was defeated by one vote.  In 1859 the bill passed but was vetoed by President James Buchanan.  The passage was very important to President Lincoln, and with the secession of the Southern States, causing the loss of Southern Democrats in Congress,  the bill was finally passed and signed into law.

The Homestead Act gave a male applicant who was over the age of 21 and head of a household ownership at no cost to farm land, typically 160 acres, west of the Mississippi.  The law required three steps:  file an application, improve the land, and file for a deed of title.  In order to own the land outright you had to build a 12'x14' dwelling and improve the land for five years.  Only about 40 percent of the applicants who started the process were able to complete it because of blizzards, drought, grasshoppers, disease, and loneliness on the open prairies.

The first applicant was a physician and veteran of the Civil War by the name of Daniel Freeman.  He attended a New Year's Eve party where he met some local land office officials and convinced a clerk to open the office shortly after midnight on January 1, 1863, in order to file a land claim by telling him he was leaving early that morning for St. Louis on military duty and would not be able to file his claim otherwise. There is speculation that the St. Louis story was untrue, and that Freeman just wanted to be the first to file.  He was successful in his farming endeavor.  Daniel Freeman was also the first to sign a "Proof Required Under Homestead Acts May 20, 1862..." at the end of the first 5 year requirement.  His witnesses were his neighbors, Joseph Graff and Samuel Kilpatrick.

In 1936 the Department of The Interior recognized Daniel Freeman as the first claimant and established The Homestead National Monument on his homestead near Beatrice, Nebraska.  Today, the monument is administered by the National Park Service, and the site commemorates the changes to the land and the nation brought about by the Homestead Act of 1862.

The Homestead Act was discontinued in 1976, except in Alaska, where it continued until 1986. 

Thanksgiving

The event that Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated to give thanks to God for guiding them safely to the New World. The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days, providing enough food for 13 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans. The feast consisted of fish (cod, eels, and bass) and shellfish (clams, lobster, and mussels), wild fowl (ducks, geese, swans, and turkey), venison, berries and fruit, vegetables (peas, pumpkin, beetroot and possibly, wild or cultivated onion), harvest grains (barley and wheat), and the Three Sisters: beans, dried Indian maize or corn, and squash. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating "thanksgivings"—days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.

Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26. As a federal holiday in the U.S. Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays of the year. Together with Christmas and New Years Eve, Thanksgiving is a part of the holiday season.

From all of us at National Write Your Congressman, a very blessed Thanksgiving!

Importance of Constituent Opinion

In our representative form of government, it is essential for the public to express their views to their elected officials. My job in Congress is to act on behalf of my constituents, and I constantly look for their guidance as I make these decisions. -United States Representative, Cliff Stearns, 6th District, Florida

In his Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln declared that, "This nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth." The input I receive daily by telephone, mail, e-mail, and fax allows me to know where people stand on specific issues and enables me to best represent their interests. -Congressman Zach Wamp, 3rd District, Tennessee