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Section V: Healing a Nation

Lincoln was a kindly man, who by his own estimate probably had “too little” of the feeling of personal resentment —“a man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels,” he reflected. He saw the irony that, as someone who did not bear a grudge, he had found himself at the center of […]

Section VIII: Lincoln In the Eyes of the World

Lincoln’s horizons extended across the nineteenth-century world. Deeming the Union the “last, best hope of earth,” he defined the Civil War as more than an American crisis. The struggle presented “to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic . . . can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own […]

Section IV: The Emancipator

Lincoln felt strongly the injustice of slavery. “I am naturally anti-slavery,” he wrote in 1864. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.” Yet he was careful never to describe it as a sin: Southerners were the victims of their particular circumstances. During […]

Lincoln Fires a Union Officer for Disloyalty

When Major John J. Key became the only Union officer to be court- martialed and discharged for “uttering disloyal sentiments,” the final appeal came to Lincoln. Having reviewed the arguments on both sides, Lincoln used his legal expertise to distill his response into a few words. Such disloyalty was “wholly inadmissible,” and Key was to […]

Mill’s Reaction to the Assassination

During the Civil War, the British philosopher and economist J. S. Mill wrote extensively in support of the North. In “The Contest in America” (1862), Mill argued: “The world knows what the question between the North and South has been for many years, and still is. Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of. Slavery […]

O Captain! My Captain!

Lincoln’s assassination inspired Walt Whitman to write this poem of mourning. It is one of the few poems in which he used a conventional meter and rhyme scheme. His tribute became extremely popular at the time of its first publication, in 1865, and it was the only poem of Whitman’s to be anthologized during his […]

Lincoln Remembered By a Former Slave

In this 1909 tribute to Lincoln delivered to the Republican Club of New York City, Booker T. Washington remembers his mother on the dirt floor of their slave cabin praying that Lincoln would succeed in ending slavery. Now a prominent public figure, the former slave Washington sees Lincoln’s legacy as the “blending of all tongues, […]

Lincoln Urges Immediate Action

By September, Tennessee was under Union control, and this letter to Johnson is considerably more imperative than usual, as Lincoln told him “not a moment should be lost [in] re-inaugurating a loyal state government.” Despite the exigency, Lincoln remained reasonable in his tone, deferring to Johnson’s local knowledge and offering “a few suggestions” only. With […]

The President Demands Better for His Troops

As an active commander in chief, Lincoln personally tested the innovative Spencer repeater carbines, or “navy rifles.” Despite being pressured to approve the weapon, Lincoln demanded its flaws be corrected before it was issued to his troops. This letter shows Lincoln’s sense of responsibility—in word and deed—to the troops and his insistence on high standards. […]

The Commander in Chief Gives an Order

Facing a crisis that threatened the security of Washington, DC, Lincoln erupts at the bureaucratic delay and angrily orders General Charles H. Russell to move troops to Fort Monroe, 180 miles from the capital: “I want you to cut the Knots and send them right along.” In his haste he mistakenly writes “Fort Sumpter” where […]