The story of Abraham Lincolns Presidency

It had been a long time coming. Hopelessly divided by the issue of slavery, thirty-one million American citizens were in 1860

Called upon to elect the 16th President of the United States. The Democratic Party met At its National Party Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to choose their nominee

for the presidency. Split over slavery, each faction, Northern Democrats on the one hand and Southern Democrats on the other, presented its own opposite proposal for the party platform. In

February 1860, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi claimed that neither the Congress of the United States nor the territorial parliaments had the power to touch slavery. Southern Democrats

and few Northern pro-slavery Democrats support the Davis resolution: "the Government of a Territory (...) is provisional and temporary, and during its existence all citizens of the United

States have an equal right to settle with their property in the Territory, without their rights, either of person or property, being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or Territorial legislation."

The Southerners' desire was to pass a slave code, that is, a federa

to an end. The conference ended with no results, because the south wasn't going to give up their life style with out a fight.

On Inauguration Day, March 4, President Lincoln delivered one of the shortest inaugural addresses in U.S. history [see Appendix E], but also the most memorable. After four years of war, Lincoln did not see the need for another broad inaugural statement. "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." [Basler] With the end of the war seeming near, he reminded his listeners of the cause of the struggle, saying "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." In the concluding paragraph, Lincoln addressed the responsibilities of the people and stressed that the Dixie should be dealt with mildly in order to bring the entire nation back together as soon as possible. He was not interested in mass executions or summary arrests of Confederate political leaders. After four years, Abraham Lincoln was now fully master of the job he had been elected to; he was the hero of the common people. But now, it was also up to him as to where the nation was to go next.

In 1859 Booth was an eyewitness to the execution of John Brown, the abolitionist who had tried to start a slave uprising at Harper's Ferry. Temporarily wearing a militia uniform, Booth stood near the scaffold with other armed men to guard against any attempt to rescue John Brown before the hanging. The photograph to the left is from Asia Booth Clarke's The Unlocked Book.

Throughout the Northern states, businesses closed, schools closed,

The American Civil War was absolutely the most defining and shaping event in the nation's life - it was so important that it is now impossible to imagine what the United States would have been without it. The war was the key moment in American history, in which the Union of the states developed into a united nation. Most of what the USA became resulted from the war. It was the emergence of a new social, economic and political life.

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Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page double spaced)