"Lincoln was born in a log cabin that he built with his own hands."
At the same time, he made this little log cabin cradle for himself.
Posted on 02/12/2023 11:52:05 AM PST by thecodont
Abraham Lincoln, known for his determination and perseverance, is the most famous U.S. presidents in history. He became the 16th president of the U.S. on 4th March 1861. With these 47 interesting facts about Abraham Lincoln, let’s learn about his life, career, politics, mission, philosophy, and death. Facts about Lincoln’s childhood, education, family, marriage, religious belief etc
1. Education: Lincoln was a self-educated man. He had little formal education; however, he practiced law. On the other hand, Lincoln’s dad was only literate enough to write his name.
2. He was the second child of his parents. They were farmers and their family lived in Kentucky until 1816. There’s hasn’t yet been a president who was an only child. The majority of US presidents were middle children.
3. Death of his mother: Lincoln’s mother died from drinking poisoned milk. His father soon married another woman by the name Sarah Bush Johnston, who was a widow. She had a good relation with Abraham and he liked her company as well.
4. Lincoln did not have a middle name.
5. Lincoln also worked as a licensed bartender.
6. Lincoln was an avid hunter.
7. Religion: Lincoln was never a member of an organized church. He read the bible to learn about Christianity.
8. Marriage: In 1842, Lincoln was got married to a 23-year old woman named Mary Todd who was just 5 feet 2 inches while Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches. They had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady of the United States of America, passed away in 1882.
9. Abraham Lincoln also had a serious girlfriend named Mary. However, they broke up and he later married Mary Todd.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefactfile.org ...
If the South had won the war would it have ended slavery?
No.
If so, I doubt it will stay that way. Don’t you know U.S. Grant’s wife’s family owned slaves?
“Coercion always yields less conversion than persuasion. It may work for a while, but coercion is never sustainable.”
I agree completely.
Lincoln’s plan, the gentle treatment of the southern states and the removal of former slaves to African or Caribbean locations was, IMVHO, the option with the greatest chance of success at that time.
Barring the removal of the former slaves from the scene entirely, a two tiered society would have been preferable to the forced “equality” we endured for the next hundred years.
I agree. They would not have ended slavery and no doubt would have expanded it.
I have no idea when or how slavery would have ended had the South won. It’s an interesting counter-factual, as there would have been further wars over western expansion and extensions of slavery. For this thread, though, the question is if Lincoln had overseen Reconstruction, would things have been different for blacks?
What we can know is that segregation and economic isolation were imposed upon the former slaves immediately after the Civil War, even with the presence of Northern armies for another 10 years. The armies were going to be there for a time, regardless of Federal policy, so it’s a matter of the extent to which Reconstruction succeeded in its purposes.
What progressive historians like Foner miss is that Reconstruction’s primary purpose of reunification was a complete success. By 1877, the South was politically re-integrated into the nation. From my general research on the early 1900s, I can attest that upon the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, the lasting memory of it was of a war well-fought and a Union retained along with sectional good will. That was Lincoln’s primary goal. But what is less apparent is if the reintegration had to follow the path it took, namely Republican rule with black legislators enforced by the Army, and if Lincoln would have supported these methods.
Reconstruction’s secondary project, citizenship for the former slaves was also a success, despite the ongoing political suppression of blacks. Citizenship, equal protection, and suffrage for blacks were the South’s cost of losing the war, so I doubt Lincoln would have opposed the 14th and 15th Amendments.
But Reconstruction’s tertiary project, civil rights was a mess. Lincoln surely would have known that it was counter-productive to impose Republican local rule in the South with black officials. I also doubt he would have required adoption of the 13th amendment as a condition for readmission (as Grant did)— it was already adopted nationally. Congress and the Federal government had plenty of opportunities to pursue reasonable protections of blacks (such as the 2nd Morrell Act, which gave financial incentives to create black land grant colleges) without unrealistically trying to force them upon Southern whites. The fuller Reconstruction program required the Army, which led to more Southern resentment, more reprisals against blacks, and more general exhaustion over the entire program. By the time the 1875 Civil Rights Act was passed, there was no realistic hope of enforcing it (Grant did not), so it was just posturing and provocation, which only led to its nullification by the Supreme Court.
To sum up, I suppose what I’m arguing is that Lincoln would have allowed for a kind of salutary neglect (within the baselines of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments), which ultimately would have yielded better race relations in the South and better outcomes for blacks than what followed Reconstruction’s imposed political and racial agenda. Salutary neglect worked in the North, which also exercised de facto and, in many places, de jure segregation, yet the black economy exploded. By 1909, American blacks were, as an aggregate, already the wealthiest group of blacks in the world - merely 40 or so years after the end of slavery. And that was not because of Reconstruction, it was despite it. I think we can clearly attribute fifty years of legal segregation to Reconstruction, and not to its not having gone far enough, as leftist historians argue.
Thanks for a moment of common sense. Unfortunately there’s no reasoning with that one.
As long as cash crop agriculture was the economic engine of the Southern States, slavery would continue to flourish. If some machines like a cotton harvester had been perfected earlier, then the reliance on slave labor would have diminished. There were some prominent Southerners that pined for a slave empire consisting of part of Mexico, Cuba and some of the other islands in the Caribbean.
“I have no idea when or how slavery would have ended had the South won. It’s an interesting counter-factual, as there would have been further wars over western expansion and extensions of slavery.”
Unlike the deep south here in Virginia slavery was already falling out of favor.
The “Peculiar Institution” as it was called was leaving a bad taste in the mouths of even slaveowners.
Robert E Lee had to free every slave at Arlington plantation as a part of the will of George Washington Parke Custis. By the time the war started all slaves had been manumitted and the ones who chose to stay were paid workman’s wages.
In my own family my ancestors owned 9 slaves who they taught, against the law, to read so each could read the Bible for themselves. My great great grandpa manumitted his slaves in 1863 and offered each of them work for as long as they wanted it. They all stayed. It was 50 years before they started moving off to greener pastures.
About those Union armies. They were terrible and lazy. In the fall of 1865 they needed corn for their horses and to mill for cornmeal. They sent out wagons with cavalry escort. They would get to a farm, empty the corn shed and give the farmer a form to be paid. They always shorted the farmer on quantity taken and the clerk would short him on price.
That first year my great great hadn’t gotten around to shucking his corn. The Union soldiers took a look and left it because it shucked. My family was the only family with corn that winter. With judicious rationing everyone around had corn from us that winter.
They did the same with horses, cattle, hogs, sheep whatever you had.
They called it living off the land.
“But what is less apparent is if the reintegration had to follow the path it took, namely Republican rule with black legislators enforced by the Army, and if Lincoln would have supported these methods.”
I have done no research but I’m convinced that things would have been much different under Lincoln. For one thing he would never have allowed the idea of black legislators in the south to see the light of day. He would have known that that would be like rubbing salt in an open wound to the recently defeated southerners. Lincoln had known hard times and bitterness in his own life and I just can’t believe he would allow those things to happen while he was in charge.
“To sum up, I suppose what I’m arguing is that Lincoln would have allowed for a kind of salutary neglect (within the baselines of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments), which ultimately would have yielded better race relations in the South and better outcomes for blacks than what followed Reconstruction’s imposed political and racial agenda.”
I completely agree.
with Lincoln we would have had a soft landing and the states would have developed a new status quo that satisfied themselves and the northern states.
The men who fought that war were able, years later, to come together in friendship and comradeship for civic occasions. One such occasion was an anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg. Men from both sides, older and wiser, sat together for pictures, gave interviews and even sampled the rations they would have been carrying at the battle. They all agreed the war had been a terrible waste and yes, their old rations were as bad as they remembered.
The “Peculiar Institution” as it was called was leaving a bad taste in the mouths of even slaveowners.Indeed. Jefferson recognized not just the immorality of the institution but its corrupting effects upon both slave and master. In 1782, Virginia legalized manumission (which was outlawed in 1732, in response to some like John Carter who freed slaves in his will; even then, some, such as Francis Fauquier, who died in 1768, in his will authorized his slaves to choose their master). The Revolution, itself inspired by Virginia statesmen, moved sentiment and law towards emancipation. Jefferson hoped that Virginia would follow New York in a gradual emancipation, although the legislature didn't go forward with it. Nevertheless, prominent opponents to slavery including Ferdinando Fairfax (who promoted recolonization plans) and Robert Carter III, who in 1791 began to free his slaves and employ rather than own them, eventually freeing some 450 slaves.
“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep for ever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may be come probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII
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This has been an interesting discussion and has taxed my poor understanding of history. I have only the little I’ve read and a lot of anecdotal evidence to bring to the discussion.
Now tell me, just where did you teach history and for how long?🥴
Virginia roots (Carter) and deep respect for my elders. :)
And, btw, your comments are excellent. Please ping me whenever you’re in a similar discussion. Your family experience is essential to understanding our common today.
“I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.”
Lincoln was born in a log cabin that he built with his own hands.
"Those aren't pillows!"
I didn’t know about that part. I will include it hereafter and henceforth.
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