Free Republic

In an era that lives by self-promotion- an era that takes someone like Donald Trump seriously as a presidential candidate- Presidents' Day is a day to remember that greatness still resides in what one does, not what one claims to be. That is why Abraham Lincoln will always belong to every age. Because Lincoln was not just a great president; he may have been one of the greatest men that this country has yet produced. His rare combination of self-confidence and humility produced the archetype of "the American, this new man," who is still universally admired. While many of our...

On front page of website, no registration required.Shockingly, neither Carter nor the present occupant of the White House are choices...

February 22 is the birthday of George Washington -- the man who, more than any other, made possible our republican form of government. The third Monday in February has come to be known, wrongly, as President's Day. America's political leaders should take this occasion to remember Washington's deeds, recollect his advice, and again call the holiday celebrating him by its legal name: Washington's Birthday. Washington biographer James Flexner called him the "indispensable man" of the American Founding. Without Washington, America would never have won our War of Independence. He played the central role in the Constitutional Convention and set the...

This looks absurd....which means it will be either awesome or dreadful.

ANAHEIM – They adjusted their black-cotton beards and their Lincoln-stovepipe hats that stood almost as tall as them. Then, in unison, the 19 kindergarteners began: "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent ..." From beginning to end, Room 4 at Fairmont Private School recited from memory the entire Gettysburg Address – President Lincoln's 1863 speech, widely regarded as among the best speeches in American history. With words such as "endure," "dedicate" and "consecrate." The 5- and 6-year-olds got through them all. Their teacher, Patsy Bauman, began teaching her students the address in December, in...

Obama is certainly the most arrogant president in American history. This clip from the end of the entire 60 Minutes Obama interview didn't make it on air.

Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Lincoln’ Book Banned From Ford’s Theatre Because Of ‘Mistakes’ By Steven Levingston November 12 Of all the places you’d expect to find Bill O’Reilly’s new history “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever,” Ford’s Theatre — the site of the dreadful act — should rank right at the top. But you’d do better to search for the bestseller on Amazon because it has been banned from the theater’s store. The crime? O’Reilly and his co-author Martin Dugard have displayed a serial disregard for historical fact. For a purported history of the assassination — an “unsanitized and...

You could call it a debate in the style of America’s most famous series of oratorical confrontations — but only if Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had addressed each other from comfy, high-backed armchairs. And spectators had been willing to shell out at least $200. Georgia’s two Republican candidates for president, friends who have watched each other’s back during much of the early campaign, will go toe to toe Saturday evening in a two-man debate in the backyard of a third contender, Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Last spring, when a Texas tea party group conceived of it , the 90-minute...

At a ceremony to honor the opening of the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in our nation's capital Friday, the late civil rights leader's daughter Bernice made an historical error that would evoke tremendous ridicule and derision if she were a conservative. BERNICE KING: "But as I close, I close with the recognition that daddy is standing, Lincoln is seated. Lincoln remembered for signing the Declaration of Independence. Daddy being remembered as standing up for truth and standing up for justice and standing up for righteousness and standing up for peace and standing up for freedom. Daddy is now...

President Barack Obama said yesterday in Decorah, Iowa, that he absorbs more political criticism than Abraham Lincoln, the assassinated 16th U.S. president, attracted from his Civil War critics. The comment came during a question-and-answer session where one invited audience member asked Obama how he deals with his congressional critics in the GOP. “The Congress doesn’t seem to be a good partner. You said so yourself, they’re more interested in seeing you lose than [seeing] the country win,” the questioner lamented. “Democracy is always a messy business in a big country like this,” Obama responded. “When you listen to what the...

At his campaign-style town hall meeting in Decorah, Iowa, President Obama compared the criticism he has received from Republicans and other political opponents to the troubles faced by President Abraham Lincoln during the civil war. "Lincoln," the president said, "they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me." The president's remarks came in response to a question from a woman who said that congressional Republicans are refusing to be a "good partner" to work with the president. "What happens to our democracy?" the woman asked. "We are in a very divided country right now. What...

See video at link. Wonderful

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Military secrecy was a bit lax during the Civil War, by today’s standards, but contractor deadlines were a lot tighter.The technology that revolutionized naval warfare began with a five-sentence message delivered to The New York Times 150 years ago, on Aug. 9, 1861, and the information was not exactly classified. It was an advertisement placed by the Union Navy, to appear the following six days, under the heading “Iron-Clad Steam Vessels.”

During a discussion with college students at the University of Maryland last week, President Obama compared his current struggles with the debt ceiling debate negotiations with Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

On Jan. 2, 1864, Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne presented his fellow Southerners with a question about the war they were fighting. “Was the war about independence? Or was the war being fought primarily to preserve slavery?” said former Georgia labor commissioner Michael Thurmond.

On Thursday, July 14, at 10 a.m.. the Georgia Historical Society will be conducting a dedication service to unveil a marker commemorating Confederate Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne’s proposal to arm slaves in exchange for their freedom. Cleburne’s plan was to provide manpower for the South to face the ever-increasing Federal Army which was beginning to recruit black soldiers and which continued to swell its ranks with immigrants, particularly from Germany and other parts of Europe. It was becoming increasingly clear to Southern officers during the winter of 1863-64 that the South was fast running out of men to continue the...

Today is the Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. It might do us all well to take a moment to re-read it and reflect on it's meaning to us then and how it applies today. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of ...

Fifty years had passed since the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1st- 3rd, 1863.

As the season of presidential politics 2012 unfolds, I’m struck by similarities between today and the tumultuous period in our history that led up to the election of Abraham Lincoln and then on to the Civil War. So much so that I’m finding it a little eerie that this year we are observing the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. No, I am certainly not predicting, God forbid, that today’s divisions and tensions will lead to brother taking up arms against brother. But profound differences divide us today, as was the case in the 1850′s. The difference...

According to Chris Matthews, Sarah Palin is the most divisive figure since Abraham Lincoln "caused" the Civil War. In an odd historical analogy, the Hardball host marveled at Palin's bus tour: "Leading off tonight, civil war on the right. Not since the election of Abraham Lincoln has a Republican caused such a war." The anchor frothed, "Sarah Palin went right to New Hampshire, serving as a human grenade, blowing up his announcement by saying Romney's health care is a total violation of Tea Party beliefs."

Abraham Lincoln’s greatest love was politics, but his intellectual passion was for what the 19th century called “political economy” — the way economics and politics intersected in society and government. According to his law partner William Herndon, Lincoln “liked political economy, the study of it,” and Shelby Cullom, who practiced law beside Lincoln in Springfield, Ill. (and later crafted the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887), thought that “theoretically . . . on political economy he was great.” Although Lincoln’s angular, shambling appearance gave him the look of anything but a student of economics — one contemporary said he resembled “a...

Today, 21 March 2011, marks the 150th anniversary of Alexander Hamilton Stephens’ delivery of the Cornerstone Speech in Savannah, Georgia. On 20 December 1860, the state convention called by the legislature of South Carolina after the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency had voted for secession from the Union. By the beginning of February, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, George, Louisiana, and Texas had followed suit. And on 7 February 1861, these states joined together to form the Confederate States of America. Soon thereafter, Jefferson Davis was elected its President, and Stephens, its Vice-President. In his Second Inaugural, looking back, Abraham...

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 16, 2011, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona. TO BEGIN, consider one of the most important measures of property, the kilogram. It’s a measure of mass or, for non-scientific purposes, weight. According to the papers last week, a global scramble is under way to define this most basic unit after it was discovered that the standard kilogram—a cylinder of platinum and iridium that is maintained by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures—has been losing mass. You may think that this is impossible. Of all the...

Texas' secession from the Union was not official until the next day.

New Republican legislators should come down Capitol Hill to the National Museum of American History, which displays a device that in 1849 was granted U.S. patent 6469. It enabled a boat's "draught of water to be readily lessened" so it could "pass over bars, or through shallow water." The patentee was from Sangamon County, Ill. Across Constitution Avenue, over the Commerce Department's north entrance, are some words of the patentee, Abraham Lincoln: THE PATENT SYSTEM ADDED THE FUEL OF INTEREST TO THE FIRE OF GENIUS Stoking that fire is, more than ever, a proper federal function, so the legislators should...

On a recent pilgrimage to Gettysburg I ventured into the Evergreen cemetery, the scene of chaotic and bloody fighting throughout the engagement. Like Abraham Lincoln on a cold November day in 1863, I pondered the meaning of it all. With the post-Tea Party wave of libertarianism sweeping the nation, LincolnÂ’s reputation has received a serious pillorying. He has even been labeled a tyrant, who used the issue of slavery as a mendacious faux excuse to pummel the South into submitting to the will of the growing federal power in Washington D.C. In fact, some insist, the labeling of slavery as...

DreamWorks Studios just announced that Daniel Day-Lewis will take on the role of President Abraham Lincoln in the long-in-development biopic to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Lincoln, which playwright Tony Kushner has adapted from the Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals, has been on Spielberg's docket for years, with Liam Neeson once attached to star as the 16th president. Kushner also co-wrote Spielberg's Munich, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. Kathleen Kennedy and Spielberg are producing the project, which the director will begin filming next fall. “Daniel Day-Lewis would have always been counted as one of the greatest...

2010 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Dollar Launch Ceremony Planned By Coin Update Staff on October 26th, 2010 Categories: US Coins, United States Mint Details of the launch ceremony for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Dollar have been announced by the United States Mint. Launch ceremonies have typically been held on or around the circulation release date for each Presidential Dollar coin, held at a location related to the former President. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential $1 Coin will mark the 16th release of the overall series and the final release for this year. The obverse of the coin features a portrait of Lincoln...

BSC previously brought you news of this Timur Bekmambetov and Tim Burton collaboration. The former is directing. The latter is producing. And for anyone who’s seen Night Watch (Bekmambetov) or Sleepy Hollow (really?), you know what a good pairing this will be. Even more outrageous is the nature of that pairing. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a book from Seth Grahame-Smith, the writer of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In it, the sixteenth President of the United States hunts down some bloodsuckers, who killed his mother. Twilight this ain’t! Expect Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to hit theaters in the summer...

"Honest Abe said government should do for people what they can not do better for themselves," President Obama said at a campaign rally in Oregon on Wednesday night. Obama said Lincoln would have "trouble getting a nomination in the Republican party right now."

This article gives another perspective on liberals, libertarians and conservatives. The history both Lincoln and Sherman has been written by the victors and beyond reproach. Do we want to restore honor in this country? Can we restore honor by bringing up subjects over 100 years old? Comments are encouraged. Randy's Right aka Randy Dye NC Freedom The American Lenin by L. Neil Smith lneil@lneilsmith.org It’s harder and harder these days to tell a liberal from a conservative — given the former category’s increasingly blatant hostility toward the First Amendment, and the latter’s prissy new disdain for the Second Amendment —...

On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Effective at yearend, all slaves in Confederate-controlled territory would be "forever free."

Do you think he could see into the future? Around say...2010? You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. Abraham Lincoln, (attributed) 16th president of US (1809 - 1865)

Grand Old Partisan salutes Carl Schurz (R-MO), who arrived in the United States on this day in 1852. The Prussian-born Schurz became a leader of the German-American community in Missouri and entered politics as a Republican. He was a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention, where he supported Abraham Lincoln for the nomination. President Lincoln appointed him ambassador to Spain. A year later, Schurz became a general in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. In the summer of 1865, Schurz traveled throughout the post-war South. His report on conditions during the administration of Democrat President Andrew Johnson outraged...

On this day in 1862, the Democratic Party nominated Horatio Seymour for Governor of New York. Seymour denounced the Emancipation Proclamation as "a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, for arson and murder unparalleled in the history of the world." At the onset of the Civil War, Seymour had called for the federal government to allow the rebel states to secede if they insisted on preserving slavery.

Although it may be a minority viewpoint among scholars, some intellectuals do not think that talk show host Glenn Beck’s criticism of President Woodrow Wilson goes far enough. “There would have been no Wilson if there had been no Lincoln,” Professor Marshall DeRosa said at a conference at Catholic University on September 5, 2010. “America has always been imperialist,” he alleged. “McKinley and the Spanish American War referenced back to Lincoln,” DeRosa said, and “Lincoln was revived during the New Deal to prop up programs.” DeRosa, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University, spoke at a conference staged by the National...

In talking about the new rug in the Oval Office on Wednesday, we mentioned several historical quotes woven into the rug, including one from Martin Luther King Jr.: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." A number of listeners pointed out that King was in fact echoing the words of 19th century abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. NPR's Melissa Block talks to Clayborne Carson -- a professor of history at Stanford University and director of the Martin Luther King Junior Research and Education Institute -- about Parker, and about King's use of favorite...

On this day in 1890, President Benjamin Harrison (R-IN) signed into law the Second Land-Grant College Act. The law, written by Senator Justin Morrill (R-VT), made African-Americans eligible to attend land-grant colleges. Specifically, the law required any state that banned African-Americans from attending land-grant colleges to establish land-grant colleges for those students. Back then, there was no legal or judicial means for the federal government to compel state governments to cease racial discrimination, so this law was actually a big step forward.

On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) authorized his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, to "arm, uniform and receive into the service of the United States such number of volunteers of African descent as you may deem expedient." African-Americans had already been serving aboard U.S. Navy ships. During the Civil War, 210,000 African-Americans, three-quarters being southerners, served in the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy.

On this day in 1863, Frederick Douglass (R-MD) met with President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) for the first time. Senator Samuel Pomeroy (R-KS) escorted Douglass to the War Department building. On arrival, Douglass urged Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to allow equal pay for African-American soldiers in the U.S. Army. Though sympathetic, Stanton said that would require congressional approval, which he supported. Next, Douglass was introduced to the president at the White House. Lincoln stood and shook his hand "just as you have seen one gentleman receive another," Douglass later recounted. "I at once felt myself in the present of an...

[by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine, CA), re-published with his permission] For years I have admired Congressman Ron Paul’s principled stance on spending and the Constitution. That said, he really damaged himself when he blamed President Lincoln for the Civil War, saying, “Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war… [President Abraham Lincoln] did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic.” This is historical revisionism of the worst order, and it must be addressed. For Congressman Paul’s benefit – and for his supporters who may not know – seven states illegally declared...

On this day in 1846, Abraham Lincoln defeated his Democrat opponent to win a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He had agreed with his Whig Party supporters that he would not run for re-election. Not until 1864 did congressional elections take place all on the same day, "the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November." The presidential election of 1848 was the first in which people from each state voted for President simultaneously, on that same day. Nowadays, socialists have tainted the word "progressive," but it is a fair assessment that in its day the Whig Party...

Under the OaksIn 1854, the Democrats in control of the 33rd Congress were moving toward passage of their Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowing slavery to expand into the western territories. Championing the bill was Stephen Douglas, the senator who would be the Democratic Party's 1860 presidential nominee. The Democrat President at the time, Franklin Pierce, said he would sign the bill into law. The Democratic Party had chosen to promote slavery. Amid the intense reaction, a grassroots movement similar to the Tea Parties sprang up to oppose the extension of slavery. At town meetings and demonstrations, anti-slavery activists voiced their opposition to...

My ten-year old son receives a weekly allowance when he has performed his duties and household chores in such a way that is pleasing to his parents. No whining and a job well done are expected in order to receive this compensation. Don’t worry, we aren’t violating any child labor laws. These are typical household chores that we expect done even for free but we know our job as parents is to prepare our son to be a man and part of that is teaching him how to take the payment from a job done well and turn it into...

After President Obama's serial petulence towards and treatment of former President Bush, the GM's CEO Rick Wagoner, a majority of the United States Supreme Court during the Stae of the Union, John McCain and Paul Ryan in the Blair House "summit," medical doctors and other health care execs throughout the Obamacare debate, and everyone in the oil industry but especially BP's senior execs since the explosion in the Gulf --in short, of everyone he perceives as a threat or who has been insufficiently awed by his talent and deferential to his wishes-- we shouldn't be surprised that he took less...

I'm planning on reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln for a nice non-fiction change of pace. As you can imagine, there's so many Lincoln biographies out there I wouldn't know where to begin! Certainly, I would like to begin with the cream of the crop, but which one would it be? Even if I do a search in Amazon.com for Abraham Lincoln biographies sorted by five-star average customer reviews, a truckload of titles pop out.Here's just a few of those titles: Lincoln and His Admirals by Craig L. Symonds Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Vintage) by...

About three years ago, local attorney Jeff Boehm began reading a number of books about Abraham Lincoln. He became fascinated by this president who invited so many of his detractors to be in his cabinet of advisors. But it was Carl Sandburg's six-volume account of Lincoln that really engaged him. "The strategies of the Civil War don't interest me as much as the personalities and motivations of the major figures in our history," said Mr. Boehm. Having already acquired a bust of Thomas Jefferson and a portrait of George Washington, Mr. Boehm wanted to add a likeness of Lincoln to...

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift." "You cannot help small men by tearing down big men." "You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong." "You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer." "You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich." “You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.” "You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred." "You cannot establish security on borrowed money." "You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence." "You cannot help men permanently by doing for...

The fourteenth of April, eve of American activism and fortitude nationwide; the day when America was once on the eve of another sad challenge to rebuild a tired nation Robert, Tad, and Mary sat around the breakfast table as the the worn and tired man ate his egg and drank his coffee listening attentively to his sons detailed account of the surrender of the Old Lion of West Point. Mary was animate about tickets which she had bought at Grover's Theatre and lamenting over her choice of the patriotic show now playing there over the comedy, The American Cousin playing...

CONCORD, N.H. – In a tale celebrating the romance of movies, a contractor cleaning out an old New Hampshire barn destined for demolition found seven reels of nitrate film inside, including the only known copy of a 1913 silent film about Abraham Lincoln. "When Lincoln Paid," a 30-minute film about the mother of a dead Union soldier asking Lincoln to pardon a Confederate soldier whom she had initially turned in, stars the brother of John Ford, director of "The Grapes of Wrath," "The Quiet Man," and other classics. "I was up in the attic space, and shoved away over in...