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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the prop osition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether...
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Lincoln and Whitman
The relationship between Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln has long been the stuff of legend. According to one report, in 1857 Lincoln in his Springfield law office picked up a copy of Whitman’s poetry volume Leaves of Grass , began...
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Lincoln’s Civil Religion
His long-time law partner William Herndon once described Abraham Lincoln as "the most shut-mouthed man who ever lived." That phrase wonderfully captured an important characteristic of a politician who had surprisingly few friends and...
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Lincoln’s Interpretation of the Civil War
On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office for the second time. The setting itself reflected how much had changed in the past four years. When Lincoln delivered his First Inaugural Address, the new Capitol dome, which...
Lincoln’s Religion
"Lincoln often, if not wholly, was an atheist," insisted one of Lincoln’s political associates, James H. Matheny. The young Lincoln had "called Christ a bastard," "ridiculed the Bible," and duped pious voters into believing he was "a...
Natural Rights, Citizenship Rights, State Rights, and Black Rights: Another Look at Lincoln and Race
Stephen Douglas was the first in a long line of observers frustrated by the inconsistent things Abraham Lincoln had to say about racial equality. In their fifth debate, at Galesburg, Illinois, on October 7, 1858, Douglas complained...
Race and the American Constitution: A Struggle toward National Ideals
James O. Horton was the Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History at George Washington University and historian emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. He edited,...
Reconstructing the West and North
In 1865 the Radicals of the Republican Party regarded the Northern victory in the Civil War as a “golden moment” to remake the Republic. The Republicans controlled Congress, the Supreme Court, and, so they thought until Andrew Johnson...
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Reconstruction and the Battle for Woman Suffrage
The origins of the American women’s suffrage movement are commonly dated from the public protest meeting held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. At that historic meeting, the right of women to join with men in the privileges and...
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