Lincoln & Slavery

Had it not been for Abraham Lincoln, and his determination to save the Union, the sun would have forever set on the work of George Washington, and humanity's "last best hope of earth" would have perished.

Washington was born in Virginia, and became one of the richest men in the colonies, by birth and by marriage. Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin, and was an average American boy in an average pioneer family. Both came into the world, not as finished products, but possessing great possibilities. Both men acquired the virtue of self-control to a marked degree. Both were ambitious. Both were endowed with strong, comprehensive intellects. Both were physically strong. Both were equally devoted to the nation they served." ... Both thought only of the public good, simply, purely, constantly, so that single-hearted devotion to country will always find a synonym in their names," declared Senator Charles Sumner in June, 1865. (1) Both had to create an army and learn from the trials and campaigns of battle. Each was a national chief during a time of successful war, one for eight years, and the other for four.

In his last will and testament, Washington manumitted all his slaves. And, Lincoln, by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, made possible the ultimate liberation of all slaves in the United States. Washington became the "Father of his Country;" and Lincoln the "Savior" of the United States. The work left undone by Washington was continued by Lincoln. As Sumner declared:
Washington fought for National Independence and triumphed,--making
his country an example to mankind. Lincoln drew his reluctant sword
to save those great ideas, essential to the life and character of
the Republic, which unhappily the sword of Washington had failed to
put beyond the reach of assault. (2)

However, from his youth through his presidential years, Lincoln himself admired the "Great Washington," and was inspired by his devotion to the American people. Lincoln had once said: "Let us believe, as in the days of our youth, that Washington was spotless. It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect--that human perfection is possible." (3) Abraham Lincoln's George Washington left his imprimatur on the 16th President of the United States and, thus, the nation itself.

LINCOLN'S YOUTH AND WASHINGTON, 1809-1836

When Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, George Washington had been dead less than nine years; and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and many other patriots of the revolutionary generation were still alive and active. Both of Lincoln's parents were born in Washington's Virginia of decent, average American stock. (4)

Thomas Lincoln, son of Abraham and Bathsheba Lincoln, was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, January 6, 1778; during the years when Washington was commanding the Continental Army in the war for American Independence. Lincoln's grandfather Abraham moved his family from Virginia to Kentucky in 1782 before the war was over, when Lincoln's father was four years old. In the spring of 1786; Grandfather Lincoln was killed by an Indian, leaving a widow, three sons and two daughters. Having purchased incredibly cheap land in Kentucky with depreciated Virginia currency, Captain Abraham Lincoln left at least 2,334 acres. Both Washington and Jefferson Counties claim the site of Captain Lincoln's death.

Lincoln's father, Thomas lived in both Washington and Hardin counties, and appears on the tax lists of Washington County in 1795; as a minor above sixteen years of age, and again on May 16, 1796, during the time Washington was still President of the nation. In 1799, the year Washington died in December, Thomas Lincoln's name appears on a tax list as 21 years old. Lincoln's father was associated with the Washington name in another way. There was fear of an Indian uprising in 1795 in Kentucky, and Thomas Lincoln, then a boy of seventeen, served some thirty days from June 8 to July 7 as a private in Captain George Ewing's Company of Washington County militia, under command of Brigadier General John Caldwell. (5)

Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, was also born in Washington's Virginia in 1784. She was born on Mike's Run, a small tributary of Patterson's Creek, in what is now Mineral County, West Virginia. Her family left Washington's Virginia for Kentucky in the very year she was born. (6)

Lincoln's fascination for George Washington began when he became a reader at a very early age. His stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, remembered that young Lincoln had "devoured everything in the book line within his reach." Sometimes he read a book over and over, and thus his literary tastes were formed during this early period of his life. Lincoln enjoyed biographies of eminent men early on. His stepmother managed to buy a life of Henry Clay for him which dates the beginning of his undying admiration for Henry Clay of Kentucky. (7) And, he found a life of Benjamin Franklin which gave him a good background for understanding the importance of the American Revolution, and the concepts of liberty and justice. However, Lincoln "lingered with rapt delight" over both the Franklin biography, and another biography which he had found. In his campaign biography, John Locke Scripps wrote:
He followed Washington and brave Ben. Franklin through their early
trials and struggles as well as through their later triumphs; and
even then, in the midst of his cramped surroundings, and in the face
of the discouragements which beset him on every hand, his soul was
lifted upwards, and noble aspirations which never afterwards forsook
him, grew up within him, and great thoughts stirred his
bosom--thoughts of emancipated nations, of the glorious principles
which lie at the foundation of human freedom, and of honorable
fame acquired by heroic endeavors to enforce and maintain them. (8)

It is not exactly known just who presented young Lincoln with a copy of the Reverend Mason Locke Weems's The Life of Washington which he probably read shortly thereafter. Lincoln had been attending classes under his schoolteacher, Andrew Crawford, and it seems to be associated with his teacher. However, Weems's book influenced him more than any other book except the Bible. He probably read the 1809 edition which contains an addition of "curious anecdotes" such as the famous cherry tree story. (9)

Throughout the book Washington is portrayed as the perfect example for young people to emulate. Washington's policy was "the divine policy of doing good for evil. It melted down his iron enemies into golden friends." Weems dramatically developed the tragedies and triumphs of the American Revolution, for example, his account of the Battle of Trenton. This account made Lincoln aware "that there must have been something more than common that these men struggled for ... that something even more than National independence; that something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world to all time to come...." Weems personified that something as the "Genius of Liberty" and under Washington's leadership the struggle for liberty ended victoriously.

Thus, Weems helped young Lincoln to find George Washington as both a great inspiration and personal challenge. Washington personified those who founded the United States, a nation which had been conceived in liberty and dedicated to justice for all. But it also gave him a Washington who was a model of private virtue and self-control to help him overcome the frontier conditions of his young life. (10)

Some time later, young Lincoln borrowed David Ramsay's Life of Washington from Josiah Crawford, an Indiana neighbor. The volume was exposed by some accident to a rain shower and was water-soaked. The young man had no money but he offered to work out the full value of the book. Crawford owned a field of com which had been stripped of the blades as high as the ear, and expressed his willingness to let Lincoln cut the tops for winter fodder for his cattle. And, after three days of hard work, Lincoln was the proud owner of the watersoaked biography of George Washington. As his friend from New Salem days, "Charlie" Maltby, said: "His manliness and honesty won the respect and esteem of Mr. Crawford, and all his neighbors, who were soon informed of the incident." Ramsay's dedicatory statement in his Life of George Washington reads:
To the Youth of the United States, in the hope that from the Example
of their common father, they will learn to do and suffer whatever
Their Country's Good may require at their hands, the following life
of George Washington, is most affectionately inscribed by the
author.

Ramsay's Life of George Washington gave young Lincoln a much more detailed account of the Revolution than could be found in Weems's biography of Washington. In addition, Ramsay developed more information about the beginning of the United States federal government and added an appendix with an address and petition to Congress from the Officers of the Army of the United States, Washington's Farewell Address and Washington's personal will. As he labored in the fields, he thought of Washington and Jefferson. Thus it was that Washington became his hero. (11)

The Lincolns moved to Illinois in 1830. The twenty-two year old Lincoln left his father's home and settled in New Salem, Illinois on the Sangamon River. He longed to better himself and to improve both his education and his status. What had Lincoln read before he came to New Salem? Caleb Carman, who knew Lincoln before and during his residence in New Salem was later asked the question by Lincoln's law partner, William H. Herndon. Carman replied:
I Reed your letter of the 5th Decb whishing to know if Lincoln
quotied Shakespear in Sangamon Town it was in Sangamon Town and
Newsalem the words I Can not Recollect often in Conversation he
would Refer to that Great man Shakespear allso Lord Byron as
being a great man and Burns and of Burns Poems and Lord Nellson as
being a Great Admarall and Naval Commander and Adams and Henry Clay
Jackson George Washington was the Greatest of all of them and was
his Great Favorite in Conversation he would Refer to those Great
men and would say thay was Great men.... (12)

Another New Salem friend, Jason Duncan later marveled that his friend Lincoln would eventually be placed in the same category as those he had so admired as a young man trying to advance himself. "So Singular is it," he noted, "and sometimes to my mind so marvelous, that a man at the age of twenty one with so few advantages for preferment, should at last reach the goal and posterity lace his name high up with those of Washington Adams Webster and Clay upon the same page of history." (13)

However, Lincoln's admiration for Washington took an interesting twist in a story he repeated to his friends. Shortly after the Black Hawk war, Captain Abraham Lincoln returned to New Salem, and Abner Y. Ellis met him, but did not know him well until the summer and fall of 1833 when the two young men boarded at the same log Tavern kept by Henry Onstott. Ellis heard Lincoln tell an anecdote about Colonel Ethan Allen of Revolutionary war fame. According to Lincoln's telling, shortly after the United States made peace with England, Ethan Allen visited England, and while there "the English took Great pleasure in teasing him, and trying to "make fun of the Americans and General Washington in particular...." So one day they got a picture of General Washington and hung it up in the "Back House" where Ethan Allen could see it. They asked Allen if he had seen the picture of his friend in the privy. Allen said "no," as Lincoln told the story, "but said he thought that it was a very appropriate [place] for an Englishman to Keep it." "Why," they asked. Ethan Allen answered: "there is nothing that Will Make an Englishman Shit so quick as the Sight of Genl Washington." And after that, they let "Mr. Aliens Washington alone."

Some years later, Lincoln repeated the story on the day of his nomination to the presidency by the Republicans at the Wigwam in Chicago. Christopher C. Brown, his old friend, reported that he was nervous and "intensely excited Lincoln told stories," one of which was about Washington's picture in an English privy. (14)

LINCOLN'S LEGISLATIVE AND CONGRESSIONAL YEARS AND WASHINGTON 1836-1854

Young Lincoln's interest in politics began in his Indiana years. The Federalist party of Washington and Hamilton had died years before young Lincoln settled in New Salem. The only national political organization in the 1820s was the Jeffersonian Republican party. By 1832, party lines had divided and voters identified themselves as Jackson, Calhoun, or Clay men. When Lincoln returned from the Black Hawk campaign in 1832, encouraged by his great popularity among his New Salem neighbors, he ran for the Illinois State Legislature. He received 277 votes from his own precinct, with only 7 votes in opposition. But, he lost the election, "the only time Lincoln was ever beaten in a direct vote of the people." (15)

After his defeat, he continued to deliver political speeches; and as a good politician, he began to use his hero in them. In 1834, he was elected to the state legislature by the highest vote cast for any candidate. Lincoln began to study law and read American history in earnest. He concentrated on American history and especially the Revolution, the Federalist era and Hamilton's fiscal policies. Lincoln was reelected to the state legislature in 1836, 1838, and 1840. He revered Washington and the "Immortal Washington" could now serve as an ally in Lincoln's political ambition. (16)

Lincoln received his license to practice law in 1836. The following year on April 15, 1837; he moved to Springfield, the new state capital, and began to practice law with his old friend John Todd Stuart. There he came in contact with one of the leading forces of Springfield's cultural activity, the Young Men's Lyceum.

On January 27, 1838, Lincoln was invited to deliver a lecture before the Lyceum on "the Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions," and George Washington was on his mind. He concluded his address on the note that the "pillars of the temple of liberty" like Washington and the founders had "crumbled away" and that the "temple" would fall unless their descendants "supplied their places," supporting and defending the "temple of Liberty" with "reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason" and continued to improve and remain free "to the last." So "... that we revered his name to the last; [tha]t, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate [his] resting place; shall be that which to le[arn the last] trump shall awaken our WASH[INGTON]. Thus, Lincoln ended his speech by inviting citizens to partake of Washington's immortality by upholding his advice and following his example.

That following winter, an editorial appeared in the Sangamo Journal on November 3, 1838; almost certainly written by Lincoln, which declared that both the names of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster would be remembered as long as the name of "our immortal Washington." (17)

Lincoln became a spokesman for the Whig party and took part in a debate between Democrats and Whigs in the Hall of Representatives at Springfield during the week of Christmas 1839. Using Washington as part of his ammunition that the Bank of the United States was constitutional, he concluded the Whig argument on the Sub-Treasury.

The first National Bank was established "chiefly by the same men who formed the constitution, at a time when that instrument was but two years old, receiving the sanction, as President, of the immortal Washington; that the second [bank] received the sanction, as President, of Mr. Madison, to whom common consent has rewarded the proud title of 'Father of the Constitution.'" Lincoln endeavored to show that the United States Bank bill was constitutional because both Washington and Madison had signed it. Lincoln posited that the "last ten years under General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren, cost more money than the first twenty-seven did (including the heavy expenses of the late British war), under Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison." Then Lincoln used Washington to demonstrate the figures of the matter:
Gen. Washington administered the Government eight years for sixteen
million, Mr. Van Buren administered it one year (1838) forty
million, so that Mr. Van Buren expended twice and a half as much in
one year, as Gen. Washington did in eight, and being in the
proportion of twenty to one--or, in other words, had Gen. Washington
administered the Government twenty years, at the same average
expense that he did for eight, he would have carried us through the
whole twenty, for no more money than Mr. Van Buren has extended in
getting us through the single one of 1838. (18)

Not long after this time, Lincoln became "a great temperance man;" during the time of the Washingtonians, the national temperance organization which was then very popular in the nation. He joined the movement. Lincoln became a Washingtonian sp[eaker and "... he would go on foot 5 or ten miles to talk," according to his New Salem friend Mentor Graham.

Known as an excellent speaker, Lincoln was invited to give the principal address on George Washington's birthday, for whom the organization was named. As he had used Washington for political purposes, so now he used Washington in a persuasive speech to support "moral reformation" in the lives of the reformed drunkards who made up the core membership of the Washingtonians. "This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth-day of Washington," he said. "We are met to celebrate this day." He dramatically concluded:
Washington is the mightiest name of earth--long since mightiest in
the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On
that name, an eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to
the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible.
Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its
naked deathless splendor, leave it shining on.

Although not well received among "professing Christians" because of his criticism of those who ostracized drunkards on religious grounds, it was published in the Sangamo Journal on March 25, 1842.

Lincoln was present the following year in the chamber of the Illinois House of Representatives on Washington's birthday, when Masons, the Legislative Temperance Society of 60 members, and the Springfield Cadets celebrated the occasion. (19)

In a campaign circular from the Whig Committee, prepared by Lincoln, an address was made to the "people of Illinois" on March 4, 1844. Again, as in 1839, Lincoln declares that the issue of the National Bank is based on solid constitutional grounds. Because it was established chiefly by the same men who formed the constitution, "at a time when that instrument was but two years old, receiving the sanction, as President, of the immortal Washington...." On Washington's birthday in 1844, Lincoln delivered various speeches in Virginia, Illinois on the Bank question in which he proved that "it was no new fenagled scheme." The Bank had been "advocated and carried out by the fathers of the Republican school." As in 1839, and in 1843, Lincoln began by showing that because Washington and Madison signed the U. S. Bank bill, it was therefore constitutional. "He labored hard to prove that Washington never done a wrong thing in his life," it was reported. (20)

Lincoln received the nomination for Congress from the Sangamon district in 1846; and, after the manner of Western nominees, "stumped" his district. Political issues were well defined, and Lincoln was a Whig on principal points. Popular in his own district, he was elected by more strength than that of his own party. His majority was unprecedented in his district. As the only Whig member from Illinois, he took his seat in the 30th Congress on December 6, 1847; as Stephen A. Douglas took his seat in the U. S. Senate during the same session.

Barely adapted to his freshman role in the House, Lincoln made an unsuccessful effort to bring Polk to a statement of the facts upon which the Congress, and the country could verify the president's role in the war. Lincoln introduced a series of resolutions on December 22, 1847; if adopted, would give President Polk the opportunity to furnish the grounds upon which the nation went to war with Mexico. On January 12, 1848; Lincoln delivered a speech to the House, in committee of the whole. "... let the President answer the interrogatories, I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones," Lincoln challenged. "Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments." And, then he challenged President Polk with President Washington. He said:
Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering,
let him answer, as Washington would answer. As a nation should not,
and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no
evasion--no equivocation.

However, the resolutions were never adopted and Polk did not reply to Lincoln's challenge. (21)

Before Lincoln made his next speech on the House floor for the 1848 Whig campaign, he participated in an important ceremony in the nation's capital on July 4. Never before had Washington honored President Washington in such a grand manner. The city had never witnessed such an event before. "Great multitudes rushed" into the streets and open spaces were filled with carriages, horsemen, and thousands of people on foot. Guns and pistols fired, firecrackers exploded, and the sounds of children's laughter mingled together.

When the parade was ready, it stretched a mile and a half, much like the later inaugural parades. At the head of the parade was the official carriage of President Polk and his Secretary of State James Buchanan, followed by the carriages of cabinet members. The Grand Marshal and his handsome staff followed. A hero of the Mexican war, Major General John Anthony Quitman of the United States army led the military--infantry, artillery, cavalry, marines and various companies from Baltimore, Richmond and Boston in their dashing uniforms. The Members of Congress followed in a solid body, and noticeable for his height as they proceeded, was Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. They met just south of the White House, and laid the cornerstone of the monument to George Washington with Masonic ceremonies.

Two very old ladies sat on the Speaker's stand, Mrs. Alexander Hamilton and Mrs. James Madison, wives of Washington's close friends of an earlier day. Speaker of the House, Robert C. Winthrop, delivered the oration of the day. Lincoln heard him declare: "This wide-spread Republic is the true monument to Washington. Maintain its Independence. Uphold its Constitution. Preserve its Union. Defend its Liberty." The very things that Lincoln himself would later declare in various addresses and proclamations as President of the United States. (22)

Two months after General Zachary Taylor obtained the Whig nomination for the presidency in 1848, Lincoln delivered a "stump" speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. While discussing the policy of Taylor in 1848, Lincoln unconsciously revealed some of the various positions he himself would hold as a candidate for the presidential office in 1860 and 1864. As before in 1839, and 1844, he called upon the Great Washington to support his position, the Whig position, on the issue of chartering the first bank of the United States and its constitutionality.

Lincoln noted that Congressman James Madison had opposed the bill chartering the bank of the United States on the basis of its lack of constitutional sanction. Madison was not alone in his opposition. "Gen: Washington, as President, was called on to approve or reject it," Lincoln noted. And so Washington sought and obtained on the constitutional question the separate written opinions of Jefferson, Secretary of State; Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; and Edmund Randolph, Attorney General. But, President Washington, following Hamilton's position, approved the Bank. Again, for Lincoln, Washington's position was enough on the bank issue, but also the first president was an embodiment of the early republican spirit of opposition to the institution of slavery. Lincoln remembered well the appendix in Ramsay's Life of Washington which included Washington's personal will which manumitted the Mount Vernon slaves upon Martha's death. (23)

Upon returning home from Congress, Lincoln devoted his full attention to the practice of law. Although less concerned with political diversions than in previous years, he still continued his interest in the political world around him. Like the many other Union-loving moderates, Lincoln was relieved to see the tensions subside after the Compromise of 1850, as a final settlement of all the outstanding issues of the slavery controversy.

Meanwhile, he spent time reading, devoting his time to his family, his profession, and the Springfield social whirl. Upon the death of Henry Clay, June 29, 1852; the citizens of Springfield held two memorial meetings, one conducted in the Episcopal Church by the Reverend Charles Dresser [who married the Lincolns and whose home they later purchased]; and the following service in the Hall of Representatives where Lincoln delivered the eulogy.

Once again, Washington came to mind. Referring to a "lost" speech which Clay delivered during the British aggressions against American seamen in 1812, Lincoln noted that it "invoked the genius of the revolution, that it apostrophized the names of Otis, of Henry, and of Washington, that it appealed to the interest, the pride the honor, and the glory of the nation...." (24)

LINCOLN, SLAVERY, AND WASHINGTON 1854-1860

Suddenly Lincoln's whole life and political aspirations underwent a drastic change on May 22, 1854. While he was attending court in Urbana, Illinois, Lincoln heard about the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The news aroused him, he said, "as it had never been before." Suddenly, Lincoln had a new purpose. He had always been opposed in principle to the institution of slavery, but had never enlisted actively in the antislavery crusade.

Lincoln believed that the constitutional recognition of slavery in the South did not mean that Washington, and the other founders, approved the institution which excluded a whole race from the benefits of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Men like Washington may have been tied to slavery economically but were politically, and morally opposed to it. During a discussion one night, Lincoln, along with some friends, discussed possible flaws in America's greatest hero Washington. He reportedly declared:
Let us believe, as in the days of our youth, that Washington was
spotless; it makes human nature better to believe that one human
being was perfect: that human perfection is possible.

He became convinced that slavery and free society were incompatible
in the nation. (25)

After Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the Senate, Lincoln pondered the slavery issue deeply, studied congressional debates, pored over various books in the Illinois State Library, and jotted down notes for future use. He inductively assembled his case, using Washington, and the founding fathers, as authority to oppose the extension of slavery. And, George Washington became his ally in both his deep moral conviction that slavery was wrong and in his practical political aspirations. This became evident when Lincoln answered Senator Stephen A. Douglas at Peoria, Illinois on October 16, 1854. He accused Douglas of setting history of the United States on its head.

The Compromises of 1850 were dependent on each other; Illinois did come into the Union as a free state. "If we do not know these things, we do not know that we ever had a revolutionary war, or such a chief as Washington," he declared. "To deny these things is to deny our national axioms, or dogmas, at least and it puts an end to all argument." For the next six years, Lincoln poured his energies into the battle against the extension of slavery into the national territories, gleaning his knowledge from his earlier studies of American history, principally the era of the American Revolution and the Federalists. Lincoln's conviction that slavery was a morally wrong, and the fact that Washington, and other founding fathers agreed with him, together with this political opportunity, helped lead him to the presidency. (26)

As soon as the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed the Congress, already frayed party ties began to collapse. Antislavery castoffs from the Northern Democrats, and the Whigs, and the Know-Nothings came together. As early as February 22, 1854 (Washington's Birthday), a group of northern Democrats, Whigs, and Free-Soilers met at Ripon, Wisconsin, to organize a new party, an anti-Nebraska party, to resist the extension of slavery if the Kansas-Nebraska bill became law. Later on July 6, a great fusion meeting met at Jackson, Michigan, and adopted the name "Republican;" emulating earlier Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party.

The anti-Nebraska coalition of 1854 was kept alive by the subsequent disorder and violence in Kansas which verged at times on civil war. This kept the coalition together and transformed it into a permanent organization which became the Republican Party. Republicans held their preliminary national convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Washington's Birthday 1856. This move stimulated action in Illinois. On that same day, Washington's Birthday 1856, a group of antislavery editors met at Decatur, Illinois, and planed "a state convention of the Anti-Nebraska party of Illinois" at Bloomington on May 29, 1856.

Lincoln was committed to organize an Illinois Republican party and his early support in 1856 for the Bloomington convention impacted those who wavered. Lincoln himself drew up a "Call for Republican Convention" on May 10, 1856. It was addressed to the "citizens of Sangamon County" who were opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, to the Democratic Pierce Administration, and "who are in favor of restoring the administration of the General Government to the Policy of Washington and Jefferson...." Lincoln delivered his so-called "Lost Speech," a climactic address, declaring that "it must be 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.'" From all accounts, it was "one of the most eloquent and effective performances of his life." and Illinois had a functioning Republican party which was equal to any others in unity discipline and zeal called to establish the policy of Washington. (27)

That following September 23, 1856, a Fremont meeting was held in the old State House, and Lincoln arrived after the meeting had opened and he was the second speaker. "He demonstrated that the Republicans are walking in the 'old path's,'" according to the Chicago Democratic Press. Then he read the recorded sentiments of Washington, Jefferson and others, "canonized leaders of both great parties." This was a more conservative approach to demonstrate that the new political party was moderate. Lincoln was somewhat slow in calling himself a "Republican," with its more radical connotation, but it was much easier to align himself with the policy of Washington.

During this same year 1856, seven thousand people waited inside New York City's Academy of Music to listen to Edward Everett of Massachusetts speak on "The Character of Washington." Washington's image was more than that of mere celebrity, but sacred. And, Lincoln continued to use the "Immortal Washington" to give the Republican cause purpose and respectability. (28)

By the summer of 1858, ninety-five Republican county conventions named Lincoln as their first choice for the U. S. Senate. The state convention met on June 16 in Springfield and unanimously adopted a challenge to the pro-Douglas faction of the party in the East. The resolution declared that "Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas." Lincoln was ready with a speech which is one of his most historic speeches. "The result is not doubtful." He declared: "We shall not fail--if we stand firm, we shall not fail." (29)

On the advice of his managers, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates and Senator Douglas reluctantly consented to meet him once in each Congressional district except in Chicago and Springfield, where they had already met. Douglas selected Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton. Lincoln agreed. The election would be decided in the central counties of Illinois.

In the first debate at Ottawa, Douglas asked why could the nation not remain divided into free and slave States. "Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jay and the great men of that day, made this Government divided into free States and slave States, and left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject of slavery," he said. Douglas repeated this same argument at Jonesboro and Charleston. The problem Lincoln answered, was that Douglas and his friends had placed slavery on a "new basis." "Our fathers [including Washington]" originally restricted slavery from the new Territories and legislated to cut off its source from the slave trade and thus put the seal of legislation "against its spread." Once again, Lincoln enlisted Washington. He declared:
Now I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place it where
Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison placed it, it would be in
the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as
for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate
extinction.

Lincoln hoped that southerners would once again regard bondage as an evil, just as Washington, Jefferson, and the other founders had regarded it. And just as the "founders" had limited slavery expansion as a first step toward ending the evil, Lincoln said, "I have no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but re-adopted the policy of the fathers." (30)

Douglas charged that Negroes were not included in the Declaration of Independence and that it was a "slander" upon Washington, and the other founders who framed the Declaration. But, Lincoln replied that the "entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the Negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence." Lincoln defied Douglas to show that Jefferson ever said so, "that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation." (31)

Lincoln "won" the debates, so far as the judgment of historians is concerned. But, he lost the election. Eight of the thirteen holdover senators were not up for reelection, and the Democrats had a majority in the next legislature and in January, 1859 selected Douglas for another six-year term as Senator from Illinois. As Princeton Historian James M. McPherson puts it, "For Lincoln the election was a victory in defeat." "I am glad I made the late race," Lincoln wrote his personal friend Dr. A. G. Henry. "It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone." Lincoln had clarified the issues between Republicans and northern Democrats more clearly than ever before, with the help of Washington and the other "fathers." Lincoln emerged as a spokesman for the Republican cause in the nation. (32)

Lincoln's influence in party affairs extended beyond the borders of Illinois after his defeat for the Senate seat and he overlooked no opportunity to influence Republican Party policies. He made a business trip to Iowa and spoke at Council Bluffs. He consulted Republican leaders in Iowa and St. Joseph, Missouri. He received invitations to speak in far distant New Hampshire, New York, Minnesota and Pennsylvania during the summer months, but turned down most invitations. With a new confidence gained from the contest with Douglas, he began to assume the role of a national leader, even intervening discreetly in the politics of other states. (33)

It was announced that Douglas would speak in Ohio, which took the Republican organization there by surprise. The very day the announcement was made, Lincoln was invited to make several speeches in Ohio "to head off the little gentleman." Although Lincoln was not well known in Ohio, his debates with Douglas had proven his ability as a campaigner. However, Lincoln had kept in close contact with political developments in Ohio. The foremost issue in the state election campaign involved the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, because of the federal indictment of thirty-seven Ohioans who had rescued an escaped slave.

Lincoln was enthusiastically received in Cincinnati, Ohio on September 17, 1859, even though he delivered a partisan speech. Although Douglas had spoken earlier and branded Lincoln as a radical, he portrayed himself as a Republican and declared his unequivocal opposition to slavery. Lincoln aimed his remarks at Kentuckians across the Ohio River, as though they were in his audience. "I think Slavery is wrong, morally and politically," he declared. He wanted to block its spread and would not object to its gradual termination from the nation. He noted that Kentuckians radically differed with him on the issue. But the Republicans were going to stand by their guns and beat the Douglas Democrats in a fair election. Lincoln boldly declared:
We mean to treat you as near as we possibly can, like Washington,
Jefferson and Madison treated you [Cheers] We mean to leave you
alone, and in no way to interfere with your institution; to abide
by all and every compromise of the constitution, and, in a word,
coming back to the original proposition, to treat you, so far as
degenerated men (if we have degenerated) may, according to the
examples of those noble fathers--Washington, Jefferson and Madison.
[Applause]

Lincoln used Washington and the other "noble fathers" to present the Republican Party as a peaceful political body and to appeal to other liberty-loving nationalists both in Ohio and across the River in Kentucky. (34)

On the way home to Springfield, he delivered an address in Indianapolis. Eight days later he set off for Milwaukee and gave an annual address at the Wisconsin State Fair and a political speech at the Newhall House in Milwaukee. Then he spoke at Beloit, Wisconsin. Lincoln declared that the real position of the Republican Party was its underlying principle of hatred to the institution of Slavery; hatred to it in all its aspects, moral, social, and political. "This," said Lincoln; "is the foundation of the Republican Party, and its active, life-living principle." Then he "went on to prove the identity of the Republican principles with those of the Fathers of the Republic," noted the reporter of the Beloit Journal. "This he did most satisfactorily." Lincoln said that if he could find twelve "good sound democrats" in the county of Rock, he would put them under oath as a jury. Then "he would bring his evidence in form of depositions in a court, and wring from them the verdict that the Republicans hold to the same principles which Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and their compeers held." (35)

On the eve of the territorial election, Lincoln was in Kansas on December 1, 1859 at the request of friends. Kansas had already adopted a constitution, elected a legislature and was about to elect territorial officers and a congressional delegate. He spoke twice at Leavenworth on December 3. He charged that the early action of the government dealt with the institution of slavery as a wrong. Lincoln took up the idea that the Kansas-Nebraska act was based on the idea that slavery was not wrong. Kansas was the first place that the "new" policy had been applied. "Compare, or rather contrast, the actual working of this new policy with that of the old, and say whether, after all, the old way--the way adopted by Washington and his compeers--was not the better way," he said.

The new policy had proven false to all its promises. "The Fathers did not seek to interfere with slavery where it existed but to prevent its extension," he said. Lincoln had been warmly received, and began to give serious consideration about entering the presidential race. (36)

During the previous October, 1859, Lincoln received an invitation to lecture at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, Henry Ward Beecher's church. Lincoln asked if he could speak on political issues, and the committee on arrangements consented. Lincoln began in earnest to research his topic. He and Douglas had sharply differed on the views of the Founding Fathers about slavery extension. Lincoln now began to research his evidence to clinch his case against the "Little Giant." He put in hours doing historical research in Elliot's Debates on the Federal Constitution, Annals of Congress and the Congressional Globe.

When Lincoln arrived in New York after a long two-day trip, he found hat the Young Men's Central Republican Union of New York City had decided to sponsor the lecture and moved the location to the Cooper Union. On the evening of February 27, 1860, Lincoln nervously rose to his feet before an august audience and delivered his research effort. Lincoln proved that twenty-one of the original thirty-nine signers of the Constitution understood that nothing could forbade the Federal Government from controlling slavery in the federal territories. Probably the rest of the signers favored the same opinion. "Again," said Lincoln,

George Washington, another of the "thirty-nine," was then President of the United States, and, as such, approved and signed the bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government, to control as to slavery in federal territory.

Democrats "delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address."

However, "less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory," which was the embodiment of the government's policy on that subject up to the very moment he wrote that warning. In fact, Lincoln carefully noted, Washington wrote LaFayette that he considered this prohibition a wise measure and expressed "his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States." Indeed, Washington had written that "I have long considered it [Negro slavery] a most serious evil, both socially and politically ..." (37)

Then he concluded his address with a stirring challenge to the Republicans in Washington's name:
Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances
wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored--contrivances
such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the
wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a
living man nor a dead man--such a policy of "don't care" on a
question about which all true men do care-such as Union appeals
beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the
divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to
repentance--such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to
unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

One of those present said that in "the close parts of his argument, you could hear the gentle sizzling of the gas-burners" and when Lincoln reached the climax of the address "the thunders of applause was terrific." Indeed, "it was a great speech." Lincoln had successfully turned George Washington into both an antislavery champion and the spiritual ancestor of Republicans. Washington had helped Lincoln conquer "one of the most critical and cultivated audiences to be gathered in the Republic." But Lincoln himself had not expected to create such a marked impression on this eastern audience. (38)

Lincoln's purpose was to visit Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire to visit his son Robert who was preparing to try a sixteenth time to pass the entrance examination into Harvard. Delegations along Lincoln's route invited him to speak. At Providence, the Governor of Rhode Island sat on the platform. At Concord, Dover and Exeter, large grounds turned out to hear him. When Lincoln was introduced in Manchester, he was introduced as the next President of the United States. At Harvard, Lincoln told his audience that the framers of the Constitution understood that slavery would be abolished at the end of the slave trade in 1808 because they considered slavery a wrong. Lincoln reminded them that the "old fathers" said that it was an "irrepressible conflict," "Jefferson said it, Washington said it." He argued that it was then regarded as an evil. "The Republicans go back to first principles and deal with it as a wrong," he declared. Even southern senators like James M. Mason of Virginia "said openly that the framers of our government were anti-slavery." Senator James H. Hammond of South Carolina said "Washington set this evil example." Even Preston S. Brooks, who had beaten Senator Charles Sumner so badly on the Senate floor in May, 1856, had admitted: "At the time the Constitution was formed, no one supposed slavery would last till now." Lincoln declared: "We stick to the policy of our fathers." (39)

At New Haven, Lincoln delivered a speech which he repeated substantially at Meriden, Connecticut, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Norwich and Bridgeport, Connecticut. He drew heavily upon Washington to point out that there was an "irrepressible conflict" and "that almost every good man since the formation of our government has uttered that same sentiment, from Gen. Washington, who 'trusted that we should yet have a confederacy of Free States,' with Jefferson, Jay, Monroe, down to the latest days...."

Lincoln repeated his charge from his Cooper Institute address that Democrats had flaunted "in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell address." But, less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President, approved and signed an act of Congress which enforced prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory.

A year later, President Washington wrote LaFayette in France that he believed this prohibition was wise and that he hoped that a time would come when the nation would be a confederacy of Free States. Then Lincoln queried: "Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it." He answered: "We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it."[Applause.] He called for the Republicans to stand by their duty and not be diverted by the "Disunionists" who invoke Washington, "imploring men to unsay what Washington did." (40)

LINCOLN'S ELECTION, SECESSION CRISIS AND WASHINGTON 1860-1861

When Lincoln returned to Springfield after his Eastern trip, Milton Hay addressed the local Republican Club and said:
Our history is prolific in examples of what may be achieved by
ability, perseverance [sic] and integrity ... but in the long list
of those who have thus from humblest beginnings won their way
worthily to proud distinction there is not one can take precedence
of the name of Abraham Lincoln....

Before the Illinois Republican convention met at Decatur on May 9 and 10, 1860, there existed a well planned strategy for the Republican presidential nomination by Lincoln's self-appointed managers. A former Democrat, John M. Palmer, offered a resolution which was accepted "That Abraham Lincoln is the choice of the Republican party of Illinois for the Presidency, and the delegates from this state are instructed to use all honorable means to secure his nomination by the Chicago Convention, and to vote as a unit for him." (41)

The Republican National Convention met in Chicago on May 16, 1860. When the convention assembled everybody was anxious to get to the serious business of the nominations for the presidential and vice presidential office. It was felt that the third ballot would be the decisive one and, before the final result was announced, hundreds of pencils tallied the ballots. It was whispered that Lincoln had received two hundred and thirty-one and a half votes, lacking only one vote and a half for the nomination. The Ohio delegate, Cartter, announced the change of four Ohio votes for Lincoln which finished the work. "After a moment's pause, like the sudden and breathless stillness that precedes the hurricane, the storm of wild, uncontrollable and almost insane enthusiasm descended," wrote one Lincoln biographer. As the cheering inside died away, the roar began outside in the streets of Chicago.

But "the scene surpassed description." Lincoln was "the favorite of Chicago and of Illinois--he was the people's idol." Soon after his nomination, Lincoln's first "appearance" with Washington was in an expensive lithograph by a Chicago artist, Edward Mendel. It showed a plain and somber Westerner looking at the viewer. George Washington's bust was at his elbow. Lincoln received a copy of the print and the next day thanked Mendel for the "truthful" image [underlining truthful]. "Lincoln may have liked the print in part because he liked to see Washington at his elbow," notes three Lincoln historians. (42)

Lincoln was a candidate for the office of the presidency which was virtually tailored to fit the heroic figure of the "immortal" George Washington. Indeed, there probably was never a more important election, necessary election, as Washington's in 1789. However, it was a foregone conclusion. Washington received all the electoral votes cast in both 1789 and 1792. There were four aspiring candidates for the presidential office in 1860.

On the night of November 6, 1860, Lincoln sat alone with the operator in the telegraph box at Springfield, and received the results of the elections of presidential electors in the various states as they came in. It became evident that for the first time in American history, the united North [except New Jersey] had used its superior numbers to outvote the Southern states. Even if all the opposition votes had been united behind one single candidate, Lincoln would still have won. However, modest changes in just a few strategic places undoubtedly would have produced a different result. Lincoln was legally and constitutionally elected President of the United States. Like Washington, Lincoln had become the most important man in the nation. He received an invitation to visit Bryan Hall in Chicago to view the "Gallery of the Presidential Portraits from Washington to Lincoln inclusive." But Lincoln endorsed the back of the invitation that he could not "find leisure to avail myself of this Mr. Bryan's kindness." (43)

And, now the one who had dreamed of the accomplishments of George Washington, the hero of his youth in Indiana, and modeled Washington's modesty and humility, legally occupied Washington's presidential chair. But Lincoln saw a gathering storm and realized that upon him it would break its wildest fury. And indeed it broke on December 20, 1860 when South Carolina voted to secede from the United States, followed in January by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and in February by Louisiana and Texas. President-elect Lincoln wrote his close Whig friend of the 1840s, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, that if the South really feared that his Republican administration would, "directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slave," there was no cause for fear. He assured Stephens:
The South would be in no more danger in this respect, than
it was in the days of Washington. I suppose, however, this
does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and ought
to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be
restricted [just like Washington]. That I suppose is the rub.
It certainly is the only substantial difference between us. (44)

Meanwhile, Washington City was full of treason. It was the talk in hotels and government offices. Many of the forts and arsenals of the United States in the South were in the hands of those in rebellion, the northern arsenals had been stripped, and every available ship with the exception of two was beyond call. The Confederate government had been organized, the U. S. Treasury was bankrupt, and business was depressed. Threats of assassination had been made on his life. And, fear stalked the nation. However, President-elect Lincoln delayed his arrival in the nation's capital to around Washington's Birthday. This would enable him to accept official invitations to stay at four great towns and five State capitals which he could pass on his way east, and bring assurance to the people of the nation. The day for departure finally arrived in the second week of February.

On that drizzly early morning of February 11, 1861, a bewildered president-elect stood sadly before his old friends and neighbors at the back of the last rail car which would take him to Washington. He had not planned to speak, but the crowd called for a speech. Sadly, he told them that no one who had never been in his situation could possibly understand the feeling of sadness at this parting. He owed everything to "this place" and "the kindness of these people." But the cares of his presidential responsibility weighed heavy on him. And, Washington was very much on his mind. According to the Illinois State Journal reporter, Lincoln said:
To-day I leave you; I go to assume a task more difficult than
that which devolved upon General Washington. Unless the great God
who assisted him, shall be with and aid me, I must fail. But if
the same omniscient mind, and Almighty arm that directed and
protected him, shall guide and support me, I shall not fail, I
shall succeed. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may
not forsake us now. To him I commend you all--permit me to ask
that with equal security and faith, you all will invoke His
wisdom and guidance for me. With these few words I must leave
you--for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now
bid you an affectionate farewell.

Lincoln never again made so many speeches in so few days as he journeyed on to Washington for his inauguration. (45)

Lincoln celebrated his fifty-second birthday traveling through southern Indiana, near the grave of his mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln. An immense crowd greeted him in the largest city in Ohio, Cincinnati. He remembered his words to his southern friends across the Ohio River in Kentucky, the land of his birth, during his campaign visit back in 1859. And to reassure them, he repeated his words once again:
We mean to treat you, as near as we possibly can, as Washington,
Jefferson, and Madison treated you. We mean to leave you alone,
and in no way to interfere with your institution; to abide by
all and every compromise of the constitution, and, in a word,
coming back to the original proposition, to treat you, so far
as degenerated men (if we have degenerated) may, according to
the examples of those noble fathers--Washington, Jefferson and
Madison.

The next day, he spoke to the Ohio Legislature and shared with them the Washington theme of his Farewell Address to his friends in Springfield the day he left:
I am deeply sensible of that weighty responsibility. I cannot but
know what you all know, that, without a name, perhaps without a
reason why I should have a name, there has fallen upon me a task
such as did not rest even upon the Father of his country, and so
feeling I cannot but rum and look for the support without which
it will be impossible for me to perform that great task. I turn,
then, and look to the American people and to that God who has
never forsaken them.

Lincoln was fully aware that not even the "immortal Washington" faced a task of such magnitude as Lincoln faced in the presidential office--the task of saving the Union. (46)

Lincoln appealed for the preservation of the Union all along his journey. The day before Washington's Birthday, he addressed the New Jersey Senate at Trenton. He remembered the impact of Weems's Life of Washington on him and its description of the battle of Trenton. He reminisced:
May I be pardoned if, upon this occasion, I mention that away
back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to
read, I got hold of a small book, such a one as few of the
younger members have ever seen, "Weem's Life of Washington."
I remember all the accounts there given of the battle fields
and struggles for the liberties of the country, and none fixed
themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here
at Trenton, New-Jersey.

He vividly remembered the Washington's crossing of the Delaware River, the contest with the Hessians, the great hardships of Washington and his men endured at that time. These "all fixed themselves on my memory more than any single revolutionary event; and you all know, for you have all been boys, how these early impressions last longer than any others." Lincoln's deep admiration for Washington, and these early Revolutionary War heroes had begun so early. "I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for," he said. (47)

When the President-elect spoke to the New Jersey General Assembly that same day, cheers rang out in the hall when he warned that if it became necessary "to put the foot down firmly;" the people must support him. They cried out: "Yes," "Yes" "We will...." (48)

As the Lincoln Inaugural Special traveled toward the nation's capital city, warnings of a possible assassination attempt on Lincoln in Baltimore seemed more certain. Although Lincoln had already been aware of the possible danger to his life before he left Springfield. The presidential party traveled from Trenton to Philadelphia. Lincoln had agreed to address the people outside the old state house where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. He had also agreed to raise an American flag over the historic building on the morning of Washington's Birthday and attend a reception by the Pennsylvania legislature in the afternoon. "Both of these engagements I will keep," Lincoln said, "if it costs me my life." He kept all of his scheduled appointments on Washington's birthday 1861, but said that he regretted that he did not have more time "to express something of my own feelings excited by the occasion--somewhat to harmonize and give shape to the feelings that had been really the feelings of my whole life." Washington's presence at that place moved Lincoln deeply. (49)

The Lincoln presidential party then left for Harrisburg, where he made two public speeches in the Pennsylvania state capital, one of which was before the General Assembly, again, on Washington's birthday. Lincoln had been impressed with his experience that day at Independence Hall. He told the Assembly:
Allusion has been made to the fact--the interesting fact perhaps
we should say--that I for the first time appear at the Capitol
of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, upon the birthday of
the Father of his Country. In connection with that beloved
anniversary connected with the history of this country, I have
already gone through one exceedingly interesting scene this
morning in the ceremonies at Philadelphia. Under the kind
conduct of gentlemen there, I was for the first time allowed
the privilege of standing in old Independence Hall
[enthusiastic cheering] ...

Lincoln was forced by his advisors to change his route and go by night through Baltimore to the nation's capital. Lincoln was in some danger and he was only officially protected by four army officers who were detailed to accompany him. (50)

LINCOLN'S PRESIDENTIAL YEARS: SAVING THE UNION AND WASHINGTON 1861-1863

When Lincoln's carriage left Willard's Hotel, in company with President Buchanan on March 4, 1861; he made his way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol East front where President Washington had laid the original cornerstone for the nation's Senate chamber. Lincoln delivered his inaugural address, and then took the same oath as President which Washington had taken on April 30, 1789 in New York City, including Washington's added words: "So help me God." Lincoln wrestled with just how he should conclude the address, and William H. Seward of New York, Lincoln's new Secretary of State, thought that Lincoln might need some suggestions. Frederick Seward, his son and secretary, wrote out a concluding paragraph:
I aspire to come in the spirit, however far below the ability
and the wisdom, of Washington, of Madison, of Jackson and of
Clay. In that spirit I here declare that in my administration
I shall know no rule but the Constitution, no guide but the
laws, and no sentiment but that of equal devotion to my
whole country, east, west, north and south.

Instead, Lincoln drew from another suggestion from Seward and put it in his own words. He concluded: "The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

When the address was delivered, and the oath finally administered, Lincoln was escorted to the President's Mansion, the site for which Washington had selected and laid the cornerstone. And, now Abraham Lincoln took the august responsibilities as President of the United States, the sixteenth following the first. (51)

Washington's presence at the White House could mainly be found in the Washington Parlor or the Red Room, which was the First Lady's sitting room, and the room to which the President and his guests retreated after dining. There hung Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Washington which Dolly Madison saved from the British during the War of 1812. Through his office windows on the second floor the President could see, not far to the south, the unfinished monument to Washington sometimes blurred by snow-filled air. Lincoln remembered when he was present at the cornerstone ceremony in 1848 as a lone Whig congressman from Illinois.

Soon after the Lincolns took up residence in the White House, Lincoln related an anecdote with relish about Senator Thomas Corwin of Ohio. Corwin had been told by an old Virginian who knew Washington that George Washington often swore. Corwin's father, as was true of that generation, held the Father of his Country to be a faultless person and told young Thomas to follow in Washington's footsteps. "Well," said Senator Corwin, "when I heard that George Washington was addicted to the vices and infirmities of man, I felt so relieved that I just shouted for joy." Lincoln laughed heartily. Later, when President Lincoln was told of Washington's reputation as a great wrestler, it was said that Lincoln brought up his own experience as a wrestler on the frontier. "If George was loafing around here now, I should be glad to have a tussle with him, and I rather believe that one of the plain people of Illinois would be able to manage the aristocrat of Old Virginia." If the presidential office appears to dazzle at times, it is not of record that Washington enjoyed the position, which brought him grief and kept him from his beloved Mount Vernon. (52)

Meanwhile, the provisional government of the Confederate States of America had been organized on February 4, 1861; exactly one month before Lincoln's own inauguration as the 16th President of the United States. Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens had been selected as provisional president and vice president of the "new nation." In 1861, Washington remained the hero for the Southern cause which was still passively conserving the antebellum status quo before it changed to the active assertion of independence by 1863. Colonel Robert E. Lee went with Virginia into the Confederacy in April 1861, a great boon to the Southern cause, and a great loss for the Union. The colonel was married to Mary, daughter of George Washington's adopted son. Lee had a deep reverence for the first President and strove to emulate him. (53)

Lincoln wished to visit Mount Vernon, Washington's home on the Potomac, to pay his respects at the gravesite of the Father of his Country, his boyhood hero, and now his predecessor as President of the Republic. However, a little over three weeks after his inauguration on March 27, 1861, Mrs. Lincoln; and her friends visited the home, probably without the President along. Mrs. Lincoln's maternal great grandmother Porter delivering provisions to her husband, Captain Andrew Porter, at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777, met an officer who took her to her husband. The officer was General Washington. Proud of her forbear, Mrs. Lincoln wrote her friend Hannah Shearer: "One day this week, we went down to Mount Vernon. A visit we can again pay, when you are with us." The President was in the midst of preparing 50 nominations for the U. S. Senate's consideration.

Even more importantly, it was not easy for Lincoln to get away because the crisis at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor had reached crisis proportions. In fact, the very next day, the Lincolns held their first state dinner for the cabinet and special guests. That same evening, Lincoln told cabinet members that General Winfield Scott had shockingly recommended evacuation of Fort Sumter, South Carolina and Fort Pickens, Florida. (54)

The Civil War began in the morning of April 12, 1861, when a signal mortar sounded; and a fiery ball ascended; and burst over the fort in Charleston Harbor. Major Robert Anderson surrendered his small garrison and marched out of the Fort on Sunday, April 14. For two hours Lincoln conferred with his old friend and rival, Senator Douglas of Illinois, who approved Lincoln's proclamation to call on the states for 75,000 men for the militia for three months service.

This far reaching act, the Federal militia act, was passed under President Washington in 1795. It provided for summoning the militia of the states into Federal service whenever the nation's laws should be resisted by "combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings." Lincoln had his finger on this statute and followed the precedent of Washington used in 1795 during the time of the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania when he called out the 75,000 militia "to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed." The President summoned Congress to meet in special session on July 4, 1861. He issued the proclamation on April 15 and the response from the free states was overwhelming. A Harvard professor born during Washington's presidency wrote: "I never knew what a popular excitement can be.... The whole population, men, women, and children, seem to be in the streets with Union favors and flags." (55)

As the rebels attacked a Federal garrison in Charleston Harbor, so Baltimore citizens attacked Federal troops passing through their city to defend the nation's government and protect lives and property in the capital city. Lincoln replied to a committee of fifty representing the Young Men's Christian Associations of Baltimore on Monday, April 22. He told the delegation that he would not break his presidential oath "and surrender the government without a blow." "There is no Washington in that, no [Andrew] Jackson in that, no manhood nor honor in that," he said sternly. "I have no desire to invade the South; but I must have troops to defend this Capital." (56)

President Lincoln sent his message to Congress in special session on July 4, 1861, the nation's birthday. "Our adversaries have adopted some Declarations of Independence; in which, unlike the good old one, penned by Jefferson, they omit the words "all men are created equal," Lincoln told the Congress; "Why?" "They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one, signed by Washington, they omit 'We, the People,' and substitute 'We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States,'" he observed. Lincoln then queried why the deliberate elimination of the rights of men and the authority of the people? "This is essentially a People's contest," Lincoln answered. It was "the patriotic instinct of the plain people." "They understood, without an argument; that destroyed the government, which was made by Washington, means no good to them." (57)

During the Civil War years, Mount Vernon was declared neutral territory. Both sides, North and South, claimed George Washington as a symbol of their cause. For Northerners, Washington symbolized the Union and in the South, whose President would be sworn in on Washington's Birthday, and under his statue, in Richmond, Virginia, Washington symbolized resistance to tyranny.

There had been a long struggle to save Washington's decaying home for the nation. Annoyed by thousands of visitors every year, and the destruction of his private property, the young owner was unable to keep the estate in proper order and he expressed a willingness to sell. Congress was asked to purchase it for the nation and failed. With the help of Edward Everett who delivered an oration upon Washington's character from city to city, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the property from John Augustine Washington in 1859.

Mount Vernon was located only 16 miles from the Lincoln White House, and about a hundred from Virginia's capital of Richmond. Already reluctantly loyal to the Federal government, Maryland possessed the broad Potomac River. Thus, the legal border between the Federal Union and the Confederacy did not run half a mile away through middle of the Potomac, but ran literally at the foot of Mount Vernon's sloping lawn down to the river front. Mount Vernon was the only island of neutrality during the war years.

If President Lincoln had ordered any of his commanding generals to march the Army of the Potomac in a straight line from the District of Columbia to Richmond, the Confederate capital, his troops would have had to march directly across Washington's Mount Vernon plantation. The Federal army did everything but that between April 1861 and April 1865. Although the residence at Mount Vernon had little knowledge of what was happening close at hand, they could at times hear the sound of artillery drifting across the fields for the first time since 1814. (58)

About the middle of August, 1861, there was a skirmish at Pohick Church, six miles from Mount Vernon. Northern pickets had been placed just north of Mount Vernon. Miss Sarah C. Tracy, who was Secretary of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, spent the war years on the plantation. On October 2, 1861, Lincoln's General in Chief of the United States Army, Winfield Scott, issued Miss Tracy a pass which would enable her to go in and out safely through Union lines on her travels between Mount Vernon, Alexandria, and Washington. But the pass was disputed by the pickets and the Federal pickets had moved down to within three miles of Mount Vernon and barricaded the road. Lacking candles, oil and food, Miss Tracy "took to the woods" and went directly to Washington to find help. Some advised her to see Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, others advised her to see Mrs. Lincoln, "but with a woman's instinct and faith in those who have proved kind, I went to Headquarters."

General Scott was ill, but her friend, Colonel E. D. Townshend listened to her story, and told her to write it all down and send it to him. She did so, and General Scott answered that she should see Lincoln himself if Scott's pass was disputed, "there was no power but the president who could help me"! So, Miss Tracy went to President Lincoln. She wrote: "He received me very kindly and wrote a note to Mr. McClellan requesting him to see me and arrange the matter in the best way possible." She carried Lincoln's note to General George McClellan who said "it was a grand mistake; he had never given an order revoking one of General Scott's passes." He knew his position well and would not dare do such a thing. It was all because of the zeal of some Volunteer officers.

In fact, McClellan offered to do anything he possibly could for her and offered to send a steam tug with provisions to Mount Vernon from time to time, as she might desire. Miss Tracy received a new pass much more positive than the first. She had climbed "the hill of Difficulty" at Mount Vernon, she said, but "everybody was so kind." (59)

On February 17, 1862; Congressman Edward Haight of New York wrote Lincoln to suggest that the "Commander in Chief order that the Farewell Address of Washington be read on his birthday, as the head of Armies and Navies, and that the Loyal people of the United States in all their states, cities and hamlets, their churches, houses and hearts be requested to devote that day to Exaltation for victory and gratitude to the Almighty protector of the Republic." Lincoln issued his "Proclamation for Celebration of Washington's Birthday" on February 19, 1862:
It is recommended to the People of the United States that they
assemble in their customary places of meeting for public
solemnities on the twenty-second day of February instant, and
celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the Father of His
Country by causing to be read to them his immortal Farewell
address. (60)

There was an elaborate celebration in the nation's capital on that day. A scheduled ceremony at the capitol included a presentation of capture Confederate flags to the Congress, which was to be followed by the reading of Washington's Farewell Address. However, Congressman John J. Crittenden of Kentucky introduced a resolution which opposed accepting the captured flags on the ground that they were nothing more than flags of pirates and rebels and represented no recognized legal government. After a very heated debate, Crittenden's resolution was adopted in the House seventy to sixty-one, to the great disappointment of the large crowd in the gallery. The pursuant ceremony was disrupted by a commotion in the audience. The captain of the Capitol Police, Nathan Darling, arrested two people in the lobby of the House of Representatives. Darling was indicted by a grand jury on the complaint of one he arrested. The case was continued in Criminal Court and Darling pled guilty and was fined heavily. Lincoln signed Darling's pardon on February 18, 1863; nearly a year later. (61)

Lincoln did not attend the Washington Birthday celebration at the Capitol. The day after he issued his official Proclamation for Washington's Birthday celebration, his son Willie Lincoln died, and his youngest son, Tad, remained seriously ill in his second floor White House bedroom. Lincoln's cabinet met and requested Congress to cancel illumination of public buildings on Washington's Birthday out of respect for the President's family. By Joint Resolution of Congress, all public buildings were not illuminated that evening. A year later, Lincoln acknowledged the receipt of "a beautifully engrossed and bound copy of the resolutions and proceedings of a meeting of Merchants of New York assembled in obedience to my proclamation to observe in an especial manner the Birthday of Washington in the year of our Lord, 1862...." Lincoln thanked them for their "patriotism and loyalty." (62)

During the last week in March 1862; Mrs. Lincoln, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg of Illinois, and a select party of friends, visited Mount Vernon by steamer. Captain Baker of the steamer Thomas Collyer escorted them over the grounds. Upton H. Herbert, Superintendent and a direct descendant of a great grandmother whose sister married into the Washington family, took them into the Banqueting Room and General Washington's bedroom where he died in 1799. Then he escorted them through Washington's gardens. Miss Tracy wrote: "I have not seen Mrs. Lincoln, but unprejudiced persons say she is rather stout, dresses in admirable taste, and receives like a lady." Her friend saw her "more than once, and said there was nothing coarse or unlady-like in her manner or conversation, all the slang and bad manners attributed to her is false." (63)

Wishing to see Washington's home and gravesite, and probably encouraged by his wife, Lincoln suggested that Mrs. Lincoln's visiting sister, Elizabeth Edwards, make up a party of Springfield relatives and friends for a visit to Mount Vernon. So on the morning of April 2, 1862; the President and Mrs. Lincoln, and their party, together with Commodore Dahlgren, went down the Potomac by steamer, passed the arsenal and Fort Washington and spent a delightful hour and a half visit at Washington's mansion, gardens and tomb. Although some accounts say that the President remained aboard the boat, his biographer, Benjamin P. Thomas, suggested that he went ashore. It must have been a moving experience for Lincoln to visit the home and gravesite of his boyhood hero. Lincoln had much on his mind that day. General McClellan arrived at Yorktown and started his Peninsula Campaign. (64)

The matter of colonizing freed blacks outside the United States came to ahead in July and August 1862. An interview was arranged with President Lincoln and a committee of blacks headed by Edward Thomas on August 14, 1862. Speaking to the committee, Lincoln referred to Washington's childless condition while he urged free blacks to migrate to Africa. He told the black delegation:
In the American Revolutionary war sacrifices were made by men
engaged in it; but they were cheered by the future. Gen.
Washington himself endured greater physical hardships than if
he had remained a British subject. Yet he was a happy man,
because he was engaged in benefitting his race--something for
the children of his neighbors, having none of his own.

Such a sacrifice in leaving the United States for Liberia would be like Washington's sacrifice during the Revolutionary War. Blacks were openly hostile to Lincoln's colonization proposal--with or without Washington's example. (65)

Various gentlemen associated with religious bodies in New York called on the President to urge upon him the need for enforcing better Sabbath observance in the army. The interview with Lincoln was agreeable and "satisfactory." On November 15, 1862; the President issued his "Order for Sabbath Observance" to reduce Sunday labor in the Army and Navy "to the measure of strict necessity." "The discipline and character of the national force should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperiled, by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High," he declared. Lincoln quoted Washington's words in 1776: "At this time of public distress men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality." "The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country, "Lincoln concluded with Washington's words. This was the first General Order issued on July 9, 1776 by the Father of his Country after the Declaration of Independence. (66)

LINCOLN'S PRESIDENTIAL YEARS: ABOLITION, VICTORY AND WASHINGTON 1863-1865

On January 1, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued one of the most important state papers ever issued by a President of the United States; the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln had read a copy of George Livermore's little book entitled An Historical Research: Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers, which argued that free black men had also served in the Revolutionary armies, and that General Washington had valued their services. Whether due to this argument or just the nature of the war by 1863, Lincoln was ready to authorize the service of freedmen in the United States military forces. This statement was the most important change Lincoln made from his Preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation issued on September 22, 1862. As Historian Mark Neely, Jr. declares: "This momentous decision guaranteed a multiracial future for the United States." (67)

Public meetings were organized by the United States Christian Commission in Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Washington "to check distrust and disloyalty and to restore confidence and support to the government." To give the Washington meeting greater prestige, the House of Representatives was selected as the site for the meeting, Washington's Birthday was chosen for the date, and President Lincoln was selected to serve as chairman of the occasion. Lincoln declined to preside but he fully supported the purpose of the meeting: "To strengthen our reliance on the Supreme Being, for the final triumph for the right, can not but be well for us all." Then he added: "The birth-day of Washington, and the Christian Sabbath, coinciding this year [1863], and suggesting together is most propitious for the meeting proposed." (68)

As President, Lincoln did not limit himself to legally official acts, as may be found in his establishment of Thanksgiving as an official national holiday along with Washington's Birthday and the Fourth of July. Through Lincoln the day became the matter of a regular annual proclamation by the President of the United States. The religious observance of thanksgiving was an old American custom traced back to the days of the "Plimoth" Colony. Before Lincoln, there were no regular annual presidential proclamations for the day. Presidents Washington, Adams, and Madison had called for special days of public thanks or prayer; but, they were never annual or associated with the harvest festival familiar in Europe and early America.

Washington had issued such a proclamation when the whiskey insurrection was suppressed in 1795. On October 3, 1863; following Washington's precedent, Lincoln issued a proclamation "to set apart ... the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." Again, Lincoln issued another Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 20, 1864, setting aside the last Thursday in November. Thus, Lincoln is credited with beginning the regular national observance of Thanksgiving. (69)

On Washington's Birthday, 1864 there was a meeting in the nation's capital of the Vice Regents of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The war continued to cut off Mount Vernon's sources of revenue. Strict Federal control of giving passes meant that few land visitors came to Mount Vernon any more. And, by January, 1864; they had ceased entirely. A boat had been permitted to run regularly between Mount Vernon and Washington; but, after the second battle of Bull Run [Manassas] in August, 1862, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton forbade passengers to land on the Virginia side of the Potomac. A few days after the meeting, the Vice Regent of the Association, Harriet V. Fitch, wrote to the President, requesting that the steamboat Thomas Collyer [which both the President and Mrs. Lincoln had taken before] be permitted once again to run between Washington and Mount Vernon. "We have through much labor bought, and paid for, the home and grave of Washington, and but for the national troubles, would long since have collected a sum, equal to its restoration, and future keeping," she wrote. "Now," she said:
we have no means to keep it--no revenue but such as this boat
will bring us. With that we will be enabled to go on another
year, at least, and at the end of that time, let us hope for
brighter days, when we can add to our fund; by further
collections in the States.

Lincoln sent the letter to the Secretary of War, and endorsed the letter: "I send this over as a reminder in relation to allowing the 'Thomas Colyer' to run between here and Mount-Vernon." But, Stanton's endorsement follows the President's: "The Secretary of War does not deem it expedient to allow a Steamboat to run to Mt Vernon at present." The boat would not be allowed to run until June 1, 1865. (70)

In the spring of 1864, Union arms were progressing, and Congress decided to revive the rank of lieutenant general which was last held by George Washington. The Senate approved a bill on February 26, 1864; which authorized the President, with the consent of the Senate, to appoint a lieutenant general from those officers "most distinguished for courage, skill and ability" to command the armies of the United States. In the process of passing both houses, Grant's name had been attached to the bill by Congressman Washburne of Illinois and then had been dropped. But it was fully understood for whom the position was intended. Convinced Grant had no presidential ambitions to interfere with his responsibilities, Lincoln appointed him and the Senate confirmed the nomination on March 6. The next day Stanton ordered Grant to report to Washington. Now General Washington had a successor as Lieutenant General of the United States. (71)

There was a vast woods about 35 miles south of Mount Vernon known as the Wilderness. During the days of May and June, 1864, the woods were filled with both Federal and Confederate soldiers, fighting one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war. The new Lieutenant General had begun his drive toward Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. In the Battle of the Wilderness alone, May 5-7, 1864; the effective strength of the Army of the Potomac was 115,000; it suffered 17,500 casualties (15 percent). The effective strength of the Army of Northern Virginia was 60,000; its casualties were estimated at 7,500 (12 percent).

But, from June 1 to June 3, Grant was involved in the most disastrous event of his military career, a hopeless attack on a strong entrenched position. Lee's men mowed down the Federal troops as they came in waves. Grant lost ten thousand men, the pride of his army. (72)

While the battle was raging at Cold Harbor, delegates en route to Baltimore to the National Union (Republican) Convention stopped to see the President to learn of his views. "They were all welcomed with genial and cordial courtesy, but received not the slightest intimation of what would be agreeable to him," observed his secretaries. The Convention met on June 7, 1864 with great unanimity behind Lincoln's re-nomination. The following day, with the exception of Missouri, each state cast its vote for Lincoln. The decision was then made unanimous by the delegates and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee was nominated for Vice President. (73)

Songs were a common feature of special events, campaigns, elections and presidential inaugurations since the days of the early Republic. For the 1864, Lincoln presidential campaign, Henry C. Work composed both words and music for Washington and Lincoln, and published them in Cleveland Ohio. Thus Lincoln was already conjoined with "the Great Washington" in song and verse. The national history in the future would contain the story of these two great American patriots which would never be excelled. Work penned:
Come, happy people! Oh come let us tell
The story of Washington and Lincoln!
History's pages can never excel
The story of Washington and Lincoln.
Down through the ages an anthem shall go,
Bearing the honors we gladly bestow--
Till every nation and language shall know
The story of Washington and Lincoln:

The composer believed that both whites and blacks shared in passing their glorious "tale" on to future generations.
Parents to children shall tell with delight,
The story of Washington and Lincoln:
Free born and freed men together recite
The story of Washington and Lincoln
Earth's weary bond men shall listen with cheer--
Tyrants shall tremble, and trators shall fear--
When, in it's fullness of glory, they hear
The story of Washington and Lincoln:

In his concluding verse Work makes references to their role in two great American wars, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, but notes that only "Peace" could reveal their full "story."
Though on the war cloud recorded with steel,
The story of Washington and Lincoln;
Peace only Peace, can completely reveal
The story of Washington and Lincoln.
Thanks to the Lord for the days we behold!
Thanks for the unsullied flag we unfold!
Thanks that to us, and in our time, was told
The story of Washington and Lincoln:

Then the Lincoln songster repeats his chorus:
Who gave us independence, On continent and sea
Who saved the glorious Union! And set a people free!
This is the story--Oh happy are we--
The story of Washington and Lincoln.

A few days after his re-nomination, accompanied by a committee of escort, President Lincoln and his party left Washington on a special train for Philadelphia to attend the Great Central Fair in aid of the U. S. Sanitary Commission. Lincoln responded to a toast at a banquet held in the main assembly hall of the fair. He said:
War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its
magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible....
It has destroyed property, and ruined homes; ... We accepted this
war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when
the object is attained.... I have never been in the habit of
making predictions in regard to the war, but I am almost tempted
to make one.--If I were to hazard it, it is this: That Grant is
this evening, with general Meade and General Hancock, of
Pennsylvania, and the brave officers and soldiers with him, in a
position from whence he will never be dislodged until Richmond
is taken.

Following Lincoln's address, James Pollock, former governor of Pennsylvania, presented Lincoln with a silver medal on behalf of the ladies of the Fair. He responded to the gift of the medal:
I have only to say that I accept this present of the ladies as
an additional token of your confidence, but I do not need any
further evidence of the loyalty and devotion of the women of
America to the cause of the Union and the cause of Christian
humility. I accept it thankfully, as another manifestation of
the esteem of the ladies. (74)

In addition to the silver medal, the Ladies of the fair also gave Lincoln other presents as well, including a memento of General Washington. "The loyal ladies of Trenton," many of them were descendants of those 'Matrons and Maidens' who had scattered flowers in Washington's path when he passed through the triumph arch built in 1789. "By the blessing of Providence," the arch marked the spot where General C. C. Cornwallis had been repulsed, an occasion that "reversed the gloomy fortunes of war for our National Independence." It was a token of their "love confidence and respect."

The presentation read:
Approaching as you do so near the character and experiencing
the trials and responsibilities of the venerated Father of our
Country, most especially in unswerving fidelity to free
principles and the discharge of all the duties with which you
have been invested by a confiding people, we trust that you
may find in the staff now presented you, as an 'heir loom' of
the old Arch, where the 'gratulating song' was sung by the
patriotic young ladies of Trenton, similar gratification as that
which was felt by Washington.

Because of pressing responsibilities, Lincoln was not able to thank the "Loyal Ladies of Trenton, New Jersey" until July 25, 1864. Then he recalled that he had been presented "a very pretty Cane," on their behalf by a gentleman whose name he could not remember; so much for a former governor of Pennsylvania. It does not appear that Lincoln was awed by the historic nature of the gift, however. (75)

Lincoln received a letter from Charleston, South Carolina, written by Mrs. M. Davis Parks on August 22, 1864. She told Lincoln that her older son had since died while he was removed from Point Lookout to Elmira Prison and requested that her younger son, Bushrod Washington Parks should be released. "Not only in my own name, but in that of Washington I make my request, as the Grand-son of Harriet Washington the much loved niece and adopted daughter of the great Patriot," she wrote. "I feel he should have the consideration of the representative of the people of this union...." But these young men had chosen to take up arms against the Union and the "representative of the people." Nevertheless on June 24, 1864 Lincoln responded: "Allow this lady, Mrs. Parks, with her friend, Mr. Tallmadge, to see her two sons, prisoners of war at Point Lookout." (76)

A Confederate agent, Clement C. Clay, in Canada prepared a Platform, and an Address, which was to be adopted by the Democrats at their Chicago Convention slated to meet on August 29, 1864. But, Clay himself was for peace and disunion. Before the Democrats assembled in Chicago, Lincoln wrote out in his own handwriting Clay's words:
The stupid tyrant who now disgraces the Chair of Washington and
Jackson could, any day, have peace and restoration of the Union;
and would have them, only that he persists in the war merely to
free the slaves.

Even before the Democrats had met, Lincoln's chances for reelection seemed hopeless. (77)

Defection struck among the Republicans. A movement spread among the party ranks to remove Abraham Lincoln from the Union Party ticket. Public dissatisfaction was due both to the military failures and the Lincolns Administration's unwillingness to consider any terms of peace to end the war until slavery had been abolished. This was the time when Lincoln had no "adversary," a Democratic nominee, and "seemed to have no friends." Lincoln himself began to feel that his Administration could not be reelected. The war was now in its fourth year. Weary and thin and with little appetite, sitting at his desk, he remarked whimsically, "I wish George Washington or some of those old patriots were here in my place so that I could have a little rest." (78)

Lincoln came to the conclusion that his reelection might be very close in the Electoral College. The President was clearly counting on the soldier vote. But, as election day drew near, Lincoln became more confident of victory. Washington was very quiet on election day, November 8, 1864. Still somewhat uneasy, he was not sure just how the people would vote. Lincoln's friend from California, Noah Brooks found Lincoln alone at the White House. "The house has been still and almost deserted today," John Hay, his assistant secretary wrote in his diary, "Everybody in Washington, not at home voting, seems ashamed of it and stays away from the President." It seems ironic that Lincoln was left alone in a rather deserted White House on that rainy day of election--a rather depressing portrait.

However, there were those around the President who had clearly grasped Lincoln's capabilities. Secretary of State Seward saw what others did not see. After Seward cast his ballot for president on the Union ticket, he responded to a large crowd gathering in front of his residence on Lafayette Square, across from the White House:
Henceforth all men will come to see him as you and I have seen
him: a true loyal patient patriotic, and benevolent man....
Abraham Lincoln will take his place alongside Washington,
Franklin, Adams, Jefferson and Jackson, among the benefactors
of the country and of the human race.

Despite Lincoln's fears, he received an overwhelming majority of votes. Except for three states, every state that voted in the 1864 election gave majorities to the Republican or Union candidates, Lincoln and Johnson; two states were former slaves states, Kentucky and Delaware. Lincoln's election clearly demonstrated that "a people's government can sustain a national election in the midst of a great civil war." His election was another major turning point in destroying the hope of southern independence. (79)

The day after the election, F. W. Emmons of Sturbridge, Massachusetts wrote Lincoln a letter. An old man of 105 years lived in Sturbridge and was a Democrat of the Jeffersonian School. Deacon John Phillips had voted for Washington as young man, and on election day 1864, he rode from his home, two miles, to the Town Hall with his son, Colonel Edward Phillips, who was 79 years old, to cast his vote for president. He was offered two votes, George B. McClellan or Abraham Lincoln, to take his choice. The old man answered: "I vote for Abraham Lincoln." The Centenarian John Phillips had voted for both Washington and Lincoln. The President was impressed.

Some days later, on November 21, 1864, Lincoln picked up his pen and wrote old man Phillips: "I have heard of the incident at the polls in your town, in which you bore so honored a part, and I take the liberty of writing to you to express my personal gratitude for the compliment paid me by the suffrage of a citizen so venerable." Then he added: "The example of such devotion to civic duties is one whose days have already extended an average life time beyond the Psalmist's limit, cannot but be valuable and fruitful." Lincoln was grateful. "It is not for myself only, but for the country which you have in your sphere served so long and so well, that I thank you."

It took some time but Deacon Phillips replied to the President's letter of appreciation on January 16, 1865:
I feel that I have no desire to live but to see the conclusion
of this wicked rebellion, and the power of God displayed in
the conversion of the nation. 1 believe by the help of God
you will accomplish the first--and also be the means of
establishing universal freedom and restoring peace to the
Union. (80)

After Lincoln's reelection, in the fall and winter of 1864-65, Washington offices and salons were filled with rumors that soon after Lincoln's re-inauguration in March the president's cabinet would "all bust up". Lincoln still had friends who were willing to defend him. Edward Everett of Massachusetts [the keynote speaker at Gettysburg] delivered a speech in Boston and eloquently replied to the charge that Lincoln's administration lacked "unity of counsel" by pointing out that George Washington's cabinet had included "the heads of two radically opposite parties," Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Everett protested: "It rarely happens that any other course is practicable in difficult times." But the gossips continued to characterize Lincoln's cabinet as a "solemn failure," and that even the President had come to realize it. (81)

On Washington's Birthday 1865, the Washington Literary and Dramatic Association planned to give a Soiree at Odd Fellows Hall in honor of the First President. President Lincoln was invited to attend, but did not do so. The President was not well. (82)

As the war appeared to be drawing to a close, the New York Times, edited by Lincoln's 1864 Campaign Manager, Henry J. Raymond, drew on Washington for inspiration:
Every since WASHINGTON'S day, secession has a been trying to
show its head, but has always been put down in his name.
WASHINGTON is completing his second cycle. He was with
JACKSON in 1832, when he suppressed treason, and he also
sailed with WINFIELD SCOTT into the harbor of Charleston;
stood by Anderson in 1861, and was with GILMORE, last
Saturday, when he put that good old flag on Fort Sumter
once more. He has been with ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and has gone
with us through the war, teaching us to bear reverses patiently.
He was with GRANT as the taking of Vicksburgh, and will go
with him to Richmond. He went with PORTER to Wilmington; with
SHERMAN to Atlanta and Charleston, and will go with him to
Richmond. His spirit leads us in this second war of the
Constitution, and if the rebellion should cease, he would
still guide us in peaceful enterprises. (83)

Abraham Lincoln took office for the second time as President of the United States on March 4, 1865. As Washington before, he again took the same presidential oath to serve as the nation's Chief Executive for a second term. A new feature in the simple ceremony was the presence of a battalion of black troops in the president's escort. He called for binding up the nation's wounds, "with malice toward none and charity for all." Although drawing from the New Testament lesson of forgiveness, he reminded the nation that "The Almighty has His own purposes." As he told a friend later: "There is a God governing the world." "Lincoln plumbed depths of spirituality never touched by Washington," Historian Merrill Peterson observed. Lincoln who took the presidential office with some reluctance had indeed become a revolutionary leader like Washington himself. "Lincoln fits the pattern of a revolutionary leader," writes Historian James M. McPherson. "He was a reluctant one at first, to be sure, but in the end he was more radical than Washington or Jefferson or any of the leaders of the first revolution." Lincoln had supported the abolition of slavery which made the Civil War a revolution. (84)

Richmond fell on April 3, 1865, a day which was long remembered by the people of the nation, in both sections of the country. The North was turned into a frenzy of joyous excitement.

On the Palm Sunday morning, April 9, 1865; General Robert E. Lee surrendered less than one sixth of the Confederates in arms at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The southern cause had fallen to pieces. The remaining armies of the Confederacy, though perhaps inconsiderable when compared with the large Federal force, were still infinitely larger than any General Washington had ever commanded, and still remained capable of great resistance and much trouble. But the next morning, booming cannon awakened Washington City to the news of the surrender. Those at Mount Vernon did know the reason for all the noise until later when they heard that General Lee had surrendered. (85)

LINCOLN'S DEATH, FUNERAL AND WASHINGTON 1865

Good Friday, April 14, 1865 was a very busy day for the President. Sometime after 5 p.m., President and Mrs. Lincoln took a carriage drive alone into the countryside and talked about their future together after his second term was completed. During the drive, Mrs. Lincoln told her husband: "Dear husband, you almost startle me, by your great cheerfulness." He responded: "I consider this day, the war has come to a close...." That evening the Lincolns prepared for theater to attend a benefit performance of "Our American Cousin." (86)

The Lincolns arrived late to Ford's Theatre and, with their guests. The orchestra struck up "Hail to the Chief," Lincoln acknowledged the applause, placed his hand over his heart and bowed twice. They were seated, just over the stage, in the box, festooned with American flags, and the Treasury Guard's blue regimental flag at the center post. To add patriotic color for the historic occasion, John T. Ford, proprietor, brought a gilt-framed engraving of George Washington from the reception room and placed it on the center pillar.

During the third act, holding Mrs. Lincoln's hand in his, he turned to view someone in the orchestra below. Unobserved, John Wilkes Booth, the actor, stepped close behind the President's head and fired the trigger of his .44 caliber weapon. Her agonizing screams told the audience what had happened in a theater box festooned with Washington's portrait. Booth had left a gash from his spur in the side of the gilded frame. (87)

The mortally wounded and insensible President was taken across the street to a rooming house owned by William Petersen. And, the President stopped breathing at 7:21 and 55 seconds on the morning of April 15, and his pulse ceased beating at 7:22 and 10 seconds. President Lincoln now joined the illustrious dead of the nation, along with George Washington. For the first time in the history of "this democratic republican government, the tragic scenes of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution were enacted in America almost within sight of the last resting place of the Father of the country," noted the New York Herald. But, the assassination also evoked the memory of a previous plot to assassinate George Washington in 1776, when one of his privates in his bodyguard was hanged. (88)

It was to be the longest state funeral in the history of the United States. Although bedridden in her second floor White House bedroom, Mrs. Lincoln had to make serious decisions. On at least three occasions, she said "no." Mrs. Lincoln said "no" to enshrining her husband's remains in New York City. She said "no" to her husband's interment in Washington (the Congressional Cemetery was also recommended). The widow also said "no" to depositing his remains in the vault under the Senate Chamber in the Capitol building. It was originally designed for George Washington, whose wife, Martha, also said "no," preferring to keep him interred at Mount Vernon. (89)

Mrs. Lincoln did agree to a funeral procession after the White House obsequies. And, she also yielded to his remains lying in state at the Capitol rotunda, en route home to Springfield, Illinois, following almost the same route he had taken east as President-elect four years before. The business of saying farewell took almost a full week in the nation's capital. The capitol rotunda was heavily draped and all the paintings and statues were shrouded. Only Houdon's white plaster statue of George Washington appeared differently. It was simply hung with a black sash in the military fashion. After the lying in state, the first lieutenant general since Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, walked behind the hearse as the President's remains were taken to the train for the nearly 1,700- mile journey. The dead President's remains finally came to rest in Oakridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois in the temporary receiving vault. As his funeral train slowly wound its way back to Illinois, the Lincoln legend was born, placing him alongside George Washington. And, Lincoln's old friends intended to place the remains of the resurrected hero of Springfield in the middle of the city in a proper memorial. (90)

When Lincoln's son, Robert, returned to Washington, he informed his mother that his father's old friends had already purchased the Mather property with its beautiful grove of native trees. The Lincoln Monument Association was advised of her objections through her son and family members. The land was unconsecrated ground and did not allow a place for his wife and children to be buried. On June 5, 1865, she wrote Governor Richard J. Oglesby that in all candor and fairness she wished to notify the Monument association that unless she was officially assured in the next ten days that "the Monument will be erected over the Tomb in Oak Ride Cemetery, in accordance with my oft expressed wishes," she would yield consent to the request of the National Monument association in Washington and other Eastern friends to "have the sacred remains deposited, in the vault, prepared for Washington, under the Dome of the National Capitol, at as early a period as practicable." This was, of course, only a threat because if there was no place beside her husband, she would not have been interested. (91)

Evidently, she had not received the assurance immediately, and read in the paper that the Governor and Ozias M. Hatch, another member of the Monument Association, were on the way to see her in Chicago. Nevertheless, she followed with another letter to the Governor on June 10, 1865. "My determination is unalterable," she wrote. If she did not receive a formal and written agreement that the Monument would be placed over her "Beloved" husband's body in Oak Ridge Cemetery, and that only the bodies of the President, his wife, his sons, and his sons' families would be buried there, she would "rigidly comply with my resolution." She had not anticipated that her wishes would not be carried out or she would have "readily yielded to the request of the many and had his precious remains, in the first instance placed in the vault of the National Capitol, a tomb prepared for Washington the Father of his Country and a fit resting place for the immortal Savior and Martyr for Freedom." However, a majority of the members of the Monument association felt compelled to reject Mrs. Lincoln's proposition. Again, the next day, she wrote: "My wish to have the Monument, placed over my Husband's remains, will meet the approval of the whole civilized world...." In time, she won. (92)

During this very time when Mrs. Lincoln struggled to honor her husband in her own way as his wife and widow, their mutual friend, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered a eulogy entitled "Promises of the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln" before a Boston audience in the Music Hall on June 1, 1865 at 4:00 p.m. During the later White House years, Sumner had visited with the Lincolns almost constantly. He attended their receptions, he went to the opera with both of them; he even accompanied them on a trip down to visit Grant's Army in the field. It was a close relationship. Sumner had been at the bedside when the President died on April 15, and Lincoln's son, Robert, had leaned on him through that long night and morning.

Sumner pointed out that this was only the second time the American people had been summoned by a President [Andrew Johnson, this time] to unite on an appointed day to commemorate the death of a great leader, the first had been George Washington. "Thus are WASHINGTON and LINCOLN associated in the grandeur of their obsequies," he noted. Sumner explained:
It is from the nature of things, and because the part which
Lincoln was called to perform resembled in character the part
which was performed by Washington. The work left undone by
Washington was continued by Lincoln. Kindred in service, kindred
in patriotism, each was naturally surrounded at death by kindred
homage. One sleeps in the East, and the other sleeps in the
West; and thus, in death, as in life, one is the complement
of the other.

Then Sumner, the great orator of the United States Senate, compared Washington and Lincoln in that which they were much alike:
Each was at the head of the Republic during a period of
surpassing trial; and each thought only of the public good,
simply, purely, constantly, so that single-hearted devotion to
country will always find a synonyme[sic] in their names. Each
was the national chief during a time of successful war. Each
was the representative of his country at a great epoch of
history. But here, perhaps, the resemblance ends and the
contrast begins.

But there were also differences between these two great American presidents:
Unlike in origin, conversation, and character, they were unlike
also in the ideas which they served, except as each was the
servant of his country. The war conducted by Washington was
unlike the war conducted by Lincoln--as the peace which crowned the
arms of the one was unlike the peace which began to smile upon the
other. The two wars did not differ in the scale of operations, and
in the tramp of mustered hosts, more than in the idea involved.
The first was national independence; the second was to make the
Republic one and indivisible, on the indestructible foundations of
Liberty and Equality. The first only cut the connection with the
mother country, and opened the way to the duties and advantages of
Popular Government. The second will have failed unless it
performs all the original promises of that Declaration which our
fathers took upon their lips when they became a Nation.

Charles Sumner, Lincoln friend, seemed to have a clearer view of the contributions which both Washington and Lincoln had made to the Union--contributions which built one upon the other. (93)

Lincoln's name was now constantly coupled with Washington's. It certainly had begun in the last year of the President's life, as when Seward mentioned them together on the day of Lincoln's second presidential election; but, now funeral banners proclaimed; "Washington the Father, Lincoln the Savior."

There were some people who urged that Lincoln be entombed beside Washington at Mount Vernon. But, of course, Mrs. Lincoln would not have consented. After Lincoln's assassination, picture publishers across the nation began transforming the Washington, Lincoln relationship in prints and photographic composites. From May 15, to July 15, Lincoln items were published in bulk, many of them with Washington somewhere on the item. (94)

During the weeks after the President's death, while the Lincoln Funeral Train made its slow winding journey back to Illinois, Northern preachers and politicians alike drew comparisons between the first president and the sixteenth. Lincoln was even called "the second Father of his Country." They struck the common note that there had been no purer statesman, or wiser, nobler Christian man at the head of the government since the days of Washington. Some preachers called Washington the first Savior of his Country, and Lincoln was the second one; thus, Washington's equal. From this time forward, Washington began to share his glory with Abraham Lincoln.

On April 16, 1865, Easter Sunday, and the day after Lincoln's death, Pastor J. G. Butler of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Washington, D. C. declared: "In all future this name [Lincoln] will stand beside that of Washington. If he was the father of his country, under God, Abraham Lincoln was its savior." Others pronounced Lincoln even greater than Washington because Lincoln had saved the nation which Washington had founded. (95)

Young Lincoln had repeatedly spoken in the Indiana and Illinois years of the "Immortal Washington." In death, Abraham Lincoln too had become "immortal." Again the following morning after Lincoln's death, on Easter Sunday morning, another eulogist proclaimed:
His hearse is plumed with a nation's grief; his resurrection is
hailed with the songs of revolutionary patriots, of soldiers
that have died for their country. He, the commander-in-chief has
gone to his army of the dead! The patriot President has gone to our
Washington! (96)

(1) Frank Brooks Cowgill, "Washington and Lincoln: A Comparison and a Contrast, Lincoln Fellowship of Southern California (1942), 10-17; Isaac Rusling Pennypacker, "Washington and Lincoln" (New York, 1934), pp. 34-37.

(2) A Memorial of Abraham Lincoln, Late President of the United States (Boston: Printed by Order of the City Council, 1865), pp. 92-93

(3) Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, and Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Twenty Days (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1965), p. 302.

(4) Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln: 1809-1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 1:2.

(5) William E. Barton, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, 1925), 1:30, pp. 9-10.

(6) Ibid., pp. 63-64.

(7) Noah Brooks, Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of Slavery (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1894), pp. 223-224.

(8) Josiah G. Holland, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, MA: Gurdon Bill, 1866), p. 31 ; John Locke Scripps, Life of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler and Lloyd A. Dunlap (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1961), pp. 35-36

(9) Louis A. Warren, Lincoln's Youth. Seven to Twenty-One, 1816-1830 (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1959), pp. 90-91.

(10) Ibid., pp. 93-95.

(11) Ibid., pp. 162-164; Charles Maltby, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln (Stockton, CA, 1884), p. 18.

(12) Caleb Carman to William H. Herndon, December 8, 1866, in Douglas I. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 504

(13) Jason Duncan to William H. Herndon, late 1866-early 1867, in Herndon's Informants, p. 540

(14) Abner Y. Ellis to William H. Herndon, January 1866, in Herndon's Informants, p. 174; Christopher C. Brown (William H. Herndon interview), [1865-66]; Ibid., p. 438

(15) D.W. Bartlett, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln (New York: A.B. Burdick, 1860), p. 21

(16) Ibid., p. 24.

(17) "Address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838," in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, J.J.: Rutgers University Press in association with the Abraham Lincoln Association, 1953-1955), 1:115; Sangomo Journal, November 3, 1838; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1:270

(18) "Speech on the Sub-Treasury, December [26], 1839," in CWAL, 1:172-173

(19) Mentor Graham (William H. Herndon interview), [1865-1866], in Herndon's Informants, 452; pp. 260-261; "Temperance Address, February 22, 1842," in CWAL, 1:279; Earl Schenck Miers, ed., Lincoln Day by Day (Washington: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960), 1:202

(20) "Campaign Circular from Whig Committee, March 4, 1843," in CWAL, 1:3-9, 312; "Speech in Virginia, Illinois, February 23, 1844," Ibid., 1:333-334

(21) Holland, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 100; "Speech in United States House of Representatives: The War with Mexico," January 12, 1848, in CWAL.

(22) Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1:454-455; National Intelligencer, July 6, 1848

(23) "Speech in U.S. House of Representatives on the Presidential Question, July 27, 1848," in CWAL, 1:502

(24) Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), p. 132; "Eulogy on Henry Clay, July 6, 1852," in CWAL, 2:127

(25) Henry C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston: Eses and Lauriat, 1892), pp. 45-46; Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, Recollected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 490

(26) "Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854," in CWAL, 1:502.

(27) Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1962), pp. 40-46; "Call for Republican Convention, May 10, 1856," in CWAL, 2:340.

(28) "Speech at Vandalia, September 23, 2856," in CWAL, 2:378; Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, 4; Barry Schwartz, George Washington, The Making of An American Symbol (New York: The Free Press, 187), p. 195

(29) "'A House Divided:' Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858," in CWAL, 2:468

(30) "First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858," in CWAL, 3:8; "First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858," Ibid., 3:18; "Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858," Ibid., 3:111; "Fourth Debate with Stephan A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858," Ibid., 3:162, 178, 181.

(31) "Fifth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Galesburg, Illinois, October 7, 1858," in CWAL, 3:220.

(32) James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 187-188; Lincoln to Anson G. Henry, November 19, 1858," in CWAL, 3:339. (Note: to the date--five years later--Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.]

(33) Collected Works, 3:378-379, 384, 389, 394-395, 4:34.

(34) Harry V. Jaffa and Robert W. Johnannsen, In the Name of the People (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1959), 3-6; 20-23; "Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, September 17, 1859," in CWAL, 3:453

(35) "Speech at Beloit, Wisconsin, October 1, 1859," in CWAL, 3:484

(36) Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, 145; "Speech at Leavenworth, Kansas, December 3, 1859," in CWAL, 3:497-498; "Second Speech at Leavenworth, Kansas, December 5, 1859," in CWAL, 3:502

(37) Address at Cooper Institute, New York City, February 27, 1860," in CWAL, 3:537, pp. 536-537

(38) Ibid., 3:550; Noah Brooks, Abraham Lincoln (Washington, D.C.: National Tribune, 1888), p. 187; Lord Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1917), pp. 156-157.

(39) Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 204-205; "Speech at Hartford, Connecticut, March 5, 1850," in CWAL, 4:6, pp. 11-12.

(40) "Speech at New Haven, Connecticut, March 6, 1860," in CWAL, 4:23, 26-27, 29-30

(41) Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 206-207.

(42) Holland, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 224-226; Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Lincoln Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984), p. 188

(43) Don E. Fehrenbacher, Lincoln in Text and Context: Collected Essays (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), p. 67; Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, p. 225; Holland, Abraham Lincoln, p. 243; "Endorsement: Thomas B. Bryan to Lincoln [November 22, 1860]," in CWAL, 4:144.

(44) "To Alexander H. Stephens, December 22, 1860," in CWAL, 4:160

(45) "Farewell Address at Springfield, Illinois, February 11, 1861 [C. Version]," in CWAL, 4:190-191.

(46) "Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, February 12, 1861 ," in CWAL, 4:199; "Address to the Ohio Legislature, Columbus, Ohio, February 13, 1861 ," Ibid., 204.

(47) "Address to the New Jersey Senate at Trenton, New Jersey, February 21, 1861," in CWAL, 4:235-236.

(48) "Address to the New Jersey General Assembly at Trenton, New Jersey, February 21, 1861 ," in CWAL, 4:236-237.

(49) Holland, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 269-270; Brooks, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 230-231

(50) "Address to the Pennsylvania General Assembly at Harrisburg, February 22, 1861," in CWAL, 4:244.

(51) "First Inaugural Address-First Edition and Revisions, March 4, 1861," in CWAL, 4:261; "First Inaugural Address-First Text, March 4, 1861 ," Ibid., 271

(52) Alexander K. McClure, "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories (Philadelphia: Winston, 1901), p. 235; James G. Randall, Lincoln the President: Midstream (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1953), p. 2

(53) Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865 (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1979), p. 224.

(54) Baltimore Sun, March 29, 1861 ; Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1987), p. 16; James G. Randall, Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1946), 1:332; Mary Lincoln to Hannah Shearer, March [28], 1861, in Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 82

(55) Randall, Lincoln the President, 1:354; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 274.

(56) "Reply to Baltimore Committee, April 22, 1861," in CWAL, 4:438-439

(57) "Message to Congress in Special Session, July 4, 1861 ," in CWAL, 4:438-439.

(58) Dorothy Troth Muir, Mount Vernon: The Civil War Years (Mount Vernon, VA: The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, 1993), pp. 28-31

(59) Ibid., pp. 87-91

(60) "Proclamation for Celebration of Washington's Birthday, February 19, 1862," in CWAL, 5:136-137.

(61) Lincoln to Edwin Bates, February 16, 1863, in CWAL, 6:106-107

(62) Washington Star, February 21, 22, 1862; Lincoln to Joseph Gillett and WiLliam J. Beebe, April 24, 1864, in CWAL, Supplement, 1832-1865, p. 186

(63) Muir, Mount Vernon, p. 46

(64) New York Herald, April 2, 1862: Muir, Mount Vernon, pp. 36-37; Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 477-478

(65) "Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes, August 14, 1862," in CWAL, 5:373

(66) "Order for Sabbath Observance, November 15, 1862," in CWAL, 5:497-498

(67) Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 114

(68) Lincoln to Alexander Reed, February 22, 1863," in CWAL, 5:114-115

(69) "Proclamation of Thanksgiving, October 3, 1863," in CWAL, 6:496-497; "Proclamation of Thanksgiving, October 20, 1864," in CWAL, 8:55-56.

(70) Lincoln to Edwin M. Stanton, March 4, 1864," in CWAL, 7:225; Muir, Mount Vernon, pp. 108-112.

(71) Speech to Ulysses S. Grant [March 9, 1864]," in CWAL, 7:234-235

(72) Patricia L. Faust, ed., Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1986), p. 827

(73) Howard K. Beale, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), June 3, 1864, 22:44-45.

(74) "Speech at Great Central Sanitary Fair, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 16, 1864," in CWAL, 7:394-396; "Speech Accepting Medal Presented by Ladies of the Fair, June 16, 1864," in CWAL, 7:396-397

(75) "To the Loyal Ladies of Trenton, New Jersey, July 25, 1864," in CWAL, 7:458

(76) "Pass for Mrs. M. Davis Parks, June 24, 1864," in CWAL, 7:406

(77) "Memorandum on Clement C. Clay [c. July 25, 1864]," in CWAL, 7:459-460

(78) John Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History. 10 vols (New York: The Century Co., 1890), 9:250 251; Ruth Painter Randall, Lincoln's Sons (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1955), p. 184

(79) Victor Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln (New York: Arlington Press, 1965), p. 183

(80) "Lincoln to John Phillips, November 21, 1864," in CWAL, 8:18.

(81) Washington Daily Chronicle, November 18, 1864; James G. Randall and Richard N. Current, Lincoln the President. Last Full Measure (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), pp. 275-276

(82) "A Washington's Birthday Celebration, [February 16, 1865]," in Harold Holzer, Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1993), p. 300

(83) New York Times, February 23, 1865.

(84) Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 218; James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 36-37

(85) John G. Nicolay, A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: The Century Co., 1904), p. 524; Muir, Mount Vernon, p. 41.

(86) W. Emerson Reck, A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., Inc., Publishers, 1987), pp. 31-40; Ruth Painter Randall, Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1953), pp. 380-381

(87) Reck, A. Lincoln, pp. 73, 84, 102

(88) Ibid., p. 157; Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln, p. 35; Albany, Atlas and Argus, April 26, 1865

(89) Searcher, The Farewell to Lincoln, p. 57

(90) Ibid., pp. 85-86; Gabor S. Boritt, The Historian's Lincoln (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), p. 367

(91) Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, pp. 250-251; Mary Lincoln to Richard J. Oglesby, June 5, 1865, in Turner and Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, pp. 241-242

(92) Mary Lincoln to Richard J. Oglesby, Near Chicago, June 10, 1865 in Turner and Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, pp. 243-244; Mary Lincoln to Richard J. Oglesby, Near Chicago, June 11, 1865; Ibid., pp. 244-245

(93) Randall, Mary Lincoln, pp. 355-356; A Memorial of Abraham Lincoln Late President of the United States (Boston: Printed by Order of the City Council, 1865), pp. 92-95

(94) Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory, pp. 27-29; Holzer, et al, The Lincoln Image, pp. 164, 187, 192-207

(95) G. Butler, The Martyr President (Washington, D.C.: McGill and Witheron, Printers and Stereotypers, 1865), p. 9.

(96) Our Martyr President Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln Memorial Address (New York: The Abingdon Press, nd.), pg. 39

Source Citation:Rietveld, Ronald D. "Abraham Lincoln's George Washington.(Scholarship)." White House Studies 5.3 (Summer 2005): 289(37). Academic