Section #1 - America’s First Sixteen Presidents (1790-1865)
Chapter 30: Honest Abe
His hopes end when Ft. Sumter is attacked on April 12, 1861. Lincoln declares the event an act of Insurrection and calls for 75,000 troops to fight what he thinks will be a short war. Then the Confederates add four more states – Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas – and the conflict goes on for four years, with some 650-750,000 men killed, entire cities destroyed, and the nation left financially bankrupt.
It is Lincoln, however, that saves the nation. He becomes an effective Commander-in-Chief, rallies the people over early battlefield losses, finally finds the Generals he needs, and forces the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
His Gettysburg Address calls for a “new birth of freedom,” and he delivers that for America’s four million enslaved persons, partially at first in the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, then fully in passage of the 13th Amendment, both passed against the advice of his advisors.
His assassination on April 14, 1865 marks him as a final martyr to the cause of liberty and justice for all, and for most citizens as the greatest President in American history.