Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was an American politician elected from Illinois as the 16th President of the United States. As an outspoken opponent of slavery and leader in the western states, he won the Republican nomination in 1860 and was elected with an all-Northern base.

Lincoln's election galvanized the Southern states, who refused to accept the result of the election. Seven southern states seceded from the Union. These states fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Lincoln promised military retaliation, prompting another four states to join these seven. Later in 1861, they formed the Confederate States, and the American Civil War was underway.

From 1861 through 1865, Lincoln steered the country through the war, facing initial Southern military victories, threat of intervention from abroad, and criticism at home. As the North gained victories, Lincoln was able to lay the foundation work for the end of slavery. As the war progressed, the North was able to bring its full industrial might to bear. The clear gains of the North helped secure Lincoln's re-election.

In the early months of 1865, it was clear that the South was a defeated entity. Tragically, on the eve of victory, Lincoln was assassinated by famed actor and Southern sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth.

Abraham Lincoln in "Before the Beginning"
Recordings of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln were quite popular after the time-viewer was invented.

Abraham Lincoln in The Guns of the South
Abraham Lincoln (1809-18??) remained in Washington, DC even after the Federal military collapse in the face of Confederate AK-47s at the battle of Bealeton, Virginia. Upon the arrival of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, Lincoln invited the rebel commander into the White House to negotiate an armistice, ending major combat of the Second American Revolution.

Lincoln spent his lame-duck period between the armistice and the election attempting to gain favorable terms from the Confederacy in the final peace.

In the election of November, 1864, Lincoln was defeated by Horatio Seymour. After his term of office expired, he toured Missouri and Kentucky, agitating tirelessly in favor of the two disputed states remaining in the Union.

Following the post-war plebiscites (in which Missouri voted to remain in the Union and Kentucky chose the Confederacy), Lincoln returned to obscurity in Illinois, practicing law, and growing old. Upon receiving news of the Richmond Massacre, in which Mary Custis Lee was killed, he sent a telegram of condolence to his former enemy, Robert E. Lee, now president of the Confederacy.

Lincoln's likeness, along with those of several of his generals, were used on cardboard cutouts as targets when the Rivington Men demonstrated the AK-47 to Robert E. Lee and his staff.

Abraham Lincoln in "Must and Shall"
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1864) was killed by sniper fire while observing Jubal Early's attack on Fort Stevens. He was succeeded by Vice President Hannibal Hamlin.

Lincoln's image was on the U.S. half-dollar coin. FBS agent Neil Michaels found Southerners hesitant to accept it as payment for services. In one instance, a bellboy he gave such a coin to as a tip dropped it in the hotel lobby after he had left Michaels.

Abraham Lincoln in Southern Victory
Despite his best effort, Abraham Lincoln's administration saw the severing of the United States and the emergence of the Confederate States

Lincoln's leadership during the War of Secession is widely criticized. One of the most frequent criticisms heard is that he allowed General George McClellan to remain in command of the Army of the Potomac even after he'd proven he was no match for his Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia, during the Peninsula campaign in the spring of 1862.

McClellan was defeated by Lee at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania in the fall of 1862, and Lee was able to capture the city of Philadelphia. This prompted Britain and France to extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederate States. Lincoln himself was forced to do the same under threat of war delivered by British ambassador Lord Lyons.

Lincoln was soundly defeated by Democrat Horatio Seymour in the 1864 election. Seymour became the first of a series of Democrats who treated the C.S. with absolute deference. Returning to private life, Lincoln developed and interest in workers' rights. Influenced by the works of Karl Marx, Lincoln spent the next two decades traveling the country as a staunch socialist. He was not a particularly effective advocate because he was generally despised, even among many members of his own Republican Party, for losing the war. The fact that socialists were ofen equated with violent revolutionaries did not help, although Lincoln eschewed the bullet for the ballot.

His travels came with a price: during a trip to St. Louis in 1877, both Lincoln and his wife, Mary caught typhoid. Lincoln survived, but Mary did not. Moreover, Lincoln's relationship with his only surviving son Robert was strained by Lincoln's more radical politics.

In 1880, the people of the US, exhausted with the Democratic Party's conciliatory stance towards the CS, returned the Republicans to power by electing James G. Blaine to the presidency. This helped precipitate the Second Mexican War. When war broke out, Lincoln was in Utah. He had several meetings with Mormon leader John Taylor, and was suspected of treason by Utah's military authorities, John Pope (who had a good deal of bad blood with Lincoln following Lincoln's sacking of Pope after Pope's defeat at the battle of Second Bull Run during the war of Secession) and George Custer. Blaine did not allow Pope and Custer to execute Lincoln, but were allowed to exile him to his choice of Idaho or New Mexico.

Lincoln did not remain in exile for long. He traveled to Chicago; on this trip, he encountered two young men who would eventually became president: Theodore Roosevelt (who challenged Lincoln after a speech) and Hosea Blackford (who found his conversation with Lincoln a political awakening).

On reaching Chicago, after one last attempt to convince Republican Party leaders to make workers' rights the central issue of their platform, he watched as the Republicans effectively disintegrated, as several leaders saw an opportunity to remold the now rudderless Democrats into a new anti-C.S. party. Lincoln struck out on his own, and helped create the Socialist Party from a coalition of socialist groups from around the country. Lincoln's ideas helped tame the Socialists, convincing them that more could be gained with ballots than bullets. This helped bring the party more into the mainstream of US politics, although it wasn't until 1920 that the Party actually gained national power.

Lincoln is widely reviled in the US (and of course universally among Confederate whites). However, the Socialist Party, which became a major party because of liberal Republicans who followed him into its fold, takes a kinder view of Lincoln, and he is quite popular among Confederate blacks.

Hosea Blackford considered himself and his mentor to be the two greatest failures in the history of the US Presidency. In fact many historians consider James G. Blaine to have been the next-greatest failure after Lincoln. Nonetheless, Lincoln joins George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt as history's most memorable presidents--though of the four only Roosevelt is looked on in an entirely positive light.

Those who blame Lincoln for the loss of the war do so unfairly. He was a strong and complex character who prosecuted the war to the best of his ability, though he was hampered in this by countless political grandstanders who worked at cross-purposes with him. If nothing else, he ended a period in US history in which the smaller South controlled the Federal government and left the Northern majority out in the cold--roughly the same dynamic as US-CS relations 1862-1914, but without the South having proven itself on the battlefield.

Lincoln was reviled in the Confederate States, even after their victory. However, the oppressed Negro population embraced Lincoln to an extent, particularly his writings on equality. Many of the leaders of the Red Rebellion of 1915 were well versed in Lincoln.