Lincoln, Abraham
(1809–65) sixteenth U.S. president; born near Hodgenville, Ky. Born in a log cabin to a modest farm family, he moved early with his family to Indiana. His mother died in 1818 and his stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston, provided a fine model who inspired the ambitious but unschooled boy to discipline and educate himself. The Lincolns moved to Illinois in 1830, and, after twice sailing a flatboat to New Orleans, he settled in New Salem, Ill., where he pursued workaday jobs while studying law on his own. In the 1832 Black Hawk War he served as a volunteer but saw no action. In 1835 he entered the Illinois state legislature as a Whig; after unremarkable service, Lincoln left the legislature in 1841. In 1837 he had begun what would become a successful law practice in Springfield, the capital of Illinois; in 1842 he married Mary Todd, of a prominent Springfield family. His position as a prominent Whig in Illinois took him to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1847–49, where he again had a lackluster record despite his opposition to the war in Mexico. Back in Springfield he gradually began to prosper as a lawyer, often representing business interests, but his eloquently-stated if moderate antislavery views gained him increasing attention. This came to a head during his unsuccessful race (1858) for the U.S. Senate against Stephen A. Douglas, who led the Democratic accommodation to slave interests; the historic debates between the two men secured Lincoln a national following, which led to his becoming the presidential nominee of the new antislavery Republican Party in 1860. Although he received only 40% of the popular vote, due to a split in the Democratic party Lincoln won a majority of the Electoral College votes. Although he had stated his willingness to tolerate slavery where it currently existed, his election precipitated the secession of Southern states and the formation of the Confederacy. In the years of civil war that followed, the inexperienced Lincoln proved to be one of the most extraordinary leaders, both political and moral, the U.S.A. has ever seen. First defining the war as being fought over secession rather than slavery, he oversaw the creation of the Union army. When the political time was right, Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, thereby interpreting the war as a crusade against slavery; he later oversaw the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), which legally ended slavery. With his immortal Gettysburg Address (November 1863), Lincoln further defined the war as the struggle for preservation of the democratic idea, which he called "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Meanwhile, he took a direct interest in the conduct of the war, hiring and firing generals, getting daily reports from the battlefields, and visiting the troops in the front lines. All this time, too, he had to mediate between the pressures of radical and conservative elements of the North, using an astute combination of suppression and conciliation, and barely surviving the election in 1864. Having seen the victory of the Union forces in April 1865, Lincoln was beginning to plan a generous reconstruction policy when he was assassinated by Southern fanatic John Wilkes Booth. His body was taken by train from Washington to be buried in Springfield, Ill., as the nation he had refounded mourned their "Father Abraham." Master of both a Biblical eloquence and a homespun vernacular, a natural at combining practical politics with moral principles, in only four years as president he had established why he is one of the few Americans who truly "belong to the ages.")
Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865)
(religion, spiritualism, and occult)Abraham Lincoln attended many séances, even having some at his own home. He was as much a Spiritualist as anything else. He was not of any particular Christian faith, although he certainly did seem to believe in an Infinite Intelligence. In the days before the Civil War, only 25 to 35 percent of the population actually belonged to a Christian denomination. The vast majority did not belong to any church, though most seemed to have believed in an afterlife. Spiritualism competed with Christianity and, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, became the fastest growing religion in America.
The Lincolns had lost three of their four sons to childhood diseases so it was natural that Mary Todd Lincoln, the President’s wife, wanted to attend séances. Colonel Simon F. Kase told of a notable one in the home of Mrs. Laurie, which both he and the President attended. The Laurie’s daughter, Mrs. Miller, was the medium and she played the piano while in trance. As she played, two legs of the instrument levitated several inches off the floor then repeatedly banged back to the floor to beat time to the music. As it kept rising up, Kase and two soldiers who were present climbed on the piano together but were unable to make it settle down again until the medium stopped playing. It was reported that the legs rose as high as four inches off the floor.
Abraham Lincoln had many prophetic dreams, including one of his own death. In early April 1865, he dreamed he was lying in bed when he heard the sound of sobbing. Getting up and leaving his bedroom, he went into the East Room of the White House where he saw a line of people filing past a catafalque. They were all paying their respects to the figure lying in state, guarded by four soldiers. The face of the figure was covered so, in the dream, Lincoln asked one of the soldiers who had died. The soldier replied, “The President. He was killed by an assassin.” Lincoln later told his wife, Mary, and several friends about the dream. It was later that same month that he was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth. Another of Lincoln’s prophetic dreams was of a damaged ship sailing away with a Union ship in hot pursuit. Lincoln had this dream on a number of occasions, each time just before an important Union victory.
At one séance which the Lincolns attended, a teenage girl approached the President. It was Nettie Colburn Maynard, a young medium. In trance, she began to lecture Lincoln on the necessity for emancipation. She spoke to him for almost an hour, stating that the Civil War could not come to an end until all men were free. When Nettie came out of her trance and saw to whom she had been speaking, she ran from the room in fright and embarrassment. But two days later, when Lincoln and his wife were at another séance, Nettie appeared again and did the same thing, lecturing the President about freeing the slaves. Kase reported, “President Lincoln was convinced as to the course he should pursue; the command coming from that all-seeing spirit through the instrumentality of the angel world was not to be overlooked … thus the prediction of the medium was verified.”
In 1854, ten years before the end of the Civil War, 15,000 Americans had petitioned Congress for a scientific study of Spiritualism, but the request was denied. The tremendous death toll of the war led to even more of an interest in Spiritualism.
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Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln, Abraham
Born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Ky.; died Apr. 15, 1865, in Washington, D.C. American statesman. The son of a farmer.
Lincoln was a descendant of the earliest American settlers. He worked during his youth as a day laborer on surrounding farms; he was also a flatboatman, rail-splitter, surveyor, and postal employee. At the same time he strove to educate himself. In 1836 he passed the bar examination and became a lawyer. Fairness and incorruptibility, a sharp mind, and brilliant oratorical abilities led to his rapid rise. From 1834 to 1841, Lincoln was a member of the legislative assembly of the state of Illinois. From 1847 to 1849 he was a member of the House of Representatives. During the annexationist US war against Mexico in 1846–48, Lincoln introduced into Congress a resolution calling for cessation of the war. In 1854 he was one of the organizers of the Republican Party. Lincoln’s activities reflected the interests of progressive circles of the bourgeoisie of the Northern states and of the petite bourgeoisie throughout the country. He advocated the broadening of the civil and political rights of the people and favored granting suffrage to women.
Lincoln was a resolute foe of slavery and advocated liberation of the slaves. He opposed efforts to spread slavery to the whole USA. However, Lincoln believed that the issue of slavery lay within the competence of the individual states and that the federal government had no right to control it. In 1860, Lincoln was elected president of the USA. Despite his moderate stand on slavery, his election was a signal for the slaveholding Southern states to secede from the Union; it set off the Civil War of 1861–65.
During the first stage of this war, Lincoln considered the goal to be the crushing of the rebel slaveholders and the restoration of a unified country. K. Marx and F. Engels criticized Lincoln for his foot-dragging and inconsistencies on the question of abolishing slavery, which reflected the hesitations of the bourgeoisie. They pointed to the need to conduct a revolutionary kind of war. Under pressure of the masses and of the Radical Republicans, who represented the most revolutionary part of the bourgeoisie, Lincoln changed his position in the course of the war and instituted a series of increasingly revolutionary measures. In May 1862 the Homestead Act was adopted. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became law on Jan. 1, 1863. The proclamation signified the complete evolution of Lincoln’s political views. He had gone from a policy of territorial containment of slavery to the areas where it was already established to a new course involving the abolition of slavery. In 1864, Lincoln was elected to a second term. The shift by Lincoln’s government to revolutionary-style warfare led to the military destruction of the slaveholder forces and the abolition of slavery throughout the USA. On Apr. 14, 1865, Lincoln was mortally wounded by the actor J. Booth, who was an agent of the slaveholders and their allies in the Northern states. The murder of Lincoln was not only an act of vengeance on the part of reactionaries. It was also an attempt to deprive the opponents of slavery of their outstanding leader at a time when, with the war at an end, Reconstruction had become the leading political issue. This was to be a period of new and harsh exacerbation of the struggle for the rights of the Negroes.
Lincoln is a national hero of the American people, the bearer of the revolutionary traditions that are followed by all progressive people in the USA in the struggle against reaction and for the interests of the people.
WORKS
Complete Works, vols. 1–12. Edited by J. Nicolay and J. Hay. New York, 1905.REFERENCES
Ivanov, R. F. A. Linkol’n i grazhdanskaia voina v SShA. Moscow, 1964.Petrov, D. B. A. Linkol’n—velikii grazhdanin Ameriki. Moscow, 1960.
Sandburg, C. Linkol’n. Moscow, 1961. (Translated from English.)
Nicolay, J., and J. Hay. A. Lincoln: A History, vols. 1–10. [New York] 1917.
R. F. IVANOV