Free Republic

Less than a year before John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, Booth’s brother, Edwin Booth, saved Lincoln’s oldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, from being injured and possibly killed by a train. Edwin Booth was regarded as one of the great Shakespearean actors of the 19th century. He was the manager of the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City, where many Shakespearean productions were made in 1862. Edwin was a supporter of Lincoln and a Unionist, and he was not close with his brother, who supported secession. In 1863 or 1864, the exact date is uncertain, Edwin Booth and Robert...

On September 1862, weeks before he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln wrestled with the enormous dilemma of whether to change the stakes of the Civil War…In a private document found after his death, the president struggled to understand what God expected of him and of the nation. “The will of God prevails,” Lincoln began. “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is...

Was Abraham Lincoln a Christian? Now I, in preaching this message, am not endeavoring to merely exhume the bones of Lincoln for some kind of belated autopsy. But rather, this is another way of proclaiming anew that Gospel message with which he struggled all of his life in the hope that as we emphasize and sympathize with his struggles with the great verities of life and death and eternity, that some of you will ask yourselves the deeper and more relevant question: Am I a Christian? Are you? Consider well the sixteenth President of the United States. Like the nation...

Mamdani's Ivy League professor father added America was the 'genesis' for modern 'settler-colonialism'New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's father, a longtime academic and Ivy League professor, said during a 2022 panel discussion about one of his many books that Adolf Hitler drew his inspiration for the Holocaust from Abraham Lincoln.The younger Mamdani, a self-proclaimed socialist, has credited his parents with providing him a "privileged upbringing," one that included frequent discussions on politics and global affairs, according to a New York Times profile on the mayoral candidate and his parents. Mamdani's mother is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. During a 2022 panel...

Police in Louisiana have arrested three suspects in connection with the theft and destruction of a statue depicting Abraham Lincoln The incident took place at the Houmas House Estate and Gardens, a historic plantation located in Darrow, a small town between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Located on a curve of the Mississippi River, the site first attracted European settlers in the early 1700s; construction on the property’s large Greek Revival-style mansion started in 1829. Today, the 38-acre site is a tourist destination, Kevin Kelly, the site’s owner, noticed the antique, solid silver statue of the nation’s 16th president was...

...Following President Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865, President Andrew Johnson rescinded Field Order 15 and returned to Confederate owners the 400,000 acres of land—“a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland 30 miles in from the coast.” Roy L. Brooks, a distinguished professor of law at the University of San Diego School of Law, described Johnson as a segregationist “who wanted to basically return African Americans to a position of subordination.” Without land of their own to work, the 3.9 million members of...

To ponder such a scenario is to delve into the realm of historical conjecture. However, by examining the political landscape of the time and Lincoln's own aspirations, it is possible to glean insight into what might have transpired had his life not been cut short by events. Firstly, it's essential to consider Lincoln's vision for post-Civil War America. He was deeply committed to the principles of reconciliation and reconstruction, aiming to heal the nation's wounds and forge a path towards unity. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Lincoln sought to reintegrate the Southern states into the Union with leniency...

Paul Craig Roberts and the Certifiable Right By Ben Johnson FrontPageMagazine.com | March 17, 2006 Quick – what columnist alleged in an article Thursday that President “Bush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to bring war about?” That Bush has used “bribery and coercion” to block “every effort to bring the dispute to a peaceful end”? That “in order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran,” he and a “’black opts’ [sic.] group will orchestrate [an] attack” on U.S. soil? One would never expect to hear the author is “chairman of the Institute for Political...

The Left is America’s oldest enemy.It was here long before the 1960s, calling for the execution of George Washington, plotting to stop the ratification of the Constitution, and collaborating with foreign enemies. Stolen elections, fake news, race riots, globalism, and socialism aren’t new problems; Americans faced them from the very beginning. Domestic Enemies reveals the true origins of the Democratic Party and its radicals, who―even two centuries ago―were calling for the redistribution of wealth, the end of marriage, and the use of schools for political indoctrination. From political battles to street fights, Domestic Enemies takes you into the heart of...

The Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 roared back through Colorado towns between Denver and Cheyenne July 17 and 19 – this time pulling another piece of history, commemorative locomotive No. 1616, also known as the Abraham Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln is a commemorative locomotive unveiled on April 30, 2025 at the Downing B. Jenks Locomotive Shop in North Little Rock, Arkansas, labeling it as the second presidential locomotive built, according to officials. The powerhouse engine joins Union Pacific’s No. 4141, which was built to honor President George H.W. Bush, according to officials. Union Pacific pays tribute to the memory of...

Everyone knows the story: Abraham Lincoln, assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in 1865. But what if that’s not the full truth? What if the real story was buried, and carefully kept hidden, for over a century? This reveal peels back the surface of one of America’s most defining tragedies to expose a deeper, darker reality. From missing documents to powerful conspirators, everything you've been told may be part of a much bigger lie. Watch closely, the truth of Abraham Lincoln's assassination finally revealed, and it's much worse than we thought. Transcript linked below video.

On July 7, 1846, a contingent of Marines raised the American flag over Monterey, California, to mark a proclamation by U.S. consul Thomas Larkin that the territory was being annexed as a consequence of the war with Mexico. Much of the future state had already been taken from Mexico's nominal control by an uprising of American settlers under the Bear Flag. Victory in the Mexican War meant that the country gained Texas, California, and everything in between, comprising most of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Next to the War of Independence and the Civil...

President Abraham Lincoln is shot in the head at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. The assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis! (Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged,” as he jumped onto the stage and fled on horseback. Lincoln died the next morning. Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and...

President Donald Trump faces a bevy of district court judges issuing restraining orders and injunctions blocking his executive actions, and Josh Hammer suggests the president take a leaf out of Abraham Lincoln’s book on the issue. Trump has responded to the orders with calls for Congress to impeach lower court judges or restrain them in other ways, and observers on the Left have claimed Trump’s actions are creating a constitutional crisis. Chief Justice John Roberts publicly chided Trump over the judicial impeachment call. Hogwash, says Hammer, a lawyer who clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit....

Today is the anniversary of the birth of America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal. In 1858 Lincoln attained national prominence in the Republican Party as the result of the contest for the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas. It was Lincoln’s losing campaign against...

Special Dispatches to the New-York Times. WASHINGTON, Wednesday, Feb. 8. The counting of the votes of the Electoral College was to-day the occasion of an imposing ceremony in Congress. Long before the appointed hour, the galleries were densely crowded, the diplomatic corps being fully represented. Mrs. LINCOLN was also present. At 1 o'clock the Senate made their appearance, and as they entered the hall the members of the House arose and remained standing until the Senators had taken the seats assigned them on the right of the Speaker, and the tellers, Mr. TRUMBULL, of the Senate, and Messrs. WILSON and...

All that was missing was Joe Scarborough looking into the camera and saying—à la his recent claim that the current Biden was the best Biden ever and f-you if you didn't believe it—that Jimmy Carter was the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. Today's episode Morning Joe engaged in some world-class revisionism in praise of Carter. Incredibly, citing supposed Soviet views at the time, Scarborough credited Carter [and Mika's dad Zbigniew Brzezinski] more than Reagan, for the fall of the Soviet Union.Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

The process began when celebration of Washington’s Birthday moved to the third Monday in February. Around the same time, many states dropped their February celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Local governments have paired or replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day. The most recent calendar change is the addition of Juneteenth

In the wake of the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, authorities are still trying to determine a motive for the shooter, a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. But the lack of publicly verifiable information about the gunman has not stopped rampant speculation about his political leanings. In a viral Facebook post, comedian and podcaster Terrence K. Williams asserted that “the Democrats” are responsible for a long line of assassinations and assassination attempts throughout American history, including the killings or attempted killings of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and former presidents Abraham Lincoln,...

Explanation: It was a night of 100,000 meteors. The Great Meteor Storm of 1833 was perhaps the most impressive meteor event in recent history. Best visible over eastern North America during the pre-dawn hours of November 13, many people -- including a young Abraham Lincoln -- were woken up to see the sky erupt in streaks and flashes. Hundreds of thousands of meteors blazed across the sky, seemingly pouring out of the constellation of the Lion (Leo). The featured image is a digitization of a wood engraving which itself was based on a painting from a first-person account. We know...