Free Republic

As the season of presidential politics 2012 unfolds, I’m struck by similarities between today and the tumultuous period in our history that led up to the election of Abraham Lincoln and then on to the Civil War. So much so that I’m finding it a little eerie that this year we are observing the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. No, I am certainly not predicting, God forbid, that today’s divisions and tensions will lead to brother taking up arms against brother. But profound differences divide us today, as was the case in the 1850′s. The difference...

After Barack Obama became the first African-American President, an admirer decided to sculpt a statue in his honor.  When he completed the project, the artist donated it to the city of Chicago. The 50 city aldermen eagerly began looking for a proper site for the work of art. After almost a year of considering different places around Chicago, the 50 aldermen could not agree upon an appropriate venue. Eventually, the Mayor suggested that they send the statue to Washington D.C., and with a unanimous vote the city council agreed. When the statue arrived in the capitol, the U.S. Senate,...

Abraham Lincoln, speech in Lewiston, Illinois, August 17, 1858, four days before his first historic debate with Stephen A. Douglas: "The Declaration of Independence was formed by the representatives of American liberty from thirteen States of the Confederacy, twelve of which were slaveholding communities. We need not discuss the way or the reason of their becoming slave-holding communities. It is sufficient for our purpose that all of them greatly deplored the evil and that they placed a provision in the Constitution which they supposed would gradually remove the disease by cutting off its source. This was the abolition of the...

Just wondering what people might have to say about this. Both would say they tried to preserve their union. Both employed military might to do so and killed lots of their own citizens. ML/NJ

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 16, 2011, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona. TO BEGIN, consider one of the most important measures of property, the kilogram. It’s a measure of mass or, for non-scientific purposes, weight. According to the papers last week, a global scramble is under way to define this most basic unit after it was discovered that the standard kilogram—a cylinder of platinum and iridium that is maintained by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures—has been losing mass. You may think that this is impossible. Of all the...

McLEAN, Va. – Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has inspired Americans for generations, but consider his jarring remarks in 1862 to a White House audience of free blacks, urging them to leave the U.S. and settle in Central America. "For the sake of your race, you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people," Lincoln said, promoting his idea of colonization: resettling blacks in foreign countries on the belief that whites and blacks could not coexist in the same nation.

The 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War offers an opportunity to reflect upon the wartime statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. Impelled to the presidency by a constitutional crisis, Lincoln stood on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution both before and during the Civil War. With special attention to what Americans today may learn from Lincoln as we grapple with a global war and prodigious debt, this lecture will illuminate Lincoln's example of self-government under law.

After getting elected chairman of the D.C. City Council in November, Kwame Brown asked for a black Lincoln Navigator L, with a DVD player for the back seat, a power moonroof, polished aluminum wheels and an all-black interior. When the Public Works Department delivered a black Navigator with a gray interior, Mr. Brown's office told the city to send it back. "He was just very clear he wanted black on black," said Brown spokeswoman Traci Hughes. "It doesn't show as much dirt and wear and tear." Public Works' employees found a second Navigator in Coldwater, Mich. But Mr. Brown was...

On Presidents’ Day, Americans take a day to recognize the office of the presidency – and to reflect upon the country’s best. FrumForum asked freshman Republican members which president they admired the most, but excluded President Reagan from contention to give the other presidents a fair chance. The fourteen Republican members who responded gave a range of answers, but President Abraham Lincoln came out on top. Interestingly, these freshman congressmen have something in common with President Obama, who has identified Lincoln as his favorite president. Independent voters also agreed – a new Gallup poll shows that Lincoln was their favorite...

Abraham Lincoln’s greatest love was politics, but his intellectual passion was for what the 19th century called “political economy” — the way economics and politics intersected in society and government. According to his law partner William Herndon, Lincoln “liked political economy, the study of it,” and Shelby Cullom, who practiced law beside Lincoln in Springfield, Ill. (and later crafted the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887), thought that “theoretically . . . on political economy he was great.” Although Lincoln’s angular, shambling appearance gave him the look of anything but a student of economics — one contemporary said he resembled “a...

Abraham Lincoln is attributed with the following: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."Clearly he had Democrats in mind. Obama knows he can fool Democrats and the press all of the time. Sometimes they even fool themselves. Obama knows well he got hammered in the recent election. Consequently, he sought to change his image and enlisted the assistance of a number of people. He has sought help on his "reinvention" from CEO's, Ken Duberstein...

The Great Emancipator was almost the Great Colonizer: Newly released documents show that to a greater degree than historians had previously known, President Lincoln laid the groundwork to ship freed slaves overseas to help prevent racial strife in the U.S. Just after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Lincoln authorized plans to pursue a freedmen’s settlement in present-day Belize and another in Guyana, both colonial possessions of Great Britain at the time, said Phillip W. Magness, one of the researchers who uncovered the new documents. Historians have debated how seriously Lincoln took colonization efforts, but Mr. Magness said the...

Author Joe Wheeler, historian and scholar, brings to the pages of this insightful book the knowledge gleaned from over ten years of study and more than sixty books on the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. Skillfully weaving his own narrative with direct quotes from Lincoln and poignant excerpts from other Lincoln biographers, Wheeler brings a refreshingly friendly rendition of Lincoln's life, faith, and courage.

A Virginia man has confessed to trying to rewrite history by altering a date on a document penned by Abraham Lincoln -- a move that enhanced his own reputation as a scholar, the National Archives said today. Longtime Lincoln researcher Thomas Lowry, of Woodbridge, Va., admitted that he changed the date on a presidential pardon issued to Patrick Murphy, a Union Army soldier who was court-martialed for desertion during the Civil War, said David S. Ferriero, archivist of the United States. Lowry altered the date on the document from April 14, 1964, to April 14, 1965 -- the day John...

"On the night of Barack Obama’s rally in Tucson..." (continued)

A RESPONSE TO THE BLOOD LIBEL OF 1860 by Abraham Lincoln: "You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting...

After witnessing the effrontery of Barack Obama against the states and our constitution, it is apparent this man has come here for the sole purpose of fomenting a civil war. From day one of his campaign he has made efforts to position himself as a parallel to Lincoln. From his campaign announcement in front of the Illinois state capitol where Lincoln served (with a Lincoln banner behind him), to his announcement of Biden as his running mate (in front of a Lincoln banner), from his quoting of Lincoln (in specious contexts) to his insistence upon swearing in on the same...

I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theorists, but love to throw them a bone. From Jordan Maxwell via Charlie Max's blog: Lincoln was elected to the Congress in 1846, Kennedy in 1946. Lincoln was elected President in 1860, Kennedy in 1960. "Lincoln" and "Kennedy" both have 7 letters. Both men were concerned with civil rights. Both men's wives lost children while living in The White House. Both were shot in the head on a Friday. Lincoln was shot in a theater named Ford. Kennedy was shot in a car named Lincoln, built by Ford.

On a recent pilgrimage to Gettysburg I ventured into the Evergreen cemetery, the scene of chaotic and bloody fighting throughout the engagement. Like Abraham Lincoln on a cold November day in 1863, I pondered the meaning of it all. With the post-Tea Party wave of libertarianism sweeping the nation, LincolnÂ’s reputation has received a serious pillorying. He has even been labeled a tyrant, who used the issue of slavery as a mendacious faux excuse to pummel the South into submitting to the will of the growing federal power in Washington D.C. In fact, some insist, the labeling of slavery as...

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving. Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." She explained, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving...