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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...

While making the closing argument in this [Camp Douglas] case, on the 17th of April, 1865, I received a dispatch from the Secretary of War, directing me to report in person immediately to the War Department to aid in the examinations respecting the murder of the President. I started for Washington the same evening, reached there on the morning of the 19th, and was "specially assigned by the Secretary of War for duty on the investigation of the murder of President Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Mr. Seward", and a room was assigned to me in the War Department....

Donald Trump the property developer is busting out of the political straitjacket to bling the Oval Office and reimagine the White House. From planning a “beautiful, magnificent” new ballroom to paving over the Rose Garden to create a convivial, Mar-a-Lago-style terrace, the 45th and 47th president is determined to make his mark on the White House this time. “It keeps my real estate juices flowing,” he told a reporter recently. ... On the curved walls, Trump has quadrupled the number of gilt-framed presidential portraits to 20, from Biden’s five, with Lincoln taking pride of place above the fireplace and Ronald...

President-elect Trump will use a Bible that was given to him by his mother, as well as the Lincoln Bible, for his swearing-in Monday. Trump’s late mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, gave him the Bible in 1955 to mark his Sunday Church Primary School graduation at First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, N.Y., according to the Trump Inaugural Committee. The inside cover of the Bible is signed by church officials and inscribed with Trump’s name and details of when it was gifted to him. He will also use the Lincoln Bible, which was first used for President Lincoln’s 1861 swearing-in and...

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...

He is perhaps best known for his honesty — but a lesser-known fact about Abraham Lincoln is that the 16th president of the United States battled severe depression during his lifetime. Dr. Chris Tuell, a clinical psychotherapist and a chemical and behavioral addiction specialist at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, has studied Lincoln’s mental health struggles extensively. "Though the history books play a significant role in our perception and understanding of the ‘rail splitter’ from Illinois, it often becomes easy for us to forget that Abraham Lincoln was very human," Tuell told Fox News Digital. "Lincoln led this...

Washington, D.C. October 3, 1863By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation.The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which...

If anyone says that the Judeo-Christian tradition had nothing to do with the founding of America, they need look no further than our annual holiday of Thanksgiving. As in, giving thanks to God for His help to us. Columnist Mark Steyn (originally from Canada) notes: “Speaking as a misfit unassimilated foreigner, I think of Thanksgiving as the most American of holidays.” While we tend to associate Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, Virginia likes to remind the world that it was in their commonwealth that the first Thanksgiving was held.

John Hay was President Lincoln's personal secretary, a position that began nearly five decades of public service. A diplomat who served multiple Administrations from Lincoln to Roosevelt, he was a central figure in defining the U.S. foreign policy that would be the basis of the United States role on the world stage in the twentieth century.This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for...

Robert Pondisco of the American Enterprise Institute responded to a query on Twitter/X yesterday on the question of why academic writing is so awful. His pithy answer: The opacity of academic prose arises from the epistemological imperative to operationalize disciplinary jargon, facilitating intra-specialized discourse while obfuscating heterogenous interpretive accessibility and perpetuating a recursive dialectic of erudition and exclusion. Yup, that pretty much nails it. My young philosopher pal Spencer Case got the wise idea in his head to ask ChatGPT to render the Gettysburg Address as written by postmodern/radical feminist icon Judith Butler, and this is the result: In a...

We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace, whose joyous expression cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however; He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part give us the cause of rejoicing be overlooked. Their honors must not be Parceled out with others. I myself was near the front, and...

The greatest beneficiaries of violence. There have been four assassinations of presidents in American history, and every one of them has aided the Democrats. This is not to say that the Democrat party engineered the assassinations for its own advantage, but nevertheless, it’s true: each time a president has been killed, the Democrats were the beneficiaries. If Donald Trump had been murdered last Saturday evening, it would not have been the killing of a sitting president, but once again, the left would have reaped the benefits. When Abraham Lincoln became the first president to be murdered while in office, the...

The far-left Lincoln Project, whose cofounder has openly and publicly called for someone to “put a bullet in Donald Trump,” is still looking to get the former president assassinated by comparing him to Adolf Hitler. Three days after an assassin fired off eight rounds at Trump, one nicking his ear, the Lincoln Project released this assassination dog whistle: Hitler's power wasn't taken, it was given. And once he had control he enacted his horrifying, dictatorial agenda. The same dynamic is at play with Trump. pic.twitter.com/PKKzyJFomc — The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 16, 2024 Here are the facts… When you tell...

This tweet didn't age well, Keith Olbermann.

There's nothing new in historians claiming that Abraham Lincoln was bisexual or gay. The "theory" took root in the 1970s during the gay awakening and has hung around on the fringes of historical scholarship ever since. Now, a serious documentary purports to "prove" the point using newly unearthed letters, documents, and photographs. Abraham Lincoln slept in the same bed with men — a common practice in 1840s America where a judicial circuit rider like Lincoln would have been forced to share a bed with other travelers while practicing law — and also wrote "passionately" about male friends and acquaintances. What...

Every new president selects personalized Oval Office decor to suit his tastes and pay homage to admired predecessors. President Biden’s Oval Office boasts both a portrait and a bust of Abraham Lincoln. But his family’s connection to the 16th president extends far beyond workplace ornamentation.

Remember Lincoln for his courage and his political perseverance in saving the Union, but also remember the source of his courage.Not long ago, the Bible was considered a foundational book for American society — a work that stood alongside the Declaration of Independence for its contributions to American politics. However, few American presidents have been shaped by their reading of the Bible as Abraham Lincoln was. From a skeptic and deist to a daily reader who made more than 200 references to Scripture in his speeches and other writings, Lincoln’s transformation as an inspirational leader coincided with his transformed relationship...

Today is the anniversary of the birth of America’s great or 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...

We need a wartime President, someone to rally around. A war without a commander-in-chief is no war at all. There is a Lincoln or Churchill among us, there always is. But he must stand up. This is not the time for polling or focus groups. It’s the time for someone to lead. Someone with the courage to stand alone, someone of honorable ambition, who will call the woke charge that we are racist; what it is, rubbish. Someone who believes that America’s traditional culture is exceptional and is committed to keeping it that way. Someone who will recall the great...

Prototypes of the 2025 Lincoln Navigator have been circulating for several months, but this is the first time we've seen one wearing less-modest camouflage, showing off elements of its new body and trim for the first time. Lincoln's big family hauler has been around long enough — since 2018, in fact — that it's due for a redesign. It was updated in 2022, when it gained BlueCruise (then called Lincoln ActiveGlide, a name the brand has since left behind) and lost a little horsepower. From what we can see here, the 2025 Navigator will retain most of its core styling....