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Barack Obama is America's second wartime president from Illinois. Depictions of the first are, of course, on every penny and $5 bill. The new book, "Obama's Wars" by Bob Woodward, offers troubling contrasts between the way Abraham Lincoln learned to handle a war and President Obama's role in overseeing U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. President Lincoln, whose military experience amounted to a brief and undistinguished appearance in a minor battle against Native Americans, learned about wartime leadership on the job. From the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 through the Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July 1863, he led...

Hi FRiends, I have two brothers who I love very much, they’re young and libertarian Ron Paul supporters, sigh. We get along and I’m hoping that one day they’ll come back to conservatism, but they have bought into a theory that I don’t think makes much sense: Abe Lincoln was a dictator. There are many websites dedicated to this nonsense you can Google "Abe Lincoln dictator" and get some weird stuff, if you want to check it out. I need your help in busting this myth are there any books I can read on this subject to dispel this stuff?...

Ron Paul: Why didn’t the north just buy the south’s slaves and free them that way? Getting down to the last two questions here…. Most people consider Abe Lincoln to be one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest president we’ve ever had. Would you agree with that sentiment and why or why not? No, I don’t think he was one of our greatest presidents. I mean, he was determined to fight a bloody civil war, which many have argued could have been avoided. For 1/100 the cost of the war, plus 600 thousand lives, enough money would have...

What I think about secession basically is that it is a consummation devoutly to be wished, but a dangerous pursuit to advocate publicly. Janet Napolitano and the alphabet soup guys do not take kindly to the notion of freedom in any way, and for the precise reason that Abraham Lincoln did not. When asked why he didn’t just let the South go, Lincoln exploded in a rage, “Let the South go? LET THE SOUTH GO? How, then, should I fill my coffers?” Documented historical fact. Look it up for yourselves. Winners write history and the North/Leftists have had nearly 160...

One of the greatest misconceptions of American history is that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Those who subscribe to this belief see President Abraham Lincoln as the benevolent leader who made unimaginable sacrifices in human blood to wipe out America’s greatest sin. While the human sacrifice is indisputable and the sin was monumental, the war’s purpose was not to free blacks from the shackles of bondage. Rather, the Civil War was fought with one purpose in mind: To preserve the Union at all costs. And, to put it in Lincoln’s terms, with no ifs, ands, or buts. You’d...

This video of the National Portrait Gallery U.S. Civil War exhibit features: Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Beauregard, Butler, McClellan, Lee, Davis, Sherman, Jackson, Pickett, Mosby, Grant, Frederick Douglas, Hariet Beecher Stowe and the Fugitive's story. After watching, please name your favorite Civil War era person and explain why. Thanks. Watch video.

Over the last few months, celebrations for Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday have drawn attention to the Kentucky native's life and his legacy as president. But the 200-year anniversary of another Kentucky president's birth, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, is receiving mixed reviews. "I'll say it this way - winners write history," said Ron Bryant, a Lexington historian writing a book on Davis. "We need heroes, we need villains. Lincoln became a hero and Davis a villain." Davis was born in what is now Todd County, Ky., in 1808, one year before Lincoln. Davis served as the only president of the 11...

Rep. Ron Paul told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" Sunday that the war was a mistake – the American Civil War. "Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war…. [President Abraham Lincoln] did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic," Paul said.

Ron Paul appeared on "Meet the Press" over the weekend, and gave voice to a sentiment scarcely heard in American politics. He claimed that the Civil War was unnecessary, and that Lincoln "never should have gone to war" to stop slavery. A better approach would have been for the federal government to simply purchase freedom for all of the slaves in the country. Watch Ron Paul on Meet the Press [YouTube]: Of course, such a program sounds more than a little strange coming from a man who is so mistrustful of government that he wants to abolish the Department of...

Sally Field wins an Emmy and suddenly everyone wants to 'really, really like her' again. Fresh off her controversial appearance on the Emmys, when she won for Brothers & Sisters, Sally Field has been cast as Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of Abraham Lincoln, in Steven Spielberg's long-awaited biopic of one of the most important leaders of all time. Liam Neeson has already been cast as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln bases on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln will center on the life of the leader in the time leading...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Copperhead Chronicle Al Benson, Jr. Articles Guess What Folks--Secesson Wasn't Treason by Al Benson Jr. More and more of late I have been reading articles dealing with certain black racist groups that claim to have the best interests of average black folks at heart (they really don't). It seems these organizations can't take time to address the problems of black crime in the black community or of single-parent families in the black community in any meaningful way. It's much more lucrative for them (and it gets more press coverage) if they spend their time and resources attacking Confederate...

CHICAGO - Artists, sculptors and photographers knew Abraham Lincoln's face had a good side. Now it's confirmed by science. Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study. The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments — including smallpox, heart illness and depression — that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln. Read MORE.

I just read an interesting if flawed book, Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War. Some fascinating tidbits in it. For example, Morse didn't invent much in the way of telegraph hardware, which is attributable to others. What he did do was software - and the entrepreneurship. Prior experimenters had used clunky codes for encoding messages; Morse used the count of each letter which was in a printer's array of type to tell him which letters to make the easiest to encode. Thus, "e," the most-used letter, is encoded...

President Abraham Lincoln and President George W. Bush. They were two different men at two different times facing the same two problems: War and hate. President Lincoln was hated mostly because of the Civil War. President Bush is hated mostly because of the war in Iraq. Both wars were fought to overthrow oppression. The Civil War succeeded in abolishing slavery and the war in Iraq succeeded in overthrowing tyrannical oppression of Saddam Hussein. There is one main difference between the two wars: The number of casualties. The Civil War lasted five years with casualties in the 600,000 range, almost equaling...

When we clicked yesterday morning on the Drudge Report's headline "Republican Congressmen Take It To Bush," it took us to a story in the New York Times about how Republican moderates had gone to warn President Bush that their support for the war was faltering. The Times quoted Congressman LaHood of Illinois as saying, "It was a tough meeting in terms of people being as frank as they possibly could about their districts and their feelings about where the American people are on the war." At that, we reached for Lloyd Wendt's history of the Chicago Tribune, which begins with...

RUSH: John in Shreveport, Louisiana. Hello. CALLER: Mr. Rush, don't you think you're being a hypocrite when you're not -- when you don't want the Iraqis to decide the problems themselves, especially since Abraham Lincoln took two -- two generals named Lincoln [sic--Grant] and Sherman who were responsible for the deaths of 59,000 southern people? And since you hate Confederate heritage that much, don't you think that we should allow the people of Iraq to decide their own fate? RUSH: (Laughing.) Gee. I hate Confederate heritage? CALLER: No kidding. RUSH: On the basis of what do you say that? CALLER:...

Today we morn the great loss of Lt. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Who died 141 years ago today. May the greatest General ever to walk the face of the earth Rest in Peace.