Abraham Lincoln
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General Grant was transferred to Chattanooga, where, in November, with the troops of Thomas, Hooker. and Sherman, he won the important victory of Missionary Ridge; and then, being appointed lieutenant-general and general-in-chief of the armies of the United States, he went to Washington and entered upon the memorable campaign of 1864. This campaign began with revived hopes on the part of the government, the people, and the army. The president, glad that the army had now at its head a general in whose ability and enterprise he could thoroughly confide, ceased from that moment to exercise any active influence on its movements. He wrote, on 30 April, to General Grant: "The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant, and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. . . . If there is anything wanting which is in my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you."

Grant crossed the Rapidan on 4 May, intending to move by the right flank of General Lee; but the two armies came together in a gloomy forest called the Wilderness, where, from the 5th to the 7th of May, one of the most sanguinary battles known to modern warfare was fought. Neither side having gained any decisive advantage in this deadly struggle, Grant moved to the left, and Lee met, him again at Spottsylvania Court House, where for ten days a series of destructive contests took place, in which both sides were alternately successful. Still moving to the left, Grant again encountered the enemy at the crossing of North Anna river, and still later at Cold Harbor, a few miles northeast of Richmond, where, assaulting General Lee's army in a fortified position, he met with a bloody repulse. He then crossed the James river, intending by a rapid movement to seize Petersburg and the Confederate lines of communication south of Richmond, but was baffled in this purpose, and forced to enter upon a regular siege of Petersburg, which occupied the summer and autumn. While these operations were in progress, General Philip H. Sheridan had made one of the most brilliant cavalry raids in the war, threatening Richmond and defeating the Confederate cavalry under General J. E. B. Stuart, and killing that. famous leader. While Grant lay before Richmond, General Lee, hoping to induce him to attack his works, dispatched a force under General Early to threaten Washington; but Grant sent two corps of his army northward, and Early--after a sharp skirmish under the fortifications of Washington, where Mr. Lincoln was personally present--was driven back through the Shenandoah valley, and on two occasions, in September and October, was signally defeated by General Sheridan.

General William T. Sherman, who had been left in command of the western district formerly commanded by Grant, moved southward at the same time that Grant crossed the Rapidan. General Joseph E. Johnston, one of the ablest of the Confederate generals, retired gradually before him, defending himself at every halt with the greatest skill and address; but his movements not proving satisfactory to the Richmond government, he was removed, and General John B. Hood appointed in his place. After a summer of hard fighting, Sherman, on 1 Sept., captured Atlanta, one of the chief manufacturing and railroad centers of the south, and later in the autumn organized and executed a magnificent march to the seaboard, which proved that the military power of the Confederacy had been concentrated at a few points on the frontier, and that the interior was little-more than an empty shell. He reached the sea-coast early in December, investing Savannah on the 10th, and capturing the city on the 21st. He then marched northward with the intention of assisting General Grant in the closing scenes of the war. The army under General George H. Thomas, who had been left in Tennessee to hold Hood in check while this movement was going on, after severely handling the Confederates in the preliminary battle of Franklin, 30 Nov., inflicted upon Hood a crushing and final defeat in the battle of Nashville, 16 Dec., routing and driving him from the state.

During the summer, while Grant was engaged in the desperate and indecisive series of battles that marked his southward progress in Virginia, and Sherman had not yet set out upon his march to the sea, one of the most ardent political canvasses the country had ever seen was in progress at the north. Mr. Lincoln, on 8 June, had been unanimously re-nominated for the presidency by the Republican convention at Baltimore. The Democratic leaders had postponed their convention to a date unusually late, in the hope that some advantage might be reaped from the events of the summer. The convention came together on 29 Aug. in Chicago. Mr. Vallandigham, who had returned from his banishment, and whom the government had sagaciously declined to re-arrest, led the extreme peace party in the convention. Prominent politicians of New York were present in the interest of General McClellan. Both sections of the convention gained their point. General McClellan was nominated for the presidency, and Mr. Vallandigham succeeded in imposing upon his party a platform declaring that the war had been a failure, and demanding a cessation of hostilities. The capture of Atlanta on the day the convention adjourned seemed to the Unionists a providential answer to the opposition. Republicans, who had been somewhat disheartened by the slow progress of military events and by the open and energetic agitation that the peace party had continued through the summer at the north, now took heart again, and the canvass proceeded with the greatest spirit to the close. Sheridan's victory over Early in the Shenandoah valley gave an added impulse to the general enthusiasm, and in the October elections it was shown that the name of Mr. Lincoln was more popular, and his influence more powerful, than any one had anticipated. In the election that took place on 8 Nov., 1864, he received 2,216,000 votes, and General McClellan 1,800,000. The difference in the electoral vote was still greater, Mr. Lincoln being supported by 212 of the presidential electors, while only 21 voted for McClellan.

President Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered on 4 March, 1865, will forever remain not only one of the most remarkable of all his public utterances, but will also hold a high rank among the greatest state papers that history has preserved. As he neared the end of his career, and saw plainly outlined before him the dimensions of the vast moral and material success that the nation was about to achieve, his thoughts, always predisposed to an earnest and serious view of life, assumed a fervor and exaltation like that of the ancient seers and prophets. The speech that he delivered to the vast concourse at the eastern front of the capitol is the briefest of all the presidential addresses in our annals; but it has not its equal in lofty eloquence and austere morality. The usual historical view of the situation, the ordinary presentment of the intentions of the government, seemed matters too trivial to engage the concern of a mind standing, as Lincoln's apparently did at this moment, face to face with the most tremendous problems of fate and moral responsibility. In the briefest words he announced what had been the cause of the war, and how the government had hoped to bring it to an earlier close. With passionless candor he admitted that neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration it had attained. "Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding "; and, passing into a strain of rhapsody, which no lesser mind and character could ever dare to imitate, He said : "Both the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offences’ for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences, which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both north and south this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers m a living God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was-said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

Through them with the Confederate authorities, Mr. Lincoln dispatched him to Niagara Falls, and sent an open letter addressed, "To whom it may concern" (see illustration). It is in the possession of Mr. William H. Appleton, of New York, and now appears in facsimile for the first time. This document put an end to the negotiation. The Confederate emissaries in Canada, and their principals in Richmond, made no use of this incident except to employ the president's letter as a text for denunciation of the National government. But later in the year, the hopelessness of the struggle having become apparent to some of the Confederate leaders, Mr. Davis was at last induced to send an embassy to Fortress Monroe, to inquire what terms of adjustment were possible. They were met by President Lincoln and the secretary of state in person.

The triumphant election of Mr. Lincoln, no less than the steady progress of the National armies, convinced some of the more intelligent of the southern leaders that their cause was hopeless, and that it would be prudent to ascertain what terms of peace could be made before the utter destruction of their military power. There had been already several futile attempts at opening negotiations; but they had all failed of necessity, because neither side was willing even to consider the only terms that the other side would offer. There had never been a moment when Mr. Lincoln would have been willing to receive propositions of peace on any other basis than the recognition of the national integrity, and Mr. Davis steadfastly refused to the end to admit the possibility of the restoration of the national authority.

In July, certain unauthorized persons in Canada, having persuaded Horace Greeley those negotiations might be opened. The plan proposed was one that had been suggested, on his own responsibility by Mr. Francis Preston Blair, of Washington, in an interview he had been permitted to hold with Mr. Davis in Richmond, that the two armies should unite in a campaign against the French in Mexico for the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, and that the issues of the war should be postponed for future settlement. The president declined peremptorily to entertain this scheme, and repeated again the only conditions to which he could listen: The restoration of the national authority throughout all the states, the maintenance and execution of all the acts of the general government in regard to slavery, the cessation of hostilities, and the disbanding of the insurgent forces as a necessary prerequisite to the ending of the war. The Confederate agents reported at Richmond the failure of their embassy, and Mr. Davis denounced the conduct of President Lincoln in a public address full of desperate defiance. Nevertheless, it was evident even to the most prejudiced observers that the war could not continue much longer. Sherman's march had demonstrated tile essential weakness of the Confederate cause; the soldiers of the Confederacy who for four years, with the most stubborn gallantry, had maintained a losing fight--began to show signs of dangerous discouragement and insubordination; recruiting had ceased some time before, and desertion was going on rapidly.

The army of General Lee, which was tile last bulwark of the Confederacy, still held its lines stoutly against the gradually enveloping lines of Grant; but their valiant commander knew it was only a question of how many days he could hold his works, and repeatedly counseled the government at Richmond to evacuate that city, and allow the army to take up a more tenable position in the mountains. General Grant's only anxiety each morning was lest he should find the army of General Lee moving away from him, and late in March he determined to strike the final blow at the rebellion. Moving for the last time by the left flank, his forces under Sheridan fought and gained a brilliant victory over the Confederate left at Five Forks, and at the same time Generals Humphreys, Wright, and Parke moved against the Confederate works, breaking their lines and capturing many prisoners and guns. Petersburg was evacuated on 2 April. The Confederate government fled from Richmond the same afternoon and evening, and Grant, pursuing the broken and shattered remnant of Lee's army, received their surrender at Appomattox Court-House on 9 April. About 28,000 Confederates signed the parole, and an equal number had been killed, captured, and dispersed in the operations immediately preceding the surrender. General Sherman, a few days afterward, received the surrender of Johnston, and the last Confederate army, under General Kirby Smith, west of the Mississippi, laid down its arms.

President Lincoln had himself accompanied the army in its last triumphant campaign, and had entered Richmond immediately after its surrender, receiving the cheers and benedictions, not only of the Negroes whom he had set free, but of a great number of white people, who were Weary of the war, and welcomed the advent of peace. Returning to Washington with his mind filled with plans for the restoration of peace and orderly government throughout the south, he seized the occasion of a serenade, on 11 April, to deliver to the people who gathered in front of the executive mansion his last speech on public affairs, in which he discussed with unusual dignity and force the problems of reconstruction, then crowding upon public consideration. As his second inaugural was the greatest of all his rhetorical compositions, so this brief political address, which closed his public career, is unsurpassed among his speeches for clearness and wisdom, and for a certain tone of gentle but unmistakable authority, which shows to what a mastery of statecraft he had attained. He congratulated the country upon the decisive victories of the last week; he expressly asserted that, although he had been present in the final operations, "no part of the honor, for plan or execution, was his" and then, with equal boldness and discretion, announced the principles in accordance with which he should deal with the restoration of the states. He refused to be provoked into controversy, which he held would be purely academic, over the question whether the insurrectionary states were in or out of the Union. "As appears to me," he said, "that question has not been,

nor yet is, a practically material one, and any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all--a merely pernicious abstraction. We all agree that the seceded states, so-called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those states, is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding, or even considering, whether these states have ever been out of the Union than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the states from without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it."

In this temper he discussed the recent action of the Unionists of Louisiana. where 12,000 voters had sworn allegiance, giving his full approval to their course, but not committing himself to any similar method in other cases; "any exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement .... if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We, in effect, say to the white men,' You are worthless or worse, we will neither help you, nor be helped by you.' To the blacks we say,' This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you and leave you to the chances of gathering tile spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how.' . . . If, on the contrary, we sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse is made true. Concede that it is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it."

These words were the last he uttered in public; on 14 April, at a cabinet meeting, he developed these views in detail, and found no difference of opinion among his advisers. The same evening he attended a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre, in Tenth Street. He was accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and two friends --Miss Harris, a daughter of Senator Ira Harris, of New York, and Maj. Henry R. Rathbone. In the midst of the play a shot was heard, and a man was seen to leap from the president's box to the stage. Brandishing a dripping knife, with which, after shooting the president, he had stabbed Maj. Rathbone, and shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis!--the south is avenged!" he rushed to the rear of the building, leaped upon a horse, which was held there in readiness for him, and made his escape. The president was carried to a small house on the opposite side of the street, where, surrounded by his family and the principal officers of the government, he breathed his last at 7 o'clock on the morning of 15 April. The assassin was found by a squadron of troops twelve days afterward, and shot in a barn in which he had taken refuge. The illustration on page 722 represents the house where Mr. Lincoln passed away.

The body of the president lay in state at the Capitol on 20 April and was viewed by a great concourse of people; the next day the funeral train set out for Springfield, Ill. The cortege halted at all the principal cities on the way, and the remains of the president lay in state in Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Chicago, being received everywhere with extraordinary demonstrations of respect and sorrow. The joy over tile return of peace was for a fortnight eclipsed by tile universal grief for the dead leader. He was buried, amid the mourning of the whole nation, at Oak Ridge, near Springfield, on 4 May, and there on 15 Oct., 1874, an imposing monument--the work of the sculptor Larkin G. Mead--was dedicated to his memory. The monument is of white marble, with a portrait-statue of Lincoln in bronze, and four bronze groups at the corners, representing the infantry, cavalry, and artillery arms of the service and the navy. (click here for illustration.)

The death of President Lincoln, in the moment of the great national victory that he had done more than any other to gain, caused a movement of sympathy throughout the world. The expressions of grief and condolence that were sent to the government at Washington, from national, provincial, and municipal bodies all over the globe, were afterward published by the state department in a quarto volume of nearly a thousand pages, called "The Tribute of the Nations to Abraham Lincoln." After the lapse of twenty years, the high estimate of him that the world appears instinctively to have formed at the moment of his death seems to have been increased rather than diminished, as his participation in the great events of his time has been more thoroughly studied and understood. His goodness of heart, his abounding charity, his quick wit and overflowing humor, which made him the hero of many true stories and a thousand legends, are not less valued in themselves; but they are east in the shade by the evidences that continually appear of his extraordinary qualities of mind and of character, his powerful grasp of details, his analytic capacity, his unerring logic, his perception of human nature, would have made him unusual in any age of the world, while the quality that, in the opinion of many, made him the specially fitted agent of Providence in the salvation of the country, his absolute freedom from prejudice or passion in weighing the motives of his contemporaries and the deepest problems of state gives him pre-eminence even among the illustrious men that have preceded and followed him in his great office. Simple and modest as he was in his demeanor, he was one of the most self-respecting of rulers. Although his kindness of heart was proverbial, although he was always glad to please and unwilling" to offend, few presidents have been more sensible of the dignity of their office, and more prompt to maintain it against encroachments.

He was at all times unquestionably the head of the government, and, though not inclined to interfere with the routine business of the departments, he tolerated no insubordination in important matters. At one time, being conscious that there was an effort inside of his government to force the resignation of one of its members, he read in open cabinet a severe reprimand of what was going on, mentioning no names, and ordering peremptorily that no questions should be asked, and no allegations be made to the incident, then or thereafter. He did not except his most trusted friends or his most powerful generals from this strict subordination. When Mr. Seward went before him to meet the Confederate envoys at Hampton Roads, Mr. Lincoln gave him this written injunction: "You will not assume to definitely consummate anything"; and, on 3 March, 1865, when General Grant was about to set out on his campaign of final victory, the secretary of war gave him, by tile president's order, this imperative instruction: "The president directs me to say to you that he wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for the capitulation of General Lee's army, or on some other minor and purely military matter. He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or to confer upon any political question. Such questions the president holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no military conferences or conventions. mean-while, you are to press to the utmost your military advantages." When he refused to comply with the desire of the more radical Republicans in congress to take Draconian measures of retaliation against the Confederates for their treatment of black soldiers, he was accused by them of weakness and languor. They never seemed to perceive that to withstand an angry congress in Washington required more vigor of character than to launch a threatening decree against the Confederate government in Richmond. Mr. Lincoln was as unusual in personal appearance as in character. Hs stature was almost gigantic, six feet and four inches; he was muscular but spare of frame, weighing about 180 pounds. His hair was strong and luxuriant in growth, and stood out straight, from his head; it began to be touched with gray in his last years, his eyes, a grayish brown, were deeply set, and were filled, in repose, with an expression of profound melancholy, which easily changed to one of uproarious mirth at the provocation of a humorous anecdote, told by himself or another. His nose was long and slightly curved, his mouth large and singularly mobile. Up to the time of his election he was clean-shaven, but. during his presidency the fine outline of his face was marred by a thin and straggling beard. His demeanor was, in general, extremely simple and careless, but he was not without a native dignity that always protected him from anything like presumption or impertinence.

Mr. Lincoln married, on 4 Nov., 18.42, Miss Mary Todd, daughter of Robert S. Todd, of Kentucky. There were born of this marriage four sons. One, Edward Baker, died in infancy; another, William Wallace, died at the age of twelve, during the presidency of Mr. Lincoln; and still another, Thomas, at the age of eighteen, several years after his father's death. The only one that grew to maturity was his eldest son, Robert. The house in which Mr. Lincoln lived when he was elected president. in Springfield, Ill., was conveyed to the state of Illinois in 1887 by his son, and a collection of memorials of him is to be preserved there perpetually. (See illustration on page 717.)

There were few portraits of Mr. Lincoln painted in his lifetime; the vast number of engravings that have made his face one of the most familiar of all time have been mostly copied from photographs. The one on page 715 is from a photograph taken in 1858. There are portraits from life by Frank B. Carpenter, by Matthew Wilson, by Thomas Hicks, and an excellent crayon drawing by Barry. Since his death G. P. A. Healy, William Page, and others have painted portraits of him. There are two authentic life-masks: one made in 1858 by Leonard W. Volk, who also executed a bust of Mr. Lincoln before his election in 1860, and another by Clark Mills shortly before the assassination. There are already a number of statues: one by Henry Kirke Brown in Union square, New York (click here); another by the same artist in Brooklyn; one in the group called "Emancipation," by Thomas Ball, in Lincoln Park, Washington, D. C., a work which has especial interest as having been paid for by the contributions of the freed people; one by Mrs. Vinnie Ream Hoxie in the Capitol; one by Augustus St. Gaudens in Chicago, set up in Chicago, 22 Oct., 1887; and one by Randolph Rogers in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia (to see illustration click here). There is a bust by Thomas D. Jones, modeled from life in 1860.

The Lincoln bibliography is enormous, comprising thousands of volumes. See John Russell Bartlett's "Catalogue of Books and Pamphlets relating to the Civil War in the United States" (Boston, 1866). The most noteworthy of the lives of Lincoln already published are those of Joseph H. Barrett (Cincinnati, 1865); Henry J. Raymond (New York, 1865); Josiah G. Holland (Springfield, Mass., 1866) ; Ward H. Lamon (only the first volume, Boston, 1872); William O. Stoddard (New York, 1884) ; and Isaac N. Arnold (Chicago, 1885). Briefer lives have also been written by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stow< Mr. D. W. Bartlett, Charles G. Leland, John Carroll Power, and others. The most extensive work upon his life and times yet attempted is now (1887) in process of serial publication in the "Century" magazine, by his private secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay; and the same writers are engaged in the preparation of a complete edition of all his writings, speeches, and letters. --His wife, Mary Todd, b. in Lexington, Ky., 12 Dec., 1818 ; d. in Springfield, Ill., 16 July, 1882, was the daughter of Robert S. Todd, whose family were among the most influential of the pioneers of Kentucky and Illinois. Her great-uncle, John Todd, was one of the associates of General George Rogers Clark, in his campaign of 1778, and took part in the capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes. Being appointed county lieutenant by Patrick Henry, at that time governor of Virginia, he organized the civil government of what became afterward the state of Illinois. He was killed in the battle of Blue Licks, 18 Aug., 1782, of which his brother Levi, Mrs. Lincoln's grandfather, who also accompanied Clark's expedition as a lieutenant, was one of the few survivors.

Edited Appleton's American Image Copyright© 2001 by Virtualology^TM

Mary Todd was carefully educated in Lexington. When twenty-one years of age she went to Springfield to visit her sister, who had married Ninian W. Edwards, a son of Ninian Edwards, governor of the state. While there she became engaged to Mr. Lincoln, whom she married, 4 Nov., 1842. Her family was divided by the civil war "several of them were killed in battle" and, devoted as Mrs. Lincoln was to her husband and the National cause, this division among her nearest kindred caused her much suffering. The death of her son, William Wallace, in 1862, was an enduring sorrow to her. One of her principal occupations was visiting the hospitals and camps of the soldiers about Washington. She never recovered from the shock of seeing her husband shot down before her eyes her youngest son, Thomas, died a few years later, and her reason suffered from these repeated blows. She lived in strict retirement during her later years, spending part of her time with her son in Chicago, a part in Europe, and the rest with her sister, Mrs. Edwards, in Springfield, where she died of paralysis.—

Their son, Robert Todd, lawyer, born in Springfield, Illinois 1 Aug., 1843, was prepared for college at Phillips Exeter academy, and graduated at Harvard in 1864. He entered Harvard law-school, but after a short stay applied for admission to the military service, and his father suggested his appointment on the staff of General Grant, as a volunteer aide-de-camp without pay or allowances. This exceptional position did not meet with General Grant's approval, and at his suggestion young Lincoln was regularly commissioned as a captain, and entered the service on the same footing with others of his grade. He served with zeal and efficiency throughout the final campaign, which ended at Appomattox. At the close of the war he resumed the study of law, was admitted to the bar in Illinois, and practiced his profession with success in Chicago until 1881, with an interval of a visit to Europe in 1872; he steadily refused the offers that were repeatedly made him to enter public life, though taking part, from time to time, in political work and discussion. In 1881, at the invitation of President Garfield, he entered his cabinet as secretary of war. Mr. Lincoln, who, sixteen years before, had returned from the field just in time to stand by the death-bed of his father, assassinated while president, now had this strange experience repeated upon the assassination of President Garfield, a few months after his inauguration. On the accession of Vice-President Arthur to the presidency, Mr. Lincoln was the only member of the former cabinet who was requested to retain his portfolio, and he did so to the end of the administration. Lie performed the duties of the place with such ability and fairness, and with such knowledge of the law and appreciation of the needs of the army, as to gain the warmest approbation of its officers and its friends. Noteworthy incidents of his administration of the civil duties of the department were his report to the house of representatives upon its challenge to him to justify President Arthur's veto of the river and harbor bill of 1882, and the thoroughness and promptness of the relief given, from Wheeling to New Orleans, to those suffering from the great floods of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in February, 1884. In the latter year Mr. Lincoln was prominently spoken of for the presidency : but as President Arthur was a candidate before the Republican convention, Lincoln refused to allow his name to be presented for either place on the ticket. He returned to Chicago in the spring of 1885, and resumed the practice of his profession. -- Edited Appleton's Cyclopedia American Biography Copyright© 2001 by Virtualology^TM

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Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library - preserves and makes available for research the papers, audiovisual materials, and memorabilia of Dwight and Mamie D. Eisenhower

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library

Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum

Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation

Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum

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Ronald Reagan Presidential Library - 40th President: 1981-1989.

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President Who? Forgotten Founders Part I

President Who? Forgotten Founders Part II

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