Thank You, Mr. Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

D/O/B:  February 12, 1809

Abraham Lincoln, this nation's 16th President, was born on this date two hundred and eleven years ago.  Lincoln was elected President in November, 1860.  Within one hundred and twenty days of his election, and prior to his inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven southern states seceded from the Union. Roughly forty-five days following his inauguration, the War Between the States (a/k/a "the Civil War"), began with the bombardment of the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. 

President Lincoln guided the United States into and through the Civil War. In November, 1864, he was re-elected to the Presidency.  On March 4, 1865, in his Second Inaugural Address, which he gave in the waning days of the war with the Confederacy on its knees, Lincoln could have boasted about the Confederacy's destruction. He could have sworn vengeance on the inhabitants of this nation's southern states.  A lesser man would have.  Hell, a lesser man who is the current tenant in Lincoln's former Pennsylvania Avenue address does so now in response to any slight, be it real, perceived, or self-inflicted.  

Of course, Mr. Lincoln did neither: 

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 lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

- President Abraham Lincoln 

2nd Inaugural Address

March 4, 1865

-AK