The Western President

In Lincoln's inauguration address on March 4, 1861, he told the South, "you have an oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it'".  But southerners were not listening and when Lincoln sought to send supplies to federal troops at Fort Sumter in Charleston, guns boomed and the Civil War began.

Despite pressure from radical Republicans in Congress, Lincoln feared that an attack on slavery would cause the strategically important border states like Kentucky and Missouri to leave the Union.  Lincoln concluded that emancipation was necessary to win Negro support.  The final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 freed slaves only in areas still in rebellion, but it was a promise that changed the war into a war of freedom.

At Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered his famous speech to rally his countrymen to finish the work for men who had died there.  The bloody stalemate in Virginia brought war weariness to Lincoln.  Ulysses Grant's strategy of sending Sherman south to Atlanta and Sheridan across the Shenandoah Valley gave Lincoln his victory over not only the South in the Civil War, but also over the Democratic candidate General George McClellan in 1864.

At his final inauguration on March 4, 1865, Lincoln looked ahead to healing peace, asking people to act "with malice for none, with charity for all."  Sadly Lincoln didn't live to work such a peace.  He was assassinated just five day after Lee's surrender.  Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton who once called Lincoln the 'original gorilla', said at his funeral, "now he belongs to the ages".  Lincoln is one of the most loved Presidents in United States history.

Next time...Civil War in the Midwest
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On October 23, 1855, the Kansas Free State forces set up a governor and legislature under their Topeka Constitution, a document that outlaws slavery in the territory In opposition to the fraudulently elected pro-slavery legislature of Kansas.