COLEGIUL NATIONAL NICOLAE IORGA, Valenii de [623316]

COLEGIUL NATIONAL “NICOLAE IORGA”, Valenii de
Munte
Atestat de competenta lingvistica -Limba engleza
Pirvu Ana Maria
Semnatura:
Prof. Coord.: Dumitrescu Iuliana
Profil umanist – filologie
Clasa a XII -a E
An scolar: 2019 -2020

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-Abraham Lincoln –
AMERICAN PRESIDENT AND CITIZEN

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Table of contents

Introduction……………………………………………4
Chapter I: ABRAHAM LINCOLN –
CITIZEN ……………………………… …………… .…5
Chapter II: ABRAHAM LINCOLN – AMERICAN
PRESIDENT ……. ……………………… ……… .……7
Chapter III: THE LEGENDS OF ABRAHAM
LINCOLN .…………………………………………… 15
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………… 16
Bibliography …………………………………………. 18

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Introduction: Who was Abraham Lincoln?

Abraham Lincoln, byname Honest Abe, the Rail -Splitter, or the Great
Emancipator, was the 16th president of the United States and was an American
statesman and lawyer . Lincoln led the nation through its greatest moral,
constitutional, and political crisis in the American Civil War. He preserved the
Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized
the U.S. economy and he is regarded as one of America’s greatest heroes due to his
role as savior of the Union and emancipator of slav es.
Among American heroes, Lincoln continues to have a unique appeal for his
fellow countrymen and also for people of other lands. This charm derives from his
remarkable life story —the rise from humble origins, the dramatic death —and from
his distinc tively human and humane personality as well as from his historical role
as saviour of the Union and emancipator of the slaves. His relevance endures and
grows especially because of his eloquence as a spokesman for democracy. In his
view, the Union was wort h saving not only for its own sake but because it
embodied an ideal, the ideal of self -government. In recent years, the political side
to Lincoln’s character, and his racial views in particular, have come under close
scrutiny, as scholars continue to find him a rich subject for research. The Lincoln
Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated to him on May 30, 1922.

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Chapter I: ABRAHAM LINCOLN -CITIZEN .
Abraham Lincoln’s life .

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one -room log cabin on
Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky and he was the second child of
Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln. Thomas was a strong and determined pioneer
who found a moderate l evel of prosperity and was well respected in community.
The couple had two other children: Lincoln’s older sister Sarah and younger
brother Thomas, who died infancy.
When young Lincoln was nine years old, his mother died of tremetol (milk
sickness) at age 34, an October 5, 1818. The event was devasting to him, and
young Lincoln grew more alienated from his father and quietly resented the hard
work placed on him at an early age. Ten years later, on January 20, 1828, Sarah
died while giving birt h to a stillborn son; Lincoln was distraught over his sister's
death.
In December 1819, just over a year after his mother’s death, Lincoln’s father
Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a Kentucky widow with three children of
her own. She was a strong and affectionate woman with whom Lincoln quickly
bonded. The Lincolns were forced to move from Lincoln’s birthplace of Kentucky
to Perry County, Indiana, due to a land dispute in 1817. In Indiana, the family
"squatted" on public land to scrap out a living in a crude shelter, hunting game and
farming a small plot. Lincoln’s father was eventually able to buy the land.

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Though both his parents were most likely illiterate, Thomas’ new wife Sarah
encouraged Lincoln to read. It was while growing into manhood that Lincoln
received his formal education — an estimated total of 18 months — a few days or
weeks at a time. Read ing material was in short supply in the Indiana wilderness.
Neighbors recalled how Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow a book. He
undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time
such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress and Aesop’s Fables
In March 1830, 21 -year-old Lincoln joined his extended family in a move to
Illinois. After helping his father establish a farm in Macon County, Illinois,
Lincoln set out on his own in the spring of 1831. Lincoln settled in the vil lage of
New Salem where he worked as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, militia soldier
during the Black Hawk War and became a lawyer in Illinois. He was elected to the
Illinois Legislature in 1834, and was reelected in 1836, 1838, 1840 and 1844. In
additio n to his law career, Lincoln continued his involvement in politics, serving in
the United States House of Representatives from Illinois in 1846.

Private life
While residing in New Salem, Lincoln became acquainted with Ann Rutledge.
Apparently he was fond of her, and certainly he grieved with the entire community
at her untimely death, in 1835, at the age of 22. Afterward, stories were told of a
grand romance between Lincoln and Rutledge, but these stories are not supported
by sound historical evidence . A year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln carried on
a halfhearted courtship with Mary Owens, who eventually concluded that Lincoln
was “deficient in those little links which make up the chain of woman’s
happiness.” She turned down his proposal.So far as can be known, the first and
only real love of Lincoln’s life was Mary Todd. High -spirited, quick -witted, and
well-educated, Todd came from a rather distinguished Kentucky family, and her
Springfield relatives belonged to the social aristocracy of the to wn.

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Some of them frowned upon her association with Lincoln, and from time to time
he, too, doubted whether he could ever make her happy.
Nevertheless, they became engaged. Then, on a day in 1841 that Lincoln
recalled as the “fatal first of January,” the e ngagement was broken, apparently on
his initiative. For some time afterward, Lincoln was overwhelmed by terrible
depression and despondency. Finally the two were reconciled, and on November 4,
1842, they married.
Four children, all boys, were born to t he Lincolns. Edward Baker was nearly 4
years old when he died, and William Wallace (“Willie”) was 11. Robert Todd, the
eldest, was the only one of the children to survive to adulthood, though Lincoln’s
favorite, Thomas (“Tad”), who had a cleft palate and a lisp, outlived his father.
Lincoln left the upbringing of his children largely to their mother, who was
alternately strict and lenient in her treatment of them.
The Lincolns had a mutual affectionate interest in the doings and welfare of their
boys, w ere fond of one another’s company, and missed each other when apart, as
existing letters show. Like most married couples, the Lincolns also had their
domestic quarrels, which sometimes were hectic but which undoubtedly were
exaggerated by contemporary goss ips. She suffered from recurring headaches, fits
of temper, and a sense of insecurity and loneliness that was intensified by her
husband’s long absences on the lawyer’s circuit. After his election to the
presidency, she was afflicted by the death of her so n Willie, by the ironies of a war
that made enemies of Kentucky relatives and friends, and by the unfair public
criticisms of her as mistress of the White House. She developed an obsessive need
to spend money, and she ran up embarrassing bills. She also st aged some painful
scenes of wifely jealousy. At last, in 1875, she was officially declared insane,
though by that time she had undergone the further shock of seeing her husband
murdered at her side. During their earlier married life, she unquestionably
encouraged her husband and served as a prod to his own ambition. During their
later years together, she probably strengthened and tested his innate qualities of
tolerance and patience.

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Chapter II: ABRAHAM LINCOLN – AMERICAN
PRESIDENT

Early politics
Whe n Lincoln first entered politics, Andrew Jackson was president. Lincoln
shared the sympathies that the Jacksonians professed for the common man, but he
disagreed with the Jacksonian view that the government should be divorced from
economic enterprise. Amon g the prominent politicians of his time, he most
admired Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. Clay and Webster advocated using the
powers of the federal government to encourage business and develop the country’s
resources by means of a national bank, a protectiv e tariff, and a program of internal
improvements for facilitating transportation. In Lincoln’s view, Illinois and the
West as a whole desperately needed such aid for economic development. From the
outset, he associated himself with the party of Clay and We bster, the Whigs.
As a Whig member of the Illinois State Legislature, to which he was elected four
times from 1834 to 1840, Lincoln devoted himself to a grandiose project for
constructing with state funds a network of railroads, highways, and canals. W higs
and Democrats joined in passing an omnibus bill for these undertakings, but the
panic of 1837 and the ensuing business depression brought about the abandonment
of most of them. While in the legislature he demonstrated that, though opposed to
slavery, he was no abolitionist. In 1837, in response to the mob murder of Elijah
Lovejoy, an antislavery newspaperman of Alton, the legislature introduced
resolutions condemning abolitionist societies and defending slavery in the
Southern states as “sacred” by vir tue of the federal Constitution. Lincoln refused to
vote for the resolutions. Together with a fellow member, he drew up a protest tha t

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declared, on the one hand, that slavery was “founded on both injustice and bad
policy” and, on the other, that “the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather
to increase than to abate its evils.”
During his single term in Congress (1847 –1849), Lincoln, as the lone Whig
from Illinois, gave little attention to legislative matters. He proposed a bill for th e
gradual and compensated emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia, but,
because it was to take effect only with the approval of the “free white citizens” of
the district, it displeased abolitionists as well as slaveholders and never was
seriousl y considered.
Lincoln devoted much of his time to presidential politics —to unmaking one
president, a Democrat, and making another, a Whig. He found an issue and a
candidate in the Mexican War. With his “spot resolutions,” he challenged the
statement of President Jam es K. Polk that Mexico had started the war by shedding
American blood upon American soil. Along with other members of his party,
Lincoln voted to condemn Polk and the war while also voting for supplies to carry
it on. At the same time, he labourd for the n omination and election of the war hero
Zachary Taylor. After Taylor’s success at the polls, Lincoln expected to be named
commissioner of the general land office as a reward for his campaign services, and
he was bitterly disappointed when he failed to get t he job. His criticisms of the
war, meanwhile, had not been popular among the voters in his own congressional
district. At the age of 40, frustrated in politics, he seemed to be at the end of his
public career.
President Lincoln
After Lincoln’s election and before his inauguration, the state of South Carolina
proclaimed its withdrawal from the Union. To forestall similar action by other
Southern states, various compromises were proposed in Congress. The most
important, the Crittenden Compromise, included constitutional amendments
guaranteeing slavery forever in the states where it already existed and dividing the
territories between slavery and freedom. Although Lincoln had no objection to the
first of these amendments, he was unalterably opposed to the s econd and indeed to
any scheme infringing in the slightest upon the free -soil plank of his party’s
platform. “I am inflexible,” he privately wrote. He feared that a territorial division,

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by sanctioning the principle of slavery extension, would only enc ourage planter
imperialists to seek new slave territory south of the American border and thus
would “put us again on the highroad to a slave empire.” From his home in
Springfield he advised Republicans in Congress to vote against a division of the
territor ies, and the proposal was killed in committee. Six additional states then
seceded and, with South Carolina, combined to form the Confederate States of
America.
Thus, before Lincoln had even moved into the White House, a disunion crisis
was upon the cou ntry. Attention, North and South, focused in particular upon Fort
Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. This fort, still under construction,
was garrisoned by U.S. troops under Major Robert Anderson. The Confederacy
claimed it and, from other harbo ur fortifications, threatened it. Foreseeing trouble,
Lincoln, while still in Springfield, confidentially requested Winfield Scott, general
in chief of the U.S. Army, to be prepared “to either hold, or retake, the forts, as the
case may require, at, and af ter the inauguration.” In his inaugural address (March
4, 1861), besides upholding the Union’s indestructibility and appealing for
sectional harmony, Lincoln restated his Sumter policy as follows: The power
confided to me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places
belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond
what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion —no using of
force against, or among the people anywhere.
Then, near the end, addressing the absent Southerners: “You can have no
conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.”

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Outbreak of war
No sooner was he in office than Lincoln received word that the Sumter garrison,
unless supplied or withdrawn, would shortly be starved out. Still, for about a
month, Lincoln delayed acting. He was beset by contradictory advice. On the one
hand, General Scott, Secretary of State William H. Seward and others urged him to
abandon the fort; and Seward, through a go -between, gave a group of Confederate
commissioners to understand that the fort would in fact be abandoned. On the other
hand, many Republicans i nsisted that any show of weakness would bring disaster
to their party and to the Union. Finally Lincoln ordered the preparation of two
relief expeditions, one for Fort Sumter and the other for Fort Pickens, in Florida.
(He afterward said he would have been willing to withdraw from Sumter if he
could have been sure of holding Pickens.) Before the Sumter expedition, he sent a
messenger to tell the South Carolina governor:
I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an
attempt w ill be made to supply Fort -Sumpter [sic] with provisions only; and that, if
such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, will
be made, without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the Fort.
Without waiting for t he arrival of Lincoln’s expedition, the Confederate
authorities presented to Major Anderson a demand for Sumter’s prompt
evacuation, which he refused. On April 12, 1861, at dawn, the Confederate
batteries in the harbour opened fire.
“Then, and thereby,” Li ncoln informed Congress when it met on July 4, “the
assailants of the Government, began the conflict of arms.” The Confederates,
however, accused him of being the real aggressor. They said he had cleverly
maneuvered them into firing the first shot so as to put upon them the onus of war
guilt. Although some historians have repeated this charge, it appears to be a gross
distortion of the facts. Lincoln was determined to preserve the Union, and to do so
he thought he must take a stand against the Confederacy. He concluded he might as
well take this stand at Sumter.

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Lincoln’s primary aim was neither to provoke war nor to maintain peace. In
preserving the Union, he would have been glad to preserve the peace also, but he
was ready to risk a war that he thought would be short.
After the firing on Fort Sumter, Lin coln called upon the state governors for
troops (Virginia and three other states of the upper South responded by joining the
Confederacy). He then proclaimed a blockade of the Southern ports. These steps —
the Sumter expedition, the call for volunteers, and the blockade —were the first
important decisions of Lincoln as commander in chief of the army and navy. But
he still needed a strategic plan and a command system for carrying it out.
General Scott advised him to avoid battle with the Confederate forces
in Virginia, to get control of the Mississippi River, and by tightening the blockade
to hold the South in a gigantic squeeze. Lincoln had little confidence in Scott’s
comparatively passive and bloodless “Anaconda” plan. He believed the war must
be actively fought if it ever was to be won. Overruling Scott, he ordered a direct
advance on the Virginia front, which resulted in defeat and rout for the federal
forces at Bull Run (July 21, 1861). After a succession of more or less sleepless
nights, Lincoln produc ed a set of memorandums on military policy. His basic
thought was that the armies should advance concurrently on several fronts and
should move so as to hold and use the support of Unionists in Missouri, Kentucky,
western Virginia, and eastern Tennessee. A s he later explained:
I state my general idea of this war to be that we have the greater numbers, and the
enemy has the greater facility of concentrating forces upon points of collision; that
we must fail, unless we can find some way of making our advantage an over -match
for his; and that this can only be done by menacing him with superior forces
at different points, at the same time.
This, with the naval blockade, comprised the essence of Lincoln’s strategy.

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Wartime politics
To win the war, President Lincoln had to have popular support. The reunion of
North and South required, first of all, a certain degree of unity in the North. But the
North contained various groups with special interests of their own. Lincoln faced
the task of attracting to his administration the support of as many divergent groups
and individuals as possible. Accordingly, he gave much of his time and attention to
politics, which in one of its aspects is the art of attracting such support. Fortunately
for th e Union cause, he was a president with rare political skill. He had the knack
of appealing to fellow politicians and talking to them in their own language. He
had a talent for smoothing over personal differences and holding the loyalty of men
antagonistic to one another. Inheriting the spoils system, he made good use of it,
disposing of government jobs in such a way as to strengthen his administration and
further its official aims.Study Copperhead opposition to Abraham Lincoln during
the U.S. presidential e lection of 1864
Postwar policy
At the end of the war, Lincoln’s policy for the defeated South was not clear in
all its details, though he continued to believe that the main object should be to
restore the “seceded States, so -called,” to their “proper p ractical relation” with the
Union as soon as possible. He possessed no fixed and uniform program for the
region as a whole. As he said in the last public speech of his life (April 11, 1865),
“so great peculiarities” pertained to each of the states, and “su ch important and
sudden changes” occurred from time to time, and “so new and unprecedented” was
the whole problem that “no exclusive and inflexible plan” could “safely be
prescribed.” With respect to states like Louisiana and Tennessee, he continued to
urge acceptance of new governments set up under his 10 percent plan during the
war. With respect to states like Virginia and North Carolina, he seemed willing to
use the old rebel governments temporarily as a means of transition from war to
peace. He was on r ecord as opposing the appointment of “strangers”
(carpetbaggers) to govern the South.

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He hoped that the Southerners themselves, in forming new state governments,
would find some way by which whites and blacks “could gradually live themselves
out of their old relation to each other, and both come out better prepared for the
new.” A program of education for the freedmen, he thought, was essential to
preparing them for their new status. He also suggested that the vote be given
immediately to some Afric an Americans -“as, for instance, the very intelligent, and
especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.

Reputation And Character
“Now he belongs to the ages,” Stanton is supposed to have said as Lincoln took
his last breath. Many thought of Lincoln as a martyr. The assassination had
occurred on Good Friday, and on the following Sunday, memorable as “Black
Easter,” hundreds of speakers found a sermon in the event. Some of them saw
more than mere chance in the fact that assassination day was also crucifixion day.
One declared, “Jesus Christ died for the world; Abraham Lincoln died for his
country.” Thus the posthumous growth of his reputation was influenced by the
timing and circumstances of his death, which won for him a kind of sain thood.
Among the many who remembered Lincoln from personal acquaintance, one
was sure he had known him more intimately than any of the rest and influenced the
world’s conception of him more than all the others put together. That one was his
former law partner William Herndon. When Lincoln died, Herndon began a new
career as Lincoln authority, collecting reminiscences wherever he could find them
and adding his own store of memories. Although admiring Lincoln, he objected to
the trend toward sanctifying h im. He saw, as the main feature of Lincoln’s life, the
far more than ordinary rise of a self -made man, a rise from the lowest depths to the
greatest heights —“from a stagnant, putrid pool, like the gas which, set on fire by
its own energy and self -combustib le nature, rises in jets, blazing, clear, and bright.”

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Abraham Lincoln: Assassination
Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by well -known actor and
Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington,
D.C. He was taken to the Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma for
nine hours before dying the next morning. His death was mourned by millions of
citizens in the North and South alike. Lincoln's body lay in state at the U. S.
Capitol before a funeral train took him back to his final resting place in
Springfield, Illinois.
Occurring near the end of the American Civil War, the assassination was part of
a larger conspiracy intended by Booth to revive the Confederate cause by
eliminating the three most important officials of the United States government.
Conspirators Lewis Powell and David Herold wer e assigned to kill Secretary of
State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt was tasked with killing Vice
President Andrew Johnson. Beyond Lincoln's death, the plot failed: Seward was
only wounded and Johnson's would -be attacker lost his nerve. After a dra matic
initial escape, Booth was killed at the climax of a 12 -day manhunt. Powell, Herold,
Atzerodt and Mary Surratt were later hanged for their roles in the conspiracy.

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Chapter III: THE LEGENDS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Abraham Lincoln Sees His Own Death
By the time of his 1864 reelection, deep lines etched Lincoln's face and heavy
black circles underlined his eyes. During his five years as commander in chief, he
had slept little and taken no vacations. There may have been more to his sadness
than even he would admit: Lincoln dreamed of his own death. Ward Hill Lamon, a
close friend of the president’s, wrote down what Lincoln told him on an evening in
early 1865: “About ten days ago I retired very late…,” the president told Lamon. “I
soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I
heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed
and wandered downstairs … I ar rived at the East Room. Before me was a
catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were
stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people,
some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face cov ered, others weeping
pitifully. “‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers.
‘The President,’ was his answer. ‘He was killed by an assassin.'”
Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States (1861 -1865) is
remembe red for his vital role as the leader in preserving the Union during the Civil
War and beginning the process that led to the end of slavery in the United
States.He's remembered for his character, his speeches and letters and as a man of
humble origins whose determination and perseverance led him to the nation's
highest office.He is also remembered for his untimely death -and his supposed
afterlife in the White House.For years, presidents, first ladies, guests, and members
of the White House staff have claimed to have either seen Lincoln or felt his
presende.The melancholy bearing of Lincoln himself, and several instances of
eerie prescience on his part, only add to the legends of the Great Emancipator's
ghost.

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His ghost haunted the corridors of the White H ouse
Liz Carpenter, press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson, told author John Alexander
that Mrs. Johnson believed she'd felt Lincoln's presence one spring evening while
watching a television program about his death. She noticed a plaque she'd never
seen befo re hanging over the fireplace. It mentioned Lincoln's importance in that
room in some way. Mrs Johnson admitted feeling a strange coldness and decided
sense of unease. This disquieting apprehension has been felt by others. Grace
Coolidge, wife of Calvin Co olidge, the thirtieth president, was the first person to
report having actually seen the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. She said he stood at a
window of the Oval Office, hands clasped behind his back, gazing out over the
Potomac, perhaps still seeing the bloody battlefields beyond.
The ghost of Lincoln was seen frequently during the administration of Franklin D.
Roosevelt, when the country went through a devastating depression then a world
war. When Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was a guest at the White House
during that period she was awakened one night by a knock on her bedroom door.
Thinking it might be an important message, she got up and opened the door. The
top-hatted figure of President Lincoln stood in the hallway. The queen fainted.
When sh e came to she was lying on the floor. The apparition had vanished.
Eleanor Roosevelt used Lincoln's bedroom as her study. Although she denied
seeing the former president's ghost, she admitted to feeling his presence whenever
she worked late at night. She t hought he was standing behind her, peering over her
shoulder.

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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, Abraham Lincoln had a spectacular life, he was a good president
and he helped the people, he was probably so good that he attracted his death by
being assassinated, because successful people, good people have many enemies.

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Bibliography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_career_of_A
braham_Lincoln
https://www.br itannica.com/place/Hodgenville
https://www.history.com/topics/us -presidents/abraham -lincoln
https://ww w.biography.com/us -president/abraham -lincoln
https://www.history.com/topics/american -civil-war/abraham –
lincoln -assassination
http://abelincolnslife.weebly.com/personal -life.html
https://www.amazon.com/private -public -life-Abraham –
Lincoln/dp/117247822 8