With Malice Toward None By Stephen B.Oates Essay, Research Paper

About the AuthorStephen B. Oates is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the writer of eight other books, including The Fires of Jubilee and To Purge This Land with Blood. His undertaking in this life was to perpetuate Lincoln as he was in the yearss he lived. His intent of this life was to convey the yesteryear into the present for us and his students.The Life of Abraham LincolnAlthough other provinces such as Indiana lay claim to his birth, most beginnings agree that Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a back countries cabin in Hodgeville, Kentucky. In an interview during his run for the presidential term in 1860 Lincoln described his adolescence as & # 8220 ; the short and simple annals of the poor. & # 8221 ; ( p 30 ) . His male parent Thomas was a husbandman who married Nancy Hanks, his female parent, in 1806. Lincoln had one sister, Sarah, who was born in 1807. The Lincoln household was more financially comfy than most despite the common historical image of complete poorness. They moved to Indiana because of the rickety system of land rubrics in Kentucky. Because the Lincoln & # 8217 ; s arrived in Spencer County at the same clip as winter, Thomas merely had clip to build a & # 8220 ; half-faced camp. & # 8221 ; Made of logs and boughs, it was enclosed on merely three sides with a boom fire for the 4th. The nearest H2O supply was a mile off, and the household had to last on the copiousness of wild game in the country. Less than two old ages after the move to Indiana, Mrs. Lincoln caught a atrocious frontier disease known as & # 8220 ; milk sick. & # 8221 ; . Thomas Lincoln returned to Kentucky to happen a new married woman. On December 2 he married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow with three kids, and took them all back to Indiana. Although there were now eight people populating in the little shelter, the Lincoln kids, particularly Abe, adored their new stepmother who played a cardinal function in doing certain that Abe at least had some formal instruction, amounting to a little less than a twelvemonth in all. To back up his household it was necessary that Abe worked for a pay on nearby farms. & # 8220 ; He was strong and a great jock, but Abe preferred to read alternatively. Although few books were available to a back countries male child such as himself, anything that he could obtain he would read doggedly & # 8221 ; ( p 56 ) . Although his formal instruction had come to an terminal, his self-cultivation was merely get downing. After a three month flatboat journey along the Ohio and Mississippi, the 19 twelvemonth old Lincoln returned to Indiana with an enthusiasm for the life styles that he had merely encountered. Unfortunately, his new-found joy did non last long as his sister Sarah died in childbearing on January 20, 1828. In 1830 the Lincoln household decided to go forth Indiana in hopes of a better hereafter in Illinois. It was shortly thenceforth that Abraham became a leader in the town of New Salem while runing a shop and pull offing a factory. The following measure for such an ambitious adult male was obvious & # 8211 ; he entered political relations, completing 8th out of 13 in a race for the Illinois House of Representatives in August of 1832. Abraham Lincoln was a strong protagonist of Whig laminitis Henry Clay and his & # 8220 ; American System. & # 8221 ; This system that arose from the National Rebublicans of 1824 was in resistance to the powerful Democratic party of President Andrew Jackson. Lincoln agreed with Clay that the authorities should be a positive force with the intent of functioning the people. Internal betterments were high on both mens & # 8217 ; lists, and this base made the comparatively unknown Lincoln popular in rural Illinois from the start. As the Whigs rose in stature throughout the 1830 & # 8217 ; s, so did Lincoln, but non without paying his dues along the manner. For 80 yearss in the spring and early summer of 1832 Lincoln served in the military. On a changeless hunt for Black Hawk, war leader of the Sauk and Fox Indians, he ne’er saw any combat but he did turn out to be a superior leader of work forces in some of the most seeking state of affairss, including menaces of abandonment. & # 8220 ; In return for his 11 and a half hebdomads of service Lincoln earned a mere $ 125, but the connexions that he made with future leaders of Illinois and the experiencing of life from a soldier & # 8217 ; s viewpoint proved to be invaluable in his future political calling & # 8221 ; ( p 80 ) . During this clip Lincoln ran for and won a place in the Illinois Legislature with bipartizan support. In 1846 Lincoln took his biggest measure in political relations to that point. He won election to Congress as the lone Whig from Illinois. His individual term was merely memorable in that he took an unpopular base against President James K. Polk and his Mexican War, which Lincoln saw as unfair. Lincoln made unsuccessful commands for an Illinois Senate place in 1855, running as a Whig, and the Vice Presidency in 1856, running as a Republican. In his early yearss as a attorney and an Illinois Legislator, Lincoln was a frequent invitee of the Edward & # 8217 ; s household and Mrs. Edward & # 8217 ; s younger sister, Mary Todd, instantly caught Abe & # 8217 ; s oculus. She was like no adult female he had of all time known earlier. Her beauty, intelligence, appeal, and ability to take a conversation was plenty to do the normally unemotional Abraham to suggest. Yet he felt he did non love here and they broke up the battle. Almost instantly thenceforth, Lincoln began to experience awful guilt and sadness over what he had done and what he so realized he had lost. He became so down that for a short clip many of those around him feared that he was traveling to perpetrate self-destruction. Until he longed for her so much that a flicker wasreignited between the old lovers and they remarried. After having the Republican Party nomination for the 1858 Illinois senatorial race, Lincoln gave his historically celebrated, yet dubiously extremist & # 8220 ; House Divided & # 8221 ; address Lincoln had lost this election against Douglas but he had strengthened the Republican Party and won national acknowledgment in the procedure. As a consequence of keeping his ain with the & # 8220 ; Little Giant & # 8221 ; ( mentioning to Douglas & # 8217 ; s physical stature and political power ) , the full state was able to see merely how great and powerful of a leader Abraham Lincoln could go. Lincoln put the Senatorial licking in its proper perspective six old ages subsequently when he said, & # 8220 ; It & # 8217 ; s a faux pas, and non a fall. & # 8221 ; ( p 143 ) After Illinois chose Lincoln over the more extremist William Seward and Edward Bates, he about reluctantly turned his attending to the national scene. Lincoln & # 8217 ; s true desire was to be a Senator, where Abe believed that he could concentrate on the most of import issues more closely. Since he candidly did non believe that he had a opportunity of really winning the presidential term, one of the chief grounds that he was running was to derive more ill fame for the 1864 senatorial. Nevertheless, Lincoln had thrown his chapeau in the ring and he ran on the Republican platform of: 1 ) resistance to the extension of bondage 2 ) resistance to & # 8220 ; nativist & # 8221 ; demands that naturalisation Torahs be changed to restrict the rights of immigrants 3 ) support of federally sponsored internal betterments, a protective duty, a railway to the Far West, and free land for Western colonists. This base was evidently really attractive to Northern and Western electors. When election twenty-four hours eventually came, Lincoln merely waited, foremost in his office at the Statehouse and subsequently in the telegraph office. When the concluding consequences came in at about two O & # 8217 ; clock I

n the morning, Abraham Lincoln had become the sixteenth President of the United States with 1,866,452 popular votes. However he, did not receive a single vote in ten Southern states, and largely because of his victory, frustrated, humiliated, and defeated Southerners began the process of secession, beginning with South Carolina in 1860. Abraham Lincoln was chosen by destiny as the man to lead the Nation through its most trying hour, and it is quite probable that he understood just how trying it would be. Upon recalling how he felt immediately after learning of his victory, Lincoln replied, “I went home, but not to get much sleep, for I then felt as I never had before, the responsibility that was upon me.” (p 231) By Lincoln’s inauguration day in March of 1861, seven states had already seceded from the Union, electing Jefferson Davis as President of their Confederacy. In his inaugural address Lincoln attempted to avoid aggravating the slave states that had not yet seceded. He asked the South to reconsider its actions, but also reinforced his belief that the Union was perpetual, and that states could not secede, saying, “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.” (p 288) Lincoln also announced that because secession was unlawful he would hold the federal forts and installations in the South. All sided with the Union basically because they were assured by Lincoln that the war was being fought to preserve the Union, and not to destroy slavery. In a letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, on August 22, 1862, Lincoln confirmed this position saying: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” (p 290) Just as he had previously said that he would, on January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared that all slaves residing in states and districts still in rebellion against the United States were to be free. Although this was a bold move meant to upset the Southern war effort, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation had no immediate affect because it applied only to the Confederate states over which the federal government had no control. The proclamation did not apply to the slave states under Union control because there was no legal justification for Lincoln to apply it in those places. It had to be classified as a “military measure,” such as depriving the South of the services of her slaves. Lincoln realized that in order to peacefully integrate the former slaves into American society he decided to train them as regular soldiers, and they fought gallantly. Some 186,000 colored troops had been enrolled in the Union army by the end of the war. The famous poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow remarked, “At last the North consents to let the Negro fight for freedom.” (p 340) Jefferson Davis, and his war-torn South, had one final hope — the defeat of Lincoln in the election of 1864. Davis knew that as long as Lincoln was in the Office, the industrial superior North would continue to fight, and the South could not withstand the war much longer. If a new “peace” candidate were to be elected, then the Confederacy might survive. “Luckily for Lincoln the tide of the war turned dramatically in September of 1864 when General Sherman took Atlanta, an extremely important Southern rail and manufacturing center. Morale was boosted greatly in the North, and the victories continued to mount under Lincoln’s new-found leaders in Ulysses S. Grant and General Sherman. By the time of the election in November, Lincoln won overwhelmingly with 212 of the 233 possible electoral.” (p 402) The very weary President addressed the Nation the next day with less than victorious words. He stressed that the South should be dealt with mildly in order to bring the entire Nation back together as soon as possible. “Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union.” (p 409) What should have been Lincoln’s finest hour was probably one of his most stressing, because it was now up to him as to where the Nation was to go next. It was Good Friday, April 14, 1865, only five days after the end of the war. Despite numerous warnings from some of his closest advisors, President Lincoln insisted on attending an evening performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater. Since General Grant was expected to attend the play with President Lincoln, the President’s attendance was highly publicized. John Wilkes Booth, a staunch Southern supporter, was a well known and popular actor who felt it necessary to redeem the lost cause of the Confederacy. He had previously planned to kidnap President Lincoln, but when that plan did not work he decided to assassinate him instead. He had the help of three others in his plot, with the intention of also assassinating Vice President Johnson, Secretary Seward, and General Grant. The wounded Lincoln was rushed across the street to the Petersen house where he was attended to for nine hours. After fighting for life like only he could, President Abraham Lincoln passed away at 7:22 a.m. on the morning of April 15, 1865. “Even he who now sleeps, has, by this event, been clothed with a new influence…Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Washington, and your children, and your children’s children, shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in party heat, as idle words.” –Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, 1865 “A greater work is seldom performed by a single man. Generations yet unborn will rise up and call him blessed.” –Reverend James Reed, 1865 “…In all America, there was, perhaps, not one man who less deserved to be the victim of this revolution, than he who has just fallen.” –The London Times, 1865 “Abraham Lincoln…was at home and welcome with the humblest, and had a spirit and a practical vein in the times of terror that commanded the admiration of the wisest. His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1876 “If one would know the greatness of Lincoln one should listen to the stories which are told about him in other parts of the world. I have been in wild places where one hears the name of America uttered with such mystery as if it were some heaven or hell…but I heard this only in connection with the name Lincoln.” –Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) “In the days before antiseptic surgery, Lincoln had foreshadowed his own demise; his efforts to preserve the life of the nation had been successful at the cost of its strongest limb.” (p 446)My View on the BookI found this book interesting and was surprised it was not another documentary style written biography. It was actually interesting to read due to Oates? creative writing style. And being a factual historical story I learned a little about the life style of the post-colonial period and of course, the life of Lincoln himself whom I know like a close relative now due to the deep personal as well as external imagery expressed in this biography.