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Historically, an Alabama excise tax "on the storage, use or other consumption in this state of tangible personal property purchased at retail for storage, use or other consumption in this state" was the focus of a 1941 U S Supreme Court ruling, "Curry v United States". County and local governments. Alabama has 67 counties. Each county has its own elected legislative branch, usually called the county commission. It also has limited executive authority in the county. Because of the constraints of the Alabama Constitution, which centralizes power in the state legislature, only seven counties (Jefferson, Lee, Mobile, Madison, Montgomery, Shelby, and Tuscaloosa) in the state have limited home rule. Instead, most counties in the state must lobby the Local Legislation Committee of the state legislature to get simple local policies approved, ranging from waste disposal to land use zoning. The state legislature has retained power over local governments by refusing to pass a constitutional amendment establishing home rule for counties, as recommended by the 1973 Alabama Constitutional Commission. Legislative delegations retain certain powers over each county. United States Supreme Court decisions in "Baker v. Carr" (1964) required that both houses have districts established on the basis of population, and redistricted after each census, to implement the principle of "one man, one vote". Before that, each county was represented by one state senator, leading to under-representation in the state senate for more urbanized, populous counties. The rural bias of the state legislature, which had also failed to redistrict seats in the state house, affected politics well into the 20th century, failing to recognize the rise of industrial cities and urbanized areas.
"The lack of home rule for counties in Alabama has resulted in the proliferation of local legislation permitting counties to do things not authorized by the state constitution. Alabama's constitution has been amended more than 700 times, and almost one-third of the amendments are local in nature, applying to only one county or city. A significant part of each legislative session is spent on local legislation, taking away time and attention of legislators from issues of statewide importance." Alabama is an alcoholic beverage control state, meaning the state government holds a monopoly on the sale of alcohol. The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board controls the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages in the state. A total of 25 of the 67 counties are "dry counties" which ban the sale of alcohol, and there are many dry municipalities in counties which permit alcohol sales. Politics. During Reconstruction following the American Civil War, Alabama was occupied by federal troops of the Third Military District under General John Pope. In 1874, the political coalition of white Democrats known as the Redeemers took control of the state government from the Republicans, in part by suppressing the black vote through violence, fraud, and intimidation. After 1890, a coalition of White Democratic politicians passed laws to segregate and disenfranchise African American residents, a process completed in provisions of the 1901 constitution. Provisions which disenfranchised blacks resulted in excluding many poor Whites. By 1941 more Whites than Blacks had been disenfranchised: 600,000 to 520,000. The total effects were greater on the black community, as almost all its citizens were disfranchised and relegated to separate and unequal treatment under the law.
From 1901 through the 1960s, the state did not redraw election districts as population grew and shifted within the state during urbanization and industrialization of certain areas. As counties were the basis of election districts, the result was a rural minority that dominated state politics through nearly three-quarters of the century, until a series of federal court cases required redistricting in 1972 to meet equal representation. Alabama state politics gained nationwide and international attention in the 1950s and 1960s during the civil rights movement, when whites bureaucratically, and at times violently, resisted protests for electoral and social reform. Governor George Wallace, the state's only four-term governor, was a controversial figure who vowed to maintain segregation. Only after passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 did African Americans regain the ability to exercise suffrage, among other civil rights. In many jurisdictions, they continued to be excluded from representation by at-large electoral systems, which allowed the majority of the population to dominate elections. Some changes at the county level have occurred following court challenges to establish single-member districts that enable a more diverse representation among county boards.
In 2007, the Alabama Legislature passed, and Republican governor Bob Riley signed a resolution expressing "profound regret" over slavery and its lingering impact. In a symbolic ceremony, the bill was signed in the Alabama State Capitol, which housed Congress of the Confederate States of America. In 2010, Republicans won control of both houses of the legislature for the first time in 136 years. , there are a total of 3,707,233 registered voters, with 3,318,679 active, and the others inactive in the state. The 2023 "American Values Atlas" by Public Religion Research Institute found that a majority of Alabama residents support same-sex marriage. Elections. State elections. With the disfranchisement of Blacks in 1901, the state became part of the "Solid South", a system in which the Democratic Party operated as effectively the only viable political party in every Southern state. For nearly a hundred years local and state elections in Alabama were decided in the Democratic Party primary, with generally only token Republican challengers running in the general election. Since the mid- to late 20th century, however, white conservatives started shifting to the Republican Party. In Alabama, majority-white districts are now expected to regularly elect Republican candidates to federal, state and local office.
Members of the nine seats on the Supreme Court of Alabama and all ten seats on the state appellate courts are elected to office. Until 1994, no Republicans held any of the court seats. In that general election, the then-incumbent chief justice, Ernest C. Hornsby, refused to leave office after losing the election by approximately 3,000 votes to Republican Perry O. Hooper Sr. Hornsby sued Alabama and defiantly remained in office for nearly a year before finally giving up the seat after losing in court. The Democrats lost the last of the nineteen court seats in August 2011 with the resignation of the last Democrat on the bench. In the early 21st century, Republicans hold all seven of the statewide elected executive branch offices. Republicans hold six of the eight elected seats on the Alabama State Board of Education. In 2010, Republicans took large majorities of both chambers of the state legislature, giving them control of that body for the first time in 136 years. The last remaining statewide Democrat, who served on the Alabama Public Service Commission, was defeated in 2012.
Only three Republican lieutenant governors have been elected since the end of Reconstruction, when Republicans generally represented Reconstruction government, including the newly emancipated freedmen who had gained the franchise. The three GOP lieutenant governors are Steve Windom (1999–2003), Kay Ivey (2011–2017), and Will Ainsworth (2019–present). Local elections. Many metropolitan and suburban counties have voters who are majority Democrats, resulting in local elections being decided in the Democratic primary. Similarly, most rural counties are majority-Republican and elections are effectively decided in the Republican Primary. However, since local governments in Alabama are weaker than in other parts of the country, Republicans have the upper hand in government. Alabama's 67 county sheriffs are elected in partisan, at-large races, and Republicans retain the vast majority of those posts. The current split is 18 Democrats, and 49 Republicans as of 2023. However, most of the Democratic sheriffs preside over urban and more populated counties. The majority of Republican sheriffs have been elected in the more rural counties with lower population. The state of Alabama has and 11 African-American sheriffs.
Federal elections. The state's two U.S. senators are Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville, both of whom are Republican. In the U.S. House of Representatives, the state is represented by seven members, five of whom are Republicans (Mike Rogers, Robert Aderholt, Dale Strong, Barry Moore, and Gary Palmer) and two Democrats (Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures). Education. Primary and secondary education. Public primary and secondary education in Alabama is under the purview of the Alabama State Board of Education as well as local oversight by 67 county school boards and 60 city boards of education. Together, 1,496 individual schools provide education for 744,637 elementary and secondary students. Public school funding is appropriated through the Alabama Legislature through the Education Trust Fund. In FY 2006–2007, Alabama appropriated $3,775,163,578 for primary and secondary education. That represented an increase of $444,736,387 over the previous fiscal year. In 2007, more than 82 percent of schools made adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward student proficiency under the National No Child Left Behind law, using measures determined by the state of Alabama.
While Alabama's public education system has improved in recent decades, it lags behind in achievement compared to other states. According to U.S. Census data (2000), Alabama's high school graduation rate (75%) is the fourth lowest in the U.S. (after Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi). The largest educational gains were among people with some college education but without degrees. According to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP), Alabama ranks 39 in reading and 40 in math among fourth-grade students in the rankings from 2022. Generally prohibited in the West at large, school corporal punishment is not unusual in Alabama, with 27,260 public school students paddled at least one time, according to government data for the 2011–2012 school year. The rate of school corporal punishment in Alabama is surpassed by only Mississippi and Arkansas. Colleges and universities. Alabama's programs of higher education include 14 four-year public universities, two-year community colleges, and 17 private, undergraduate and graduate universities. In the state are four medical schools (as of fall 2015) UAB Heersink School of Medicine, University of South Alabama and Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine and The Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine—Auburn Campus), two veterinary colleges (Auburn University and Tuskegee University), a dental school (UAB School of Dentistry, an optometry college (UAB School of Optometry), two pharmacy schools (Auburn University and Samford University), and five law schools (University of Alabama School of Law, Birmingham School of Law, Cumberland School of Law, Miles Law School, and the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law). Public, post-secondary education in Alabama is overseen by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education and the Alabama Department of Postsecondary Education. Colleges and universities in Alabama offer degree programs from two-year associate degrees to a multitude of doctoral level programs.
The largest single campus is the University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa, with 37,665 enrolled for fall 2016. Troy University was the largest institution in the state in 2010, with an enrollment of 29,689 students across four Alabama campuses (Troy, Dothan, Montgomery, and Phenix City), as well as sixty learning sites in seventeen other states and eleven other countries. The oldest institutions are the public University of North Alabama in Florence and the Catholic Church-affiliated Spring Hill College in Mobile, both founded in 1830. Accreditation of academic programs is through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) as well as other subject-focused national and international accreditation agencies such as the Association for Biblical Higher Education (ABHE), the Council on Occupational Education (COE), and the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS). According to the 2024 "U.S. News & World Report", Alabama had three universities ranked in the top 100 Public Schools in America (Auburn University at 47, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) at 76, and University of Alabama at 91).
According to the 2024 "U.S. News & World Report", Alabama had four tier one universities (Auburn University, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), University of Alabama and University of Alabama in Huntsville). Media. Major newspapers include "Birmingham News", Mobile "Press-Register", and "Montgomery Advertiser". Major television network affiliates in Alabama include: Culture. Literature. Alabama literature is characterized by themes of race and issues of gender and war, and is influenced by events such as the American Civil War, the Reconstruction era, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War. Some notable examples of Alabama literature include Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird", Winston Groom's "Forrest Gump", Fannie Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe", and the biographies of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Sports. Professional sports. Alabama has several professional and semi-professional sports teams, including three minor league baseball teams. The Talladega Superspeedway motorsports complex hosts a series of NASCAR events. It has a seating capacity of 143,000 and is the thirteenth largest stadium in the world and sixth largest stadium in America. Also, the Barber Motorsports Park has hosted IndyCar Series and Rolex Sports Car Series races.
The ATP Birmingham was a World Championship Tennis tournament held from 1973 to 1980. Alabama has hosted several professional golf tournaments, such as the 1984 and 1990 PGA Championship at Shoal Creek, the Barbasol Championship (PGA Tour), the Mobile LPGA Tournament of Champions, Airbus LPGA Classic, and Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic (LPGA Tour), and The Tradition (Champions Tour). College sports. College football is extremely popular in Alabama, particularly the University of Alabama Crimson Tide and Auburn University Tigers, rivals in the Southeastern Conference. Alabama averages over 100,000 fans per game and Auburn averages over 80,000—both numbers among the top twenty in the nation. Bryant–Denny Stadium is the home of the Alabama football team, and has a seating capacity of 101,821, and is the fifth largest stadium in America. Jordan-Hare Stadium is the home field of the Auburn football team and seats up to 87,451. Protective Stadium is home of the UAB Blazers football program and the Birmingham Bowl. It seats 45,000. Ladd–Peebles Stadium in Mobile is the home of the University of South Alabama football team, and serves as the home of the NCAA Senior Bowl, LendingTree Bowl, and Alabama-Mississippi All Star Classic; the stadium seats 40,646. In 2009, Bryant–Denny Stadium and Jordan-Hare Stadium became the homes of the Alabama High School Athletic Association state football championship games, after previously being held at Legion Field in Birmingham.
Transportation. Aviation. Major airports with sustained operations in Alabama include Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM), Huntsville International Airport (HSV), Dothan Regional Airport (DHN), Mobile Regional Airport (MOB), Montgomery Regional Airport (MGM), Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL) and Northeast Alabama Regional Airport (GAD). Rail. For rail transport, Amtrak schedules the "Crescent", a daily passenger train, running from New York to New Orleans with station stops at Anniston, Birmingham, and Tuscaloosa. Roads. Alabama has six major interstate routes: Interstate 65 (I-65) travels north–south roughly through the middle of the state; I-20/I-59 travel from the central west Mississippi state line to Birmingham, where I-59 continues to the north-east corner of the state and I-20 continues east towards Atlanta; I-85 originates in Montgomery and travels east-northeast to the Georgia state line, providing a main thoroughfare to Atlanta; and I-10 traverses the southernmost portion of the state, traveling from west to east through Mobile. I-22 enters the state from Mississippi and connects Birmingham with Memphis, Tennessee. In addition, there are currently five auxiliary interstate routes in the state: I-165 in Mobile, I-359 in Tuscaloosa, I-459 around Birmingham, I-565 in Decatur and Huntsville, and I-759 in Gadsden. A sixth route, I-685, will be formed when I-85 is rerouted along a new southern bypass of Montgomery. A proposed northern bypass of Birmingham will be designated as I-422. Since a direct connection from I-22 to I-422 will not be possible, I-222 has been proposed, as well.
Several U.S. Highways also pass through the state, such as U.S. Route 11 (US-11), US-29, US-31, US-43, US-45, US-72, US-78, US-80, US-82, US-84, US-90, US-98, US-231, US-278, US-280, US-331, US-411, and US-431. There are four toll roads in the state: Montgomery Expressway in Montgomery; Northport/Tuscaloosa Western Bypass in Tuscaloosa and Northport; Emerald Mountain Expressway in Wetumpka; and Beach Express in Orange Beach. Ports. The Port of Mobile, Alabama's only saltwater port, is a large seaport on the Gulf of Mexico with inland waterway access to the Midwest by way of the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway. The Port of Mobile was ranked 12th by tons of traffic in the United States during 2009. The newly expanded container terminal at the Port of Mobile was ranked as the 25th busiest for container traffic in the nation during 2011. The state's other ports are on rivers with access to the Gulf of Mexico.
Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus () was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. The central character in Homer's "Iliad", he was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, king of Phthia and famous Argonaut. Achilles was raised in Phthia along with his childhood companion Patroclus and received his education by the centaur Chiron. In the "Iliad", he is presented as the commander of the mythical tribe of the Myrmidons. Achilles' most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan prince Hector outside the gates of Troy. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the "Iliad", other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, who shot him with an arrow. Later legends (beginning with Statius' unfinished epic "Achilleid", written in the first century CE) state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for one heel. According to that myth, when his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx as an infant, she held him by one of his heels, leaving it untouched by the waters and thus his only vulnerable body part.
Alluding to these legends, the term "Achilles' heel" has come to mean a point of weakness which can lead to downfall, especially in someone or something with an otherwise strong constitution. The Achilles tendon is named after him following the same legend. Etymology. Linear B tablets attest to the personal name "Achilleus" in the forms "a-ki-re-u" and "a-ki-re-we", the latter being the dative of the former. The name grew more popular, becoming common soon after the seventh century BCE and was also turned into the female form ("Achilleía"), attested in Attica in the fourth century BCE (IG II² 1617) and, in the form "Achillia", on a stele in Halicarnassus as the name of a female gladiator fighting an "Amazon". Achilles' name can be analyzed as a combination of (""), 'distress, pain, sorrow, grief' and (), 'people, soldiers, nation', resulting in a proto-form "*Akhí-lāu̯os", 'he who has the people distressed' or 'he whose people have distress'. The grief or distress of the people is a theme raised numerous times in the "Iliad" (and frequently by Achilles himself). Achilles' role as the hero of grief or distress forms an ironic juxtaposition with the conventional view of him as the hero of ('glory', usually in war). Furthermore, has been construed by Gregory Nagy, following Leonard Palmer, to mean 'a corps of soldiers', a muster. With this derivation, the name obtains a double meaning in the poem: when the hero is functioning rightly, his men bring distress to the enemy, but when wrongly, his men get the grief of war. The poem is in part about the misdirection of anger on the part of leadership.
Some researchers deem the name a loan word, possibly from a Pre-Greek language. Achilles' descent from the Nereid Thetis and a similarity of his name with those of river deities such as Acheron and Achelous have led to speculations about his being an old water divinity . Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name, based among other things on the coexistence of "-λλ-" and "-λ-" in epic language, which may account for a palatalized phoneme /ly/ in the original language. Other names. Among the appellations under which Achilles is generally known are the following: Birth and early years. Achilles was the son of Thetis—a Nereid and daughter of the Old Man of the Sea—and Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons. Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals for Thetis's hand in marriage until Prometheus, the fore-thinker, warned Zeus of a prophecy (originally uttered by Themis, goddess of divine law) that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father. For this reason, the two gods withdrew their pursuit, and had her wed Peleus.
There is a tale which offers an alternative version of these events: In the "Argonautica" (4.760) Zeus' sister and wife Hera alludes to Thetis' chaste resistance to the advances of Zeus, pointing out that Thetis was so loyal to Hera's marriage bond that she coolly rejected the father of gods. Thetis, although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus, was also brought up by Hera, further explaining her resistance to the advances of Zeus. Zeus was furious and decreed that she would never marry an immortal. According to the "Achilleid", written by Statius in the first century CE, and to non-surviving previous sources, when Achilles was born Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx; however, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him: his left heel . It is not clear if this version of events was known earlier. In another version of this story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire in order to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage.
None of the sources before Statius make any reference to this general invulnerability. To the contrary, in the "Iliad", Homer mentions Achilles being wounded: in Book 21 the Paeonian hero Asteropaios, son of Pelagon, challenged Achilles by the river Scamander. He was ambidextrous, and cast a spear from each hand; one grazed Achilles' elbow, "drawing a spurt of blood". In the few fragmentary poems of the Epic Cycle which describe the hero's death (i.e. the "Cypria", the "Little Iliad" by Lesches of Pyrrha, the "Aethiopis" and "Iliupersis" by Arctinus of Miletus), there is no trace of any reference to his general invulnerability or his famous weakness at the heel. In the later vase paintings presenting the death of Achilles, the arrow (or in many cases, arrows) hit his torso. Peleus entrusted Achilles to Chiron, who lived on Mount Pelion and was known as the most righteous of the Centaurs, to be reared. In some accounts, Achilles' original name was "Ligyron" and he was later named "Achilles" by his tutor Chiron. According to Homer, Achilles grew up in Phthia with his childhood companion Patroclus. Homer further writes that Achilles taught Patroclus what he himself had been taught by Chiron, including the medical arts. Thetis foretold that her son's fate was either to gain glory and die young, or to live a long but uneventful life in obscurity. Achilles chose the former, and decided to take part in the Trojan War.
According to Photius, the sixth book of the "New History" by Ptolemy Hephaestion reported that Thetis burned in a secret place the children she had by Peleus. When she had Achilles, Peleus noticed, tore him from the flames with only a burnt foot, and confided him to the centaur Chiron. Later Chiron exhumed the body of the Damysus, who was the fastest of all the giants, removed the ankle, and incorporated it into Achilles' burnt foot. Physical description. In Homer's "Iliad", Achilles is portrayed as tall and striking, with strength and looks that were unmatched among the Greek warriors. Homer describes him as having long hair or a mane (). Along with other characters, his hair is described with the word "xanthḗ" (), which meant 'yellow', or at times shades thereof, such as brown or auburn, and was used mostly for fair hair. A later Latin account, probably from the fifth century CE, falsely attributed to Dares Phrygius described Achilles as having "... a large chest, a fine mouth, and powerfully formed arms and legs. His head was covered with long wavy chestnut-colored hair. Though mild in manner, he was very fierce in battle. His face showed the joy of a man richly endowed."
Hidden on Skyros. Some post-Homeric sources claim that in order to keep Achilles safe from the war, Thetis (or, in some versions, Peleus) hid the young man dressed as a princess or at least a girl at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. There, Achilles, properly disguised, lived among Lycomedes' daughters, perhaps under the name "Pyrrha" (the red-haired girl), Cercysera or Aissa ("swift"). With Lycomedes' daughter Deidamia, with whom he had begun a relationship, Achilles there fathered two sons, Neoptolemus (also called Pyrrhus, after his father's possible alias) and Oneiros. According to this story, Odysseus learned from the prophet Calchas that the Achaeans would be unable to capture Troy without Achilles' aid. Odysseus went to Skyros in the guise of a pedlar selling women's clothes and jewellery and placed a shield and spear among his goods. When Achilles instantly took up the spear, Odysseus saw through his disguise and convinced him to join the Greek campaign. In another version of the story, Odysseus arranged for a trumpet alarm to be sounded while he was with Lycomedes' women. While the women fled in panic, Achilles prepared to defend the court, thus giving his identity away.
In the Trojan War. According to the "Iliad", Achilles arrived at Troy with 50 ships, each carrying 50 Myrmidons. He appointed five leaders (each leader commanding 500 Myrmidons): Menesthius, Eudorus, Peisander, Phoenix and Alcimedon. Telephus. When the Greeks left for the Trojan War, they accidentally stopped in Mysia, ruled by King Telephus. In the resulting battle, Achilles gave Telephus a wound that would not heal; Telephus consulted an oracle, who stated that "he that wounded shall heal". Guided by the oracle, he arrived at Argos, where Achilles healed him in order that he might become their guide for the voyage to Troy. According to other reports in Euripides' lost play about Telephus, he went to Aulis pretending to be a beggar and asked Achilles to heal his wound. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Alternatively, Telephus held Orestes for ransom, the ransom being Achilles' aid in healing the wound. Odysseus reasoned that the spear had inflicted the wound; therefore, the spear must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound and Telephus was healed.
Troilus. According to the "Cypria" (the part of the Epic Cycle that tells the events of the Trojan War before Achilles' wrath), when the Achaeans desired to return home, they were restrained by Achilles, who afterwards attacked the cattle of Aeneas, sacked neighbouring cities (such as Pedasus and Lyrnessus, where the Greeks capture the queen Briseis) and killed Tenes, a son of Apollo, as well as Priam's son Troilus in the sanctuary of Apollo Thymbraios; however, the romance between Troilus and Chryseis described in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" and in William Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" is a medieval invention. In Dares Phrygius' "Account of the Destruction of Troy", the Latin summary through which the story of Achilles was transmitted to medieval Europe, as well as in older accounts, Troilus was a young Trojan prince, the youngest of King Priam's and Hecuba's five legitimate sons (or according other sources, another son of Apollo). Despite his youth, he was one of the main Trojan war leaders, a "horse fighter" or "chariot fighter" according to Homer. Prophecies linked Troilus' fate to that of Troy and so he was ambushed in an attempt to capture him. Yet Achilles, struck by the beauty of both Troilus and his sister Polyxena, and overcome with lust, directed his sexual attentions on the youth—who, refusing to yield, instead found himself decapitated upon an altar-omphalos of Apollo Thymbraios. Later versions of the story suggested Troilus was accidentally killed by Achilles in an over-ardent lovers' embrace. In this version of the myth, Achilles' death therefore came in retribution for this sacrilege. Ancient writers treated Troilus as the epitome of a dead child mourned by his parents. Had Troilus lived to adulthood, the First Vatican Mythographer claimed, Troy would have been invincible; however, the motif is older and found already in Plautus' "Bacchides".
In the "Iliad". Homer's "Iliad" is the most famous narrative of Achilles' deeds in the Trojan War. Achilles' wrath (, ) is the central theme of the poem. The first two lines of the "Iliad" read: The Homeric epic only covers a few weeks of the decade-long war, and does not narrate Achilles' death. It begins with Achilles' withdrawal from battle after being dishonoured by Agamemnon, the commander of the Achaean forces. Agamemnon has taken a woman named Chryseis as his slave. Her father Chryses, a priest of Apollo, begs Agamemnon to return her to him. Agamemnon refuses, and Apollo sends a plague amongst the Greeks. The prophet Calchas correctly determines the source of the troubles but will not speak unless Achilles vows to protect him. Achilles does so, and Calchas declares that Chryseis must be returned to her father. Agamemnon consents, but then commands that Achilles' slave Briseis, the daughter of Briseus, be brought to him to replace Chryseis. Angry at the dishonour of having his plunder and glory taken away (and, as he says later, because he loves Briseis), with the urging of his mother Thetis, Achilles refuses to fight or lead his troops alongside the other Greek forces. At the same time, burning with rage over Agamemnon's theft, Achilles prays to Thetis to convince Zeus to help the Trojans gain ground in the war, so that he may regain his honour.
As the battle turns against the Greeks, thanks to the influence of Zeus, Nestor declares that the Trojans are winning because Agamemnon has angered Achilles, and urges the king to appease the warrior. Agamemnon agrees and sends Odysseus and two other chieftains, Ajax and Phoenix. They promise that, if Achilles returns to battle, Agamemnon will return the captive Briseis and other gifts. Achilles rejects all Agamemnon offers him and simply urges the Greeks to sail home as he is planning to do. The Trojans, led by Hector, subsequently push the Greek army back toward the beaches and assault the Greek ships. With the Greek forces on the verge of absolute destruction, Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle, wearing Achilles' armour, although Achilles remains at his camp. Patroclus succeeds in pushing the Trojans back from the beaches, but is killed by Hector before he can lead a proper assault on the city of Troy. After receiving the news of the death of Patroclus from Antilochus, the son of Nestor, Achilles grieves over his beloved companion's death. His mother Thetis comes to comfort the distraught Achilles. She persuades Hephaestus to make new armour for him, in place of the armour that Patroclus had been wearing, which was taken by Hector. The new armour includes the Shield of Achilles, described in great detail in the poem.
Enraged over the death of Patroclus, Achilles ends his refusal to fight and takes the field, killing many men in his rage but always seeking out Hector. Achilles even engages in battle with the river god Scamander, who has become angry that Achilles is choking his waters with all the men he has killed. The god tries to drown Achilles but is stopped by Hera and Hephaestus. Zeus himself takes note of Achilles' rage and sends the gods to restrain him so that he will not go on to sack Troy itself before the time allotted for its destruction, seeming to show that the unhindered rage of Achilles can defy fate itself. Finally, Achilles finds his prey. Achilles chases Hector around the wall of Troy three times before Athena, in the form of Hector's favorite and dearest brother, Deiphobus, persuades Hector to stop running and fight Achilles face to face. After Hector realizes the trick, he knows the battle is inevitable. Wanting to go down fighting, he charges at Achilles with his only weapon, his sword, but misses. Accepting his fate, Hector begs Achilles not to spare his life, but to treat his body with respect after killing him. Achilles tells Hector it is hopeless to expect that of him, declaring that, "my rage, my fury would drive me now to hack your flesh away and eat you raw – such agonies you have caused me." Achilles then kills Hector and drags his corpse by its heels behind his chariot. After having a dream where Patroclus begs Achilles to hold his funeral, Achilles hosts a series of funeral games in honour of his companion.
At the onset of his duel with Hector, Achilles is referred to as the brightest star in the sky, which comes on in the autumn, Orion's dog (Sirius); a sign of evil. During the cremation of Patroclus, he is compared to Hesperus, the evening/western star (Venus), while the burning of the funeral pyre lasts until Phosphorus, the morning/eastern star (also Venus) has set (descended). With the assistance of the god Hermes (Argeiphontes), Hector's father Priam goes to Achilles' tent to plead with Achilles for the return of Hector's body so that he can be buried. Achilles relents and promises a truce for the duration of the funeral, lasting 9 days with a burial on the 10th (in the tradition of Niobe's offspring). The poem ends with a description of Hector's funeral, with the doom of Troy and Achilles himself still to come. Penthesilea and Memnon. Later works, including the "Aethiopis" (seventh century BCE) and a work named "Posthomerica", composed by Quintus of Smyrna in the fourth century CE, relate further events from the Trojan War. When Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons and daughter of Ares, arrives in Troy, Priam hopes that she will defeat Achilles. After his temporary truce with Priam, Achilles fights and kills the warrior queen, only to grieve over her death later. Initially taken aback, he did not fight as intensely as usual. Once he realized that his distraction was endangering his life, he refocused and killed her.
Following the death of Patroclus, Nestor's son Antilochus becomes Achilles' closest companion. Achilles already loved Antilochus, so Menelaus thought Antilochus would be the best person to inform Achilles of Patroclus' death. Later, Memnon, son of the Dawn Goddess Eos and king of Ethiopia, slays Antilochus as he sacrifices himself to save his father. According to Philostratus' Imagines, Achilles laments his death on the battlefield, promising Antilochus a glorious funeral and vengeance. Achilles once more obtains revenge on the battlefield for a lost lover, killing Memnon. Consequently, Eos will not let the sun rise until Zeus persuades her. The fight between Achilles and Memnon over Antilochus echoes that of Achilles and Hector over Patroclus, except that Memnon (unlike Hector) was also the son of a goddess. Many Homeric scholars argued that episode inspired many details in the "Iliad"s description of the death of Patroclus and Achilles' reaction to it. The episode then formed the basis of the cyclic epic "Aethiopis", which was composed after the "Iliad", possibly in the seventh century BCE. The "Aethiopis" is now lost, except for scattered fragments quoted by later authors.
Achilles and Patroclus. The exact nature of Achilles' relationship with Patroclus has been a subject of dispute in both the classical period and modern times. In the "Iliad", it appears to be the model of a deep and loyal friendship. Homer does not suggest that Achilles and his close friend Patroclus had sexual relations. Although there is no direct evidence in the text of the "Iliad" that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, this theory was expressed by some later authors. Commentators from classical antiquity to the present have often interpreted the relationship through the lens of their own cultures. In fifth-century BCE Athens, the intense bond was often viewed in light of the Greek custom of "paiderasteia", which is the relationship between an older male and a younger one, usually a teenager. In Plato's "Symposium", the participants in a dialogue about love assume that Achilles and Patroclus were a couple; Phaedrus argues that Achilles was the younger and more beautiful one so he was the beloved and Patroclus was the lover. In Xenophon's "Symposium", Socrates says that Achilles and Patroclus were not lovers but had a platonic relationship. Kenneth Dover argues that ancient Greek had no words to distinguish heterosexual and homosexual, and it was assumed that a man could both desire handsome young men and have sex with women. Many pairs of men throughout history have been compared to Achilles and Patroclus to imply a homosexual relationship.
Death. The death of Achilles, even if considered solely as it occurred in the oldest sources, is a complex one, with many different versions. Starting with the oldest account, In book 22 of the "Iliad", Hector predicts with his last dying breath that Paris and Apollo will slay him at the Scaean Gates leading to Troy (with an arrow to the heel according to Statius). In book 23, the sad spirit of dead Patroclus visits Achilles just as he drifts off into slumber, requesting that his bones be placed with those of Achilles in his golden vase, a gift of his mother. In book 11 of the "Odyssey", Odysseus sails to the underworld and converses with the shades. One of these is Achilles, who when greeted as "blessed in life, blessed in death", responds that he would rather be a slave to the worst of masters than be king of all the dead. But Achilles then asks Odysseus of his son's exploits in the Trojan war, and Odysseus tells him of Neoptolemus' actions. Book 24 of "Odyssey" gives dead King Agamemnon's ghostly account of Achilles' death: the bleached bones from Achilles' funeral pyre had been mixed with those of Patroclus and put into his mother's golden vase. Also, the bones of Antilochus, who had become closer to Achilles than any other following Patroclus' death, were separately enclosed. The customary funeral games of a hero were performed, and a massive tomb or mound was built on the Hellespont for approaching seagoers to celebrate.
Achilles was represented in the "Aethiopis" as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the river Danube. Another version of Achilles' death is that he fell deeply in love with one of the Trojan princesses, Polyxena. Achilles asks Priam for Polyxena's hand in marriage. Priam is willing because it would mean the end of the war and an alliance with the world's greatest warrior. But while Priam is overseeing the private marriage of Polyxena and Achilles, Paris, who would have to give up Helen if Achilles married his sister, hides in the bushes and shoots Achilles with a divine arrow, killing him. According to some accounts, he had married Medea in life, so that after both their deaths they were united in the Elysian Fields of Hades—as Hera promised Thetis in Apollonius' "Argonautica" (third century BCE). Fate of Achilles' armour. Achilles' armour was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Ajax the Great. They competed for it by giving speeches on why they were the bravest after Achilles to their Trojan prisoners, who, after considering both men's presentations, decided Odysseus was more deserving of the armour. Furious, Ajax cursed Odysseus, which earned him the ire of Athena, who temporarily made Ajax so mad with grief and anguish that he began killing sheep, thinking them his comrades. After a while, when Athena lifted his madness and Ajax realized that he had actually been killing sheep, he was so ashamed that he committed suicide. Odysseus eventually gave the armour to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. When Odysseus encounters the shade of Ajax much later in the House of Hades ("Odyssey" 11.543–566), Ajax is still so angry about the outcome of the competition that he refuses to speak to Odysseus.
The armour they fought for was made by Hephaestus and thus much stronger and more beautiful than any armour a mortal could craft. Thetis had the gear made for Achilles because his first set was worn by Patroclus when he went to battle and taken by Hector when he killed Patroclus. The Shield of Achilles was also made by the fire god. His legendary spear was given to him by his mentor Chiron before he participated in the Trojan War. It was called the Pelian Spear, which allegedly no other man could wield. A relic claimed to be Achilles' bronze-headed spear was preserved for centuries in the temple of Athena on the acropolis of Phaselis, Lycia, a port on the Pamphylian Gulf. The city was visited in 333 BCE by Alexander the Great, who envisioned himself as the new Achilles and carried the "Iliad" with him, but his court biographers do not mention the spear; however, it was shown in the time of Pausanias in the second century CE. Achilles, Ajax and a game of "petteia". Numerous paintings on pottery have suggested a tale not mentioned in the literary traditions. At some point in the war, Achilles and Ajax were playing a board game ("petteia"). They were absorbed in the game and oblivious to the surrounding battle. The Trojans attacked and reached the heroes, who were saved only by an intervention of Athena.
Worship and heroic cult. The tomb of Achilles, extant throughout antiquity in the Troad, was venerated by Thessalians, but also by Persian expeditionary forces, as well as by Alexander the Great and the Roman emperor Caracalla. Achilles' cult was also to be found at other places, e. g. on the island of Astypalaea in the Sporades, in Sparta which had a sanctuary, in Elis and in Achilles' homeland Thessaly, as well as in the Magna Graecia cities of Tarentum, Locri and Croton, accounting for an almost Panhellenic cult to the hero. The cult of Achilles is illustrated in the Polyxena sarcophagus (500 BCE), which depicts the sacrifice of Polyxena near the tumulus of Achilles. Strabo (13.1.32) also suggested that such a cult of Achilles existed in Troad: The spread and intensity of the hero's veneration among the Greeks that had settled on the northern coast of the Pontus Euxinus, today's Black Sea, appears to have been remarkable. An archaic cult is attested for the Milesian colony of Olbia as well as for an island in the middle of the Black Sea, today identified with Snake Island (, , near Kiliia, Ukraine). Early dedicatory inscriptions from the Greek colonies on the Black Sea (graffiti and inscribed clay disks, these possibly being votive offerings, from Olbia, the area of Berezan Island and the Tauric Chersonese) attest the existence of a heroic cult of Achilles from the sixth century BCE onwards. The cult was still thriving in the third century CE, when dedicatory stelae from Olbia refer to an "Achilles Pontárchēs" (Ποντάρχης, roughly 'lord of the sea', or 'lord of the Pontus Euxinus'), who was invoked as a protector of the city of Olbia, venerated on par with Olympian gods such as the local Apollo Prostates, Hermes Agoraeus, or Poseidon.
Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) in his "Natural History" mentions a "port of the Achæi" and an "island of Achilles", famous for the tomb of that "man" (), situated somewhat nearby Olbia and the Dnieper-Bug Estuary; furthermore, at 125 Roman miles from this island, he places a peninsula "which stretches forth in the shape of a sword" obliquely, called "Dromos Achilleos" (Ἀχιλλέως δρόμος, "Achilléōs drómos", 'the Race-course of Achilles') and considered the place of the hero's exercise or of games instituted by him. This last feature of Pliny's account is considered to be the iconic spit, called today "Tendra" (or "Kosa Tendra" and "Kosa Djarilgatch"), situated between the mouth of the Dnieper and Karkinit Bay, but which is hardly 125 Roman miles (around 185 km) away from the Dnieper-Bug estuary, as Pliny states (to the "Race-course" he gives a length of , whereas the spit measures around today).
The heroic cult dedicated to Achilles on "Leuce" seems to go back to an account from the lost epic "Aethiopis" according to which, after his untimely death, Thetis had snatched her son from the funeral pyre and removed him to a mythical (, 'White Island'). Already in the fifth century BCE, Pindar had mentioned a cult of Achilles on a "bright island" (, ) of the Black Sea, while in another of his works, Pindar would retell the story of the immortalized Achilles living on a geographically indefinite Island of the Blest together with other heroes such as his father Peleus and Cadmus. Well known is the connection of these mythological Fortunate Isles (μακαρῶν νῆσοι, "makárôn nêsoi") or the Homeric Elysium with the stream Oceanus which according to Greek mythology surrounds the inhabited world, which should have accounted for the identification of the northern strands of the Euxine with it. Guy Hedreen has found further evidence for this connection of Achilles with the northern margin of the inhabited world in a poem by Alcaeus, speaking of "Achilles lord of Scythia" and the opposition of North and South, as evoked by Achilles' fight against the Aethiopian prince Memnon, who in his turn would be removed to his homeland by his mother Eos after his death.
The "Periplus of the Euxine Sea" () gives the following details: The Greek geographer Dionysius Periegetes, who probably lived during the first century CE, wrote that the island was called "Leuce" "because the wild animals which live there are white. It is said that there, in Leuce island, reside the souls of Achilles and other heroes, and that they wander through the uninhabited valleys of this island; this is how Jove rewarded the men who had distinguished themselves through their virtues, because through virtue they had acquired everlasting honour." Similarly, others relate the island's name to its white cliffs, snakes or birds dwelling there. Pausanias has been told that the island is "covered with forests and full of animals, some wild, some tame. In this island there is also Achilles' temple and his statue." Leuce had also a reputation as a place of healing. Pausanias reports that the Delphic Pythia sent a lord of Croton to be cured of a chest wound. Ammianus Marcellinus attributes the healing to waters ("aquae") on the island.
Strabo mentioned that the cape of the Racecourse of Achilles was sacred to Achilles and although it was treeless, was called Alsos (ἄλσος). "Alsos" in Greek means 'grove'. A number of important commercial port cities of the Greek waters were dedicated to Achilles. Herodotus, Pliny the Elder and Strabo reported on the existence of a town (), built by settlers from Mytilene in the sixth century BCE, close to the hero's presumed burial mound in the Troad. Later attestations point to an "Achílleion" in Messenia (according to Stephanus Byzantinus) and an "Achílleios" (Ἀχίλλειος) in Laconia. Nicolae Densuşianu recognized a connection to Achilles in the names of Aquileia and of the northern arm of the Danube delta, called Chilia (presumably from an older "Achileii"), although his conclusion, that Leuce had sovereign rights over the Black Sea, evokes modern rather than archaic sea-law. The kings of Epirus claimed to be descended from Achilles through his son, Neoptolemus. Alexander the Great, son of the Epirote princess Olympias, could therefore also claim this descent, and in many ways strove to be like his great ancestor. He is said to have visited the tomb of Achilles at Achilleion while passing Troy. In 216, the Roman emperor Caracalla, while on his way to war against Parthia, emulated Alexander by holding games around Achilles' tumulus.
Reception during antiquity. In Greek tragedy. The Greek tragedian Aeschylus wrote a trilogy of plays about Achilles, given the title "Achilleis" by modern scholars. The tragedies relate the deeds of Achilles during the Trojan War, including his defeat of Hector and eventual death when an arrow shot by Paris and guided by Apollo punctures his heel. Extant fragments of the "Achilleis" and other Aeschylean fragments have been assembled to produce a workable modern play. The first part of the "Achilleis" trilogy, "The Myrmidons", focused on the relationship between Achilles and chorus, who represent the Achaean army and try to convince Achilles to give up his quarrel with Agamemnon; only a few lines survive today. In Plato's "Symposium", Phaedrus points out that Aeschylus portrayed Achilles as the lover and Patroclus as the beloved; Phaedrus argues that this is incorrect because Achilles, being the younger and more beautiful of the two, was the beloved, who loved his lover so much that he chose to die to avenge him.
The tragedian Sophocles also wrote "The Lovers of Achilles", a play with Achilles as the main character. Only a few fragments survive. Towards the end of the fifth century BCE, a more negative view of Achilles emerges in Greek drama; Euripides refers to Achilles in a bitter or ironic tone in "Hecuba", "Electra", and "Iphigenia in Aulis". Other contemporary tragedians, such as Astydamas, wrote works on Achilles that are completely lost today. In Greek philosophy. Zeno. The philosopher Zeno of Elea centred one of his paradoxes on an imaginary footrace between "swift-footed" Achilles and a tortoise, by which he attempted to show that Achilles could not catch up to a tortoise with a head start, and therefore that motion and change were impossible. As a student of the monist Parmenides and a member of the Eleatic school, Zeno believed time and motion to be illusions. Plato. In "Hippias Minor", a Socratic dialogue attributed to Plato, an arrogant man named Hippias argues with Socrates. The two get into a discussion about lying. They decide that a person who is intentionally false must be "better" than a person who is unintentionally false, on the basis that someone who lies intentionally must understand the subject about which they are lying. Socrates uses various analogies, discussing athletics and the sciences to prove his point. The two also reference Homer extensively. Socrates and Hippias agree that Odysseus, who concocted a number of lies throughout the "Odyssey" and other stories in the Trojan War Cycle, was false intentionally. Achilles, like Odysseus, told numerous falsehoods. Hippias believes that Achilles was a generally honest man, while Socrates believes that Achilles lied for his own benefit. The two argue over whether it is better to lie on purpose or by accident. Socrates eventually abandons Homeric arguments and makes sports analogies to drive home the point: someone who does wrong on purpose is a better person than someone who does wrong unintentionally.
In Roman and medieval literature. The Romans, who traditionally traced their lineage to Troy, took a highly negative view of Achilles. Virgil refers to Achilles as a savage and a merciless butcher of men, while Horace portrays Achilles ruthlessly slaying women and children. Other writers, such as Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid, represent a second strand of disparagement, with an emphasis on Achilles' erotic career. This strand continues in Latin accounts of the Trojan War by writers such as Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius and in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's and Guido delle Colonne's "Historia destructionis Troiae", which remained the most widely read and retold versions of the Matter of Troy until the seventeenth century. Achilles was described by the Byzantine chronicler Leo the Deacon, not as Hellene, but as Scythian, while according to the Byzantine author John Malalas, his army was made up of a tribe previously known as Myrmidons and later as Bulgars. In modern literature and arts. Music. Achilles has been frequently the subject of operas, ballets and related genres. Film and television. Achilles has been portrayed in the following films and television series:
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederate States of America, playing a major role in the abolition of slavery, expanding the power of the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy. Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky, and was raised on the frontier. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. representative. Angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened the territories to slavery, he became a leader of the new Republican Party. He reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln ran for president in 1860, sweeping the North to gain victory. Pro-slavery elements in the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding from the nation. They formed the Confederate States of America, which began seizing federal military bases in the South. A little over one month after Lincoln assumed the presidency, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a U.S. fort in South Carolina. Following the bombardment, Lincoln mobilized forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the union.
Lincoln, a moderate Republican, had to navigate a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from both the Democratic and Republican parties. His allies, the War Democrats and the Radical Republicans, demanded harsh treatment of the Southern Confederates. He managed the factions by exploiting their mutual enmity, carefully distributing political patronage, and by appealing to the American people. Anti-war Democrats (called "Copperheads") despised Lincoln, and some irreconcilable pro-Confederate elements went so far as to plot his assassination. Lincoln unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the border states to agree to compensated emancipation. He suspended the writ of "habeas corpus" in April 1861, leading to Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion in "Ex parte Merryman", and he averted war with Britain by defusing the "Trent" Affair. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states "in rebellion" to be free. It also directed the Army and Navy to "recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons" and to receive them "into the armed service of the United States." On November 19, 1863, he delivered the Gettysburg Address, which became one of the most famous speeches in American history. Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of Southern ports. He promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which, in December 1865, abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime. Lincoln managed his own successful 1864 re-election campaign. He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation, calling for "malice toward none; with charity for all" in his second inaugural address. On April 14, 1865, just five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, he was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., with his wife Mary, when he was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.
Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for his wartime leadership and for his efforts to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. He is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history. Family and childhood. Early life. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky. The second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, he was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from England to Massachusetts in 1638. The family through subsequent generations migrated west, passing through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Lincoln was also a descendant of the Harrison family of Virginia; his paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky. The captain was killed in an Indian raid in 1786. Thomas, Abraham's father, then worked at odd jobs in Kentucky and Tennessee before the family settled in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s. Lincoln's mother Nancy Lincoln is widely assumed to have been the daughter of Lucy Hanks. Thomas and Nancy married on June 12, 1806, and moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky. They had three children: Sarah, Abraham, and Thomas, who died as an infant.
Thomas Lincoln bought multiple farms in Kentucky but could not get clear property titles to any, losing hundreds of acres in legal disputes. In 1816, the family moved to Indiana, where the land surveys and titles were more reliable. They settled in an "unbroken forest" in Little Pigeon Creek Community, Indiana. In Kentucky and Indiana, Thomas worked as a farmer, cabinetmaker, and carpenter. At various times he owned farms, livestock, and town lots, appraised estates, and served on county patrols. Thomas and Nancy were members of a Separate Baptist Church, which "condemned profanity, intoxication, gossip, horse racing, and dancing." Most of its members opposed slavery. Overcoming financial challenges, Thomas in 1827 obtained clear title to in Little Pigeon Creek Community. On October 5, 1818, Nancy Lincoln died from milk sickness, leaving 11-year-old Sarah in charge of a household including her father, nine-year-old Abraham, and Nancy's 19-year-old orphan cousin, Dennis Hanks. Ten years later, on January 20, 1828, Sarah died while giving birth to a stillborn son, devastating Lincoln. On December 2, 1819, Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow with three children of her own. Abraham became close to his stepmother and called her "Mother".
Education and move to Illinois. Lincoln was largely self-educated. His formal schooling was from itinerant teachers. It included two short stints in Kentucky, where he learned to read, but probably not to write. In Indiana at age seven, due to farm chores, he attended school only sporadically, for a total of less than 12 months by age 15. Nonetheless, he remained an avid reader and retained a lifelong interest in learning. When Lincoln was a teen, his "father grew more and more to depend on him for the 'farming, grubbing, hoeing, making fences' necessary to keep the family afloat. He also regularly hired his son out to work ... and by law, he was entitled to everything the boy earned until he came of age". Lincoln was tall, strong, and athletic, and became adept at using an ax. He and some friends took goods by flatboat to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he first witnessed slave markets. In March 1830, fearing another milk sickness outbreak, several members of the extended Lincoln family, including Abraham, moved west to Illinois and settled in Macon County. Abraham became increasingly distant from Thomas, in part due to his father's lack of interest in education; he would later refuse to attend his father's deathbed or funeral.
Marriage and children. Speculation persists that Lincoln's first romantic interest was Ann Rutledge, whom he met when he moved to New Salem. However, witness testimony, given decades afterward, lacked any specific recollection of a romance between the two. Rutledge died on August 25, 1835. Lincoln took the death very hard: He sank into a serious depression and said that he could not bear the idea of rain falling on Ann's grave, which gave rise to speculation that he had been in love with her. In the early 1830s, he met Mary Owens from Kentucky. Late in 1836, Lincoln agreed to a match with Owens if she returned to New Salem. Owens arrived that November and he courted her, but they both had second thoughts. On August 16, 1837, he wrote Owens a letter saying he would not blame her if she ended the relationship, and she never replied. In 1839, Lincoln met Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois, and the following year they became engaged. She was the daughter of Robert Smith Todd, a wealthy lawyer and businessman in Lexington, Kentucky. Their wedding, which was set for January 1, 1841, was canceled because Lincoln did not appear, but they reconciled and married on November 4, 1842, in the Springfield home of Mary's sister. While anxiously preparing for the nuptials, he was asked where he was going and replied, "To hell, I suppose".
In 1844, the couple bought a house in Springfield near his law office. The marriage was turbulent; Mary was verbally abusive and at times physically violent towards her husband. They had four sons. The eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, was born in 1843, and was the only child to live to maturity. Edward Baker Lincoln (Eddie), born in 1846, died February 1, 1850, probably of tuberculosis. Lincoln's third son, "Willie" Lincoln, was born on December 21, 1850, and died of a fever at the White House on February 20, 1862. The youngest, Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, was born on April 4, 1853, and died of edema at age 18 on July 16, 1871. Lincoln "was remarkably fond of children", and the Lincolns were not considered to be strict with their own. The deaths of Eddie and Willie had profound effects on both parents. Lincoln suffered from "melancholy", a condition now thought to be clinical depression. Later in life, Mary struggled with the stresses of losing her husband and sons, and in 1875 Robert committed her to an asylum. Early vocations and militia service.
In 1831, Thomas moved the family to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, after which Abraham struck out on his own. He made his home in New Salem, Illinois, for six years. During 1831 and 1832, Lincoln worked at a general store in New Salem, Illinois. He gained a reputation for strength and courage after winning a wrestling match with the leader of ruffians known as the Clary's Grove boys. In 1832, he declared his candidacy for the Illinois House of Representatives, but interrupted his campaign to serve as a captain in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War. When Lincoln returned home from the war, he planned to become a blacksmith, but instead purchased a New Salem general store in partnership with William Berry. Because a license was required to sell customers beverages, Berry obtained bartending licenses for Lincoln and himself, and in 1833 the Lincoln-Berry General Store became a tavern as well. They offered a wide range of alcoholic beverages as well as food, including takeout dinners. But Berry became an alcoholic, was often too drunk to work, and Lincoln ended up running the store by himself. Although the economy was booming, the business struggled and went into debt, prompting Lincoln to sell his share.
In his political campaigning, Lincoln advocated for navigational improvements on the Sangamon River. He could draw crowds as a raconteur, but lacked the requisite formal education, powerful friends, and money, and lost the election. Lincoln served as New Salem's postmaster and later as county surveyor, but continued his voracious reading and decided to become a lawyer. Rather than studying in the office of an established attorney, as was the custom, Lincoln borrowed legal texts from attorneys John Todd Stuart and Thomas Drummond, purchased books including Blackstone's "Commentaries" and Chitty's "Pleadings", and read law on his own. He later said of his legal education that "I studied with nobody." Early political offices and prairie lawyer. Illinois state legislature (1834–1842). Lincoln's second state house campaign in 1834, this time as a Whig, was a success over a powerful Whig opponent. Then followed his four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives for Sangamon County. He championed construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and later was a Canal Commissioner. He voted to expand suffrage beyond white landowners to all white males, but opposed both slavery and abolition. In 1837, he declared, "slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils." He echoed Henry Clay's support for the American Colonization Society which advocated a program of abolition in conjunction with settling freed slaves in Liberia.
He was admitted to the Illinois bar on September 9, 1836, and moved to Springfield and began to practice law under John T. Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin. Lincoln emerged as a formidable trial combatant during cross-examinations and closing arguments. He partnered several years with Stephen T. Logan, and in 1844, began his practice with William Herndon, "a studious young man". On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln, then 28 years old, delivered his first major speech at the Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, after the murder of anti-slavery newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy. Lincoln, decrying such violence, warned that, though we should not "expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow", lawlessness could. "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher", said Lincoln. U.S. House of Representatives (1847–1849). Lincoln professed to friends in 1861 to be "an old line Whig, a disciple of Henry Clay". Their party favored economic modernization in banking, and tariffs to fund internal improvements including railroads, and urbanization. In 1843, Lincoln sought the Whig nomination for Illinois's 7th district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives; he was defeated by John J. Hardin, though he prevailed with the party in limiting Hardin to one term. Lincoln not only pulled off his strategy of gaining the nomination in 1846, but also won the election. The only Whig in the Illinois delegation, he participated in almost all votes and made speeches that toed the party line. He was assigned to the Committee on Post Office and Post Roads and the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department. Lincoln teamed with Joshua R. Giddings on a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but dropped the bill when it eluded Whig support.
Early political views. Lincoln spoke against the Mexican–American War, for which he said President James K. Polk "had some strong motive—what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning—to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood". He supported the Wilmot Proviso, a failed proposal to ban slavery in any U.S. territory won from Mexico. Lincoln emphasized his opposition to Polk by drafting and introducing his Spot Resolutions. The war had begun with a killing of American soldiers in disputed territory, and Polk insisted that Mexican soldiers had "invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil"; Lincoln demanded that Polk tell Congress the exact spot, "implying that this spot was actually Mexican soil". The resolution cost Lincoln political support in his district, and newspapers derisively nicknamed him "spotty Lincoln". Lincoln later regretted some of his statements, especially his attack on presidential war-making powers.
Lincoln had pledged in 1846 to serve only one term in the House. Realizing Clay was unlikely to win the presidency, he supported General Zachary Taylor for the Whig nomination in the 1848 presidential election. Taylor won and Lincoln hoped in vain to be appointed Commissioner of the United States General Land Office. The administration offered to appoint him secretary or governor of the Oregon Territory as consolation. This would have disrupted his legal and political career in Illinois, so he declined and resumed his law practice. Prairie lawyer. In his Springfield practice, Lincoln handled "virtually every kind of business that could come before a prairie lawyer". Twice a year for sixteen years he appeared for 10 consecutive weeks in county seats in the Midstate county courts. Lincoln handled transportation cases in the midst of the nation's western expansion, particularly river barge conflicts under the many new railroad bridges. As a riverboat man, Lincoln initially favored those interests, but he represented whoever hired him. He represented a bridge company against a riverboat company in "Hurd v. Rock Island Bridge Company", a landmark case involving a canal boat that sank after hitting a bridge. In 1849 he received a patent for a flotation device for the movement of boats in shallow water. The idea was never commercialized, but it made Lincoln the only president to hold a patent. Lincoln appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court in 175 cases; he was sole counsel in 51 cases, of which 31 were decided in his favor. From 1853 to 1860, one of his largest clients was the Illinois Central Railroad. His legal reputation gave rise to the nickname "Honest Abe".
Lincoln represented William "Duff" Armstrong in his 1858 trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker. The case is famous for Lincoln's use of a fact established by judicial notice to challenge the credibility of an eyewitness. After a witness testified to seeing the crime in the moonlight, Lincoln produced a "Farmers' Almanac" showing the Moon was at a low angle, drastically reducing visibility. Armstrong was acquitted. In an 1859 murder case, Lincoln elevated his profile with his defense of Simeon Quinn "Peachy" Harrison, who was a third cousin; Harrison was also the grandson of Lincoln's political opponent, Rev. Peter Cartwright. Harrison was charged with the murder of Greek Crafton who, as he lay dying, confessed to Cartwright that he had provoked Harrison. Lincoln angrily protested the judge's initial decision to exclude Cartwright's testimony about the confession as hearsay. Lincoln argued that the testimony involved a dying declaration and was not subject to the hearsay rule. Instead of holding Lincoln in contempt of court as expected, the judge, a Democrat, admitted the testimony into evidence, resulting in Harrison's acquittal.
Republican politics (1854–1860). Emergence as Republican leader. The Compromise of 1850 failed to alleviate tensions over slavery between the slave-holding South and the free North. As the slavery debate in the Nebraska and Kansas territories became particularly acrimonious, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed popular sovereignty as a compromise; the measure would allow the electorate of each territory to decide the status of slavery. The legislation alarmed many Northerners, who sought to prevent the spread of slavery, but Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Act narrowly passed Congress in May 1854. Lincoln's Peoria Speech of October 1854, in which he declared his opposition to slavery, was one of over 170 speeches he delivered in the next six years on the topic of excluding slavery from the territories. Lincoln's attacks on the Kansas–Nebraska Act marked his return to political life.
Violent political confrontations in Kansas continued, and opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act remained strong throughout the North. As the 1856 elections approached, Lincoln joined the Republicans and attended the Bloomington Convention, where the Illinois Republican Party was established. The convention platform endorsed Congress's right to regulate slavery in the territories and backed the admission of Kansas as a free state. Lincoln gave the final speech of the convention, calling for the preservation of the Union. At the June 1856 Republican National Convention, though Lincoln received support to run as vice president, John C. Frémont and William Dayton were on the ticket, which Lincoln supported throughout Illinois. The Democrats nominated James Buchanan and the Know-Nothings nominated Millard Fillmore. Buchanan prevailed, while Republican William Henry Bissell won election as Governor of Illinois, and Lincoln became a leading Republican in Illinois. "Dred Scott v. Sandford". Dred Scott was a slave whose master took him from a slave state to a territory that was free as a result of the Missouri Compromise. After Scott was returned to the slave state, he petitioned a federal court for his freedom. His petition was denied in "Dred Scott v. Sandford" (1857). In his opinion, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote that Black people were not citizens and derived no rights from the Constitution, and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional for infringing upon slave owners' "property" rights. While many Democrats hoped that "Dred Scott" would end the dispute over slavery in the territories, the decision sparked further outrage in the North. Lincoln denounced it as the product of a conspiracy of Democrats to support the Slave Power. He argued that the decision was at variance with the Declaration of Independence, which stated that all men were equal "in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
Lincoln–Douglas debates and Cooper Union speech. In 1858, Douglas was up for re-election in the U.S. Senate, and Lincoln hoped to defeat him. Many in the party felt that a former Whig should be nominated in 1858, and Lincoln's 1856 campaigning and support of Trumbull had earned him a favor. Some eastern Republicans supported Douglas for his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution and admission of Kansas as a slave state. Many Illinois Republicans resented this eastern interference. For the first time, Illinois Republicans held a convention to agree upon a Senate candidate, and Lincoln won the nomination with little opposition. Lincoln accepted the nomination with great enthusiasm and zeal. After his nomination he delivered his House Divided Speech: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." The speech created a stark image of the danger of disunion. When informed of Lincoln's nomination, Douglas stated, "[Lincoln] is the strong man of the party ... and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won."
The Senate campaign featured seven debates between Lincoln and Douglas. These are the most famous political debates in American history; they had an atmosphere akin to a prizefight and drew thousands. Lincoln warned that the Slave Power was threatening the values of republicanism, and he accused Douglas of distorting Jefferson's premise that all men are created equal. In his Freeport Doctrine, Douglas argued that, despite the Dred Scott decision, which he claimed to support, local settlers, under the doctrine of popular sovereignty, should be free to choose whether to allow slavery within their territory, and he accused Lincoln of having joined the abolitionists. Lincoln's argument assumed a moral tone, as he claimed that Douglas represented a conspiracy to promote slavery. Douglas's argument was more legal in nature, claiming that Lincoln was defying the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court as exercised in the "Dred Scott" decision.
On February 27, 1860, powerful New York Republicans invited Lincoln to give a speech at Cooper Union, in which he argued that the Founding Fathers had little use for popular sovereignty and had repeatedly sought to restrict slavery. He insisted that morality required opposition to slavery and rejected any "groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong". Many in the audience thought he appeared awkward and even ugly. But Lincoln demonstrated intellectual leadership, which brought him into contention. Journalist Noah Brooks reported, "No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience". Historian David Herbert Donald described the speech as "a superb political move for an unannounced presidential aspirant." In response to an inquiry about his ambitions, Lincoln said, "The taste "is" in my mouth a little". 1860 presidential election. On May 9–10, 1860, the Illinois Republican State Convention was held in Decatur. Lincoln's followers organized a campaign team led by David Davis, Norman Judd, Leonard Swett, and Jesse DuBois, and Lincoln received his first endorsement. Exploiting his embellished frontier legend (clearing land and splitting fence rails), Lincoln's supporters adopted the label of "The Rail Candidate". On May 18 at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Lincoln won the nomination on the third ballot. A former Democrat, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, was nominated for vice president to balance the ticket. Lincoln's success depended on his campaign team, his reputation as a moderate on the slavery issue, and his strong support for internal improvements and the tariff.
Throughout the 1850s, Lincoln had doubted the prospects of civil war, and his supporters rejected claims that his election would incite secession. When Douglas was selected as the candidate of the Northern Democrats, delegates from eleven slave states walked out of the Democratic convention; they opposed Douglas's position on popular sovereignty, and selected incumbent Vice President John C. Breckinridge as their candidate. A group of former Whigs and Know Nothings formed the Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln and Douglas competed for votes in the North, while Bell and Breckinridge primarily found support in the South. Before the Republican convention, the Lincoln campaign began cultivating a nationwide youth organization, the Wide Awakes, which it used to generate popular support to spearhead voter registration drives, thinking that new voters and young voters tended to embrace new parties. People of the Northern states knew the Southern states would vote against Lincoln and rallied supporters for Lincoln.
As Douglas and the other candidates campaigned, Lincoln gave no speeches, relying on the enthusiasm of the Republican Party. The party did the legwork that produced majorities across the North. Republican speakers focused first on the party platform, and second on Lincoln's life story, emphasizing his childhood poverty. The goal was to demonstrate the power of "free labor", which allowed a common farm boy to work his way to the top by his own efforts. The Republican Party's production of campaign literature dwarfed the combined opposition; a "Chicago Tribune" writer produced a pamphlet that detailed Lincoln's life and sold 100,000–200,000 copies. Though he did not give public appearances, many sought to visit and write to Lincoln. In the runup to the election, he took an office in the Illinois state capitol to deal with the influx of attention. He also hired John George Nicolay as his personal secretary, who would remain in that role during the presidency. On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th president. He was the first Republican president and his victory was entirely due to his support in the North and West. No ballots were cast for him in 10 of the 15 Southern slave states, and he won only two of 996 counties in all the Southern states. Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes, or 39.8 percent of the total in a four-way race, carrying the free Northern states, as well as California and Oregon, and winning the Electoral vote decisively.
Presidency (1861–1865). First term. Secession and inauguration. The South was outraged by Lincoln's election, and in response secessionists implemented plans to leave the Union before he took office in March 1861. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina adopted an ordinance of secession; by February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed. Six of these states declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America, selecting Jefferson Davis as its provisional president. The upper South and border states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas) initially rejected the secessionist appeal. President Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy, declaring secession illegal. On February 11, 1861, Lincoln gave a particularly emotional farewell address upon leaving Springfield; he would never return to Springfield alive. Lincoln and the Republicans rejected the proposed Crittenden Compromise as contrary to the Party's platform of free-soil in the territories. Lincoln said, "I will suffer death before I consent ... to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege to take possession of this government to which we have a constitutional right". Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which passed Congress and was awaiting ratification by the required three-fourths of the states when Lincoln took office, whereupon Southern states began to secede. That doomed amendment would have protected slavery in states where it already existed. On March 4, 1861, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln said that, because he holds "such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable".
Due to secessionist plots, unprecedented attention to security was given to him and his train. En route to his inauguration, Lincoln addressed crowds and legislatures across the North. The president-elect evaded suspected assassins in Baltimore. He traveled in disguise, wearing a soft felt hat instead of his customary stovepipe hat and draping an overcoat over his shoulders while hunching slightly to conceal his height. On February 23, 1861, he arrived in Washington, D.C., which was placed under substantial military guard. Many in the opposition press criticized his secretive journey; opposition newspapers mocked Lincoln with caricatures showing him sneaking into the capital. Lincoln directed his inaugural address to the South, proclaiming once again that he had no inclination to abolish slavery in the Southern states: Lincoln cited his plans for banning the expansion of slavery as the key source of conflict between North and South, stating "One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute." The president ended his address with an appeal to the people of the South: "We are not enemies, but friends... The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." The failure of the Peace Conference of 1861 signaled that legislative compromise was impossible. By March 1861, no leaders of the insurrection had proposed rejoining the Union on any terms. Meanwhile, Lincoln and the Republican leadership agreed that the dismantling of the Union could not be tolerated.
Personnel. In the selection and use of his cabinet Lincoln employed the strengths of his rivals in a manner that emboldened his presidency. Lincoln commented on his thought process, "We need the strongest men of the party in the Cabinet. We needed to hold our own people together. I had looked the party over and concluded that these were the very strongest men. Then I had no right to deprive the country of their services." Goodwin described the group in her biography of Lincoln as a "Team of Rivals". Lincoln named his main political rival, William H. Seward, as Secretary of State and left most diplomatic issues in Seward's portfolio. However, Lincoln did select some top diplomats as part of his patronage policy. Lincoln's philosophy on court nominations was that "we cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known." Lincoln made five appointments to the Supreme Court. Noah Haynes Swayne was an anti-slavery lawyer who was committed to the Union. Samuel Freeman Miller supported Lincoln in the 1860 election and was an avowed abolitionist. David Davis was Lincoln's campaign manager in 1860 and had served as a judge in the Illinois court circuit where Lincoln practiced. Democrat Stephen Johnson Field, a previous California Supreme Court justice, provided geographic and political balance. Finally, Lincoln appointed his Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, as Chief Justice. Lincoln believed Chase was an able jurist, would support Reconstruction legislation, and that his appointment would unite the Republican Party.
Commander-in-Chief. In early April 1861, Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union's Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, sent a request for provisions to Washington. Lincoln's order to meet that request was seen by the secessionists as an act of war. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter. Historian Allan Nevins argued that the newly inaugurated Lincoln made three miscalculations: underestimating the gravity of the crisis, exaggerating the strength of Unionist sentiment in the South, and overlooking Southern Unionist opposition to an invasion. William Tecumseh Sherman talked to Lincoln during inauguration week and was "sadly disappointed" at his failure to realize that "the country was sleeping on a volcano" and that the South was preparing for war. Donald concludes: His repeated efforts to avoid collision in the months between inauguration and the firing on Fort Sumter showed he adhered to his vow not to be the first to shed fraternal blood. But he had also vowed not to surrender the forts... The only resolution of these contradictory positions was for the Confederates to fire the first shot.
On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to send a total of 75,000 volunteer troops to recapture forts, protect Washington, and "preserve the Union", which, in his view, remained intact despite the seceding states. This call forced states to choose sides. Virginia seceded and was rewarded with the designation of Richmond as the Confederate capital, despite its exposure to Union lines. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas followed. Secession sentiment was strong in Missouri and Maryland, but did not prevail; Kentucky remained neutral. The Fort Sumter attack rallied Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line to defend the nation. As states sent regiments south, on April 19 Baltimore mobs in control of the rail links attacked Union troops who were changing trains. Local leaders' groups later burned critical rail bridges to the capital and the Army responded by arresting local Maryland officials. Lincoln suspended the writ of "habeas corpus" in an effort to protect the troops trying to reach Washington. John Merryman, a Maryland officer hindering the U.S. troop movements, petitioned Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney to issue a writ of "habeas corpus". In June, in Ex parte Merryman, Taney, not ruling on behalf of the Supreme Court, issued the writ, believing that Article I, section 9 of the Constitution authorized only Congress and not the president to suspend it. But Lincoln invoked nonacquiescence and persisted with the policy of suspension in select areas. Under the suspension, 15,000 civilians were detained without trial; several, including Copperhead leader Clement L. Vallandigham, were tried in military courts for "treasonable" actions, an approach which was highly criticized.
Early Union military strategy. Lincoln took executive control of the war and shaped the Union military strategy. He responded to the unprecedented political and military crisis as commander-in-chief by exercising unprecedented authority. He expanded his war powers, imposed a blockade on Confederate ports, disbursed funds before appropriation by Congress, suspended "habeas corpus", and arrested and imprisoned thousands of suspected Confederate sympathizers. Lincoln gained the support of Congress and the northern public for these actions. Lincoln also had to reinforce Union sympathies in the border slave states and keep the war from becoming an international conflict. It was clear from the outset that bipartisan support was essential to success, and that any compromise alienated factions on both sides of the aisle. Copperheads (anti-war Democrats) criticized Lincoln for refusing to compromise on slavery; the Radical Republicans (who demanded harsh treatment against secession) criticized him for moving too slowly in abolishing slavery. On August 6, 1861, Lincoln signed the Confiscation Act of 1861, which authorized judicial proceedings to confiscate and free slaves who were used to support the Confederates. The law had little practical effect, but it signaled political support for abolishing slavery.
Internationally, Lincoln wanted to forestall foreign military aid to the Confederacy. He relied on his combative Secretary of State William Seward while working closely with Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Charles Sumner. In the 1861 Trent Affair, which threatened war with Britain, the U.S. Navy illegally intercepted a British mail ship, the "Trent", on the high seas and seized two Confederate envoys; Britain protested vehemently. Lincoln ended the crisis by releasing the two diplomats. Biographer James G. Randall dissected Lincoln's successful techniques: Lincoln painstakingly monitored reports coming into the War Department. He tracked all phases of the effort, consulting with governors and selecting generals based on their success, their state, and their party. In January 1862, after complaints of inefficiency and profiteering in the War Department, Lincoln replaced War Secretary Simon Cameron with Edwin Stanton. Stanton centralized the War Department's activities, auditing and canceling contracts, saving the federal government $17,000,000. Stanton worked more often and more closely with Lincoln than did any other senior official. "Stanton and Lincoln virtually conducted the war together", say Thomas and Hyman.
Lincoln's war strategy had two priorities: ensuring that Washington was well-defended and conducting an aggressive war effort for a prompt, decisive victory. Twice a week, Lincoln met with his cabinet. Occasionally, Lincoln's wife, Mary, prevailed on him to take a carriage ride, concerned that he was working too hard. For his edification Lincoln relied on a book by his chief of staff General Henry Halleck, "Elements of Military Art and Science". Lincoln began to appreciate the critical need to control strategic points, such as the Mississippi River. Lincoln saw the importance of Vicksburg and understood the necessity of defeating the enemy's army, rather than merely capturing territory. In directing the Union's war strategy, Lincoln valued the advice of Gen. Winfield Scott, even after his retirement as Commanding General of the United States Army. In June 1862, Lincoln made an unannounced visit to West Point, where he spent five hours consulting with Scott regarding the handling of the war and the staffing of the War Department.
General McClellan. After the Union rout at Bull Run and Winfield Scott's retirement, Lincoln appointed Major General George B. McClellan general-in-chief. McClellan spent months planning his Virginia Peninsula Campaign. McClellan's slow progress frustrated Lincoln, as did his position that no troops were needed to defend Washington. McClellan, in turn, blamed the failure of the campaign on Lincoln's reservation of troops for the capital. In 1862, Lincoln removed McClellan for the general's continued inaction. He elevated Henry Halleck and appointed John Pope as head of the new Army of Virginia. Pope satisfied Lincoln's desire to advance on Richmond from the north, thereby protecting Washington from counterattack. But in the summer of 1862 Pope was soundly defeated at the Second Battle of Bull Run, forcing the Army of the Potomac back to defend Washington.
Emancipation Proclamation. Before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, two Union generals issued their own emancipation orders, but Lincoln overrode both: he found that the decision to emancipate was not within the generals' power, and that it might upset loyal border states enough for them to secede. However, in June 1862, Congress passed an act banning slavery in all federal territories, which Lincoln signed. In July, the Confiscation Act of 1862 was enacted. Its section 9 freed slaves "within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States". On July 22, 1862, Lincoln reviewed a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet. Copperheads argued that emancipation was a stumbling block to peace and reunification, but Republican editor Horace Greeley of the "New-York Tribune", in his public letter, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions", implored Lincoln to embrace emancipation. In a public letter of August 22, 1862, Lincoln replied to Greeley, writing that while he personally wished all men could be free, his first obligation as president was to preserve the Union:
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in 10 states not then under Union control, with exemptions specified for areas under such control. Lincoln's comment on signing the Proclamation was: "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper." With the abolition of slavery in the rebel states now a military objective, Union armies advancing south "enable[d] thousands of slaves to escape to freedom". The Emancipation Proclamation having stated that freedmen would be "received into the armed service of the United States," enlisting these freedmen became official policy. In a letter to Tennessee military governor Andrew Johnson, Lincoln wrote, "The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once". By the end of 1863, at Lincoln's direction, General Lorenzo Thomas "had enrolled twenty regiments of African Americans" from the Mississippi Valley.
Gettysburg Address (1863). Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery on November 19, 1863. In 272 words, taking only three minutes, Lincoln asserted that the nation was "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". He defined the war as dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality for all. He declared that the deaths of so many soldiers would not be in vain, that the future of democracy would be assured, and that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth". The Address became the most quoted speech in American history. After victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving holiday, to be celebrated on the 26th, the final Thursday of November 1863. Promoting General Grant. General Ulysses Grant's victories at the Battle of Shiloh and in the Vicksburg campaign impressed Lincoln. Responding to criticism of Grant after Shiloh, Lincoln said, "I can't spare this man. He fights." Meade's failure to capture Lee's army after Gettysburg and Grant's success at Chattanooga persuaded Lincoln to promote Grant to commander of all Union armies. Grant then waged the bloody Overland Campaign, which exacted heavy losses on both sides. Amid the turmoil of military actions, on June 30, 1864, Lincoln signed into law the Yosemite Grant enacted by Congress, which provided unprecedented federal protection for the area now known as Yosemite National Park. According to Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr, "[T]he Yosemite Grant was a direct consequence of the war ... an embodiment of the ongoing process of remaking government ... an intentional assertion of a steadfast belief in the eventual Union victory."
Grant's army moved steadily south. Lincoln traveled to Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia, to confer with Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Lincoln reacted to Union losses by mobilizing support throughout the North. Lincoln authorized Grant to target infrastructure—plantations, railroads, and bridges—to weaken the South's morale and fighting ability. He emphasized defeat of the Confederate armies over destruction for its own sake. As Grant continued to weaken Lee's forces, efforts to discuss peace began. At one point, Confederate Vice President Stephens led a meeting with Lincoln, Seward, and others at Hampton Roads. Lincoln refused to negotiate with the Confederacy as a coequal. In early April, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond and Lincoln visited the conquered capital, whereupon on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox. Fiscal and monetary policy.
The revenue measures of 1861 proved inadequate for funding the war, forcing Congress to pass further bills to generate revenue. In February 1862, Congress passed the Legal Tender Act, which authorized the minting of $150 million of "greenbacks"—the first banknotes issued by the U.S. government since the end of the American Revolution. Greenbacks were not backed by gold or silver, but rather by the government's promise to honor their value. By the end of the war, $450 million worth of greenbacks were in circulation. Congress also passed the Revenue Act of 1862, which established an excise tax affecting nearly every commodity, as well as the first national inheritance tax. The Revenue Act of 1862 also added a progressive tax structure to the federal income tax, implementing a tax of five percent on incomes above $10,000. To collect these taxes, Congress created the Office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Despite these new measures, funding the war continued to be a challenge. The government continued to issue greenbacks and borrow large amounts of money, and the U.S. national debt grew from $65 million in 1860 to $2 billion in 1866. The Revenue Act of 1864 represented a compromise between those who favored a more progressive tax structure and those who favored a flat tax. It established a five-percent tax on incomes greater than $600, a ten-percent tax on incomes above $10,000, and it raised taxes on businesses. In early 1865, Congress levied a tax of ten percent on incomes above $5000. By the end of the war, the income tax constituted about one-fifth of the federal government's revenue. Though intended as a temporary wartime measure, the income tax set a precedent for expanded federal taxation in peacetime.
Lincoln also took action against rampant fraud during the war, enacting the False Claims Act of 1863. This law, also known as the "Lincoln Law," made it possible for private citizens to file false claims (qui tam) lawsuits on behalf of the U.S. government and also protect the U.S. government from contractors providing faulty goods to the Union army. Any person who submitted a false claim would have to pay double the amount of the government's damages plus $2,000 per false claim. Hoping to stabilize the currency, Chase convinced Congress to pass the National Banking Act in February 1863, as well as a second banking act in 1864. Those acts established the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to oversee "national banks" subject to federal, rather than state, regulation. In return for investing a third of their capital in federal bonds, these national banks were authorized to issue federal banknotes. After Congress imposed a tax on private banknotes in March 1865, federal banknotes became the dominant form of paper currency in the United States.
Foreign policy. In addition to Seward, Lincoln selected other top diplomats as part of his patronage policy. He closely monitored the Trent Affair in late 1861 to avoid war with Britain. Seward's main role was to keep Britain and France from supporting the Confederacy; he convinced them that Washington would declare war on them if they did. At the start of the war, Russia was the lone great power to support the Union, while the other European powers had varying degrees of sympathy for the Confederacy. Lincoln's policy succeeded: all foreign nations were officially neutral throughout the Civil War, with none recognizing the Confederacy. Although they remained neutral, the European powers, especially France and Britain, factored into the American Civil War in various ways. European leaders saw the division of the United States as having the potential to eliminate, or at least greatly weaken, a growing rival. They looked for ways to exploit the inability of the U.S. to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Spain invaded the Dominican Republic in 1861, while France established a puppet regime in Mexico. However, many in Europe also hoped for a quick end to the war, both for humanitarian reasons and because of the economic disruption it caused.
Lincoln's foreign policy was deficient in 1861 in terms of appealing to European public opinion. The European aristocracy (the dominant class in every major country) was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed." Union diplomats had to explain that United States was not committed to the ending of slavery, and instead they argued that secession was unconstitutional. Confederate spokesmen, on the other hand, were more successful by ignoring slavery and instead focusing on their struggle for liberty, their commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy. However, the Confederacy's hope that cotton exports would compel European interference did not come to fruition, as Britain found alternative sources of cotton and experienced economic growth in industries that did not rely on cotton. Though the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately end the possibility of European intervention, it rallied European public opinion to the Union by adding abolition as a Union war goal. Any chance of a European intervention in the war ended with the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, as European leaders came to believe that the Confederate cause was doomed.
Native Americans. The Lincoln administration faced difficulties guarding Western settlers, railroads, and telegraph from Native American attacks. On August 17, 1862, the Dakota War broke out in Minnesota. Hundreds of settlers were killed and 30,000 were displaced from their homes. Some feared incorrectly that it might represent a Confederate conspiracy to start a war on the Northwestern frontier. Lincoln ordered thousands of Confederate prisoners of war be sent to put down the uprising. When the Confederacy protested, Lincoln revoked the policy and none arrived in Minnesota. Lincoln sent General John Pope as commander of the new Department of the Northwest two weeks into the hostilities. Before he arrived, the Fond Du Lac band of Chippewa sent Lincoln a letter asking to go to war for the United States against the Sioux, so Lincoln could send Minnesota's troops to fight the South. Shortly after, a Mille Lacs Band chief offered the same. The Chippewa specified they wanted to use the Indigenous rules of warfare. That meant there would be no prisoners of war, no surrender, no peace agreement. Lincoln did not accept the Chippewa offer, as he could not control the Chippewa, and women and children were considered legitimate casualties in native American warfare.
Serving under Pope was Minnesota Congressman Henry H. Sibley. Minnesota's governor had made Sibley a Colonel United States Volunteers to command the U.S. force tasked with fighting the war and that eventually defeated Little Crow's forces at the Battle of Wood Lake. During the war, Dakota warriors killed 358 white settlers, 77 soldiers, and 36 volunteer militia and armed civilians. Thousands of white settlers fled the area. Dakota warriors also took hundreds of "mixed-blood" and white hostages, almost all women and children. The total number of Dakota casualties is unknown, but 150 Dakota warriors died in battle. On September 26, 1862, 269 hostages were released to Sibley's troops at Camp Release. Interned at Fort Snelling, approximately 2,000 Dakota surrendered or were taken into custody, including at least 1,658 non-combatants. In less than six weeks, a military commission, composed of officers from the Minnesota volunteer infantry, sentenced 303 Dakota warriors to death. Lincoln pardoned all but 39, and, with one getting a reprieve, the remaining 38 were executed in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Less than four months later, Lincoln issued the Lieber Code, which governed wartime conduct of the Union Army, by defining command responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Congressman Alexander Ramsey told Lincoln in 1864 that he would have gotten more re-election support in Minnesota had he executed all 303. Lincoln responded, "I could not afford to hang men for votes."
Second term. Reelection. Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864, while uniting the main Republican factions along with War Democrats Edwin M. Stanton and Andrew Johnson. Lincoln used conversation and his patronage powers—greatly expanded from peacetime—to build support and fend off the Radicals' efforts to replace him. At its convention, the Republican Party selected Johnson as his running mate. To broaden his coalition to include War Democrats as well as Republicans, Lincoln ran under the label of the new National Union Party. Grant's bloody stalemates damaged Lincoln's re-election prospects, and many Republicans feared defeat; Lincoln rejected pressure for a peace settlement. Lincoln prepared a confidential memorandum pledging that, if he should lose the election, he would "co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward". At the next cabinet meeting, Lincoln "asked each member to sign his name on the back of the document", but he did not allow them to read it.
Victories at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley turned public opinion, and Lincoln was re-elected. On March 4, 1865, Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. Historian Mark Noll places the speech "among the small handful of semi-sacred texts by which Americans conceive their place in the world;" it is inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial. Lincoln closed his speech with these words: Reconstruction. Reconstruction preceded the war's end, as Lincoln and his associates considered the reintegration of the nation, and the fates of Confederate leaders and freed slaves. When a general asked Lincoln how the defeated Confederates were to be treated, Lincoln replied, "Let 'em up easy." Lincoln's main goal was to keep the union together, so he proceeded by focusing not on whom to blame, but on how to rebuild the nation. Lincoln led the moderates in Reconstruction policy and was opposed by the Radicals, under Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and Benjamin Wade, who otherwise remained Lincoln's allies. Determined to reunite the nation and not alienate the South, Lincoln urged that speedy elections under generous terms be held. His Amnesty Proclamation of December 8, 1863, offered pardons to those who had not held a Confederate civil office and had not mistreated Union prisoners, if they signed an oath of allegiance.
As Southern states fell, they needed leaders while their administrations were restored. In Tennessee and Arkansas, Lincoln respectively appointed Johnson and Frederick Steele as military governors. In Louisiana, Lincoln ordered General Nathaniel P. Banks to promote a plan that would reestablish statehood when 10 percent of the voters agreed, and only if the reconstructed states abolished slavery. Democratic opponents accused Lincoln of using the military to ensure his and the Republicans' political aspirations. The Radicals denounced his policy as too lenient, and passed their own plan, the 1864 Wade–Davis Bill, which Lincoln vetoed. The Radicals retaliated by refusing to seat elected representatives from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. After implementing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln increased pressure on Congress to outlaw slavery nationwide with a constitutional amendment. By December 1863 an amendment was brought to Congress. The Senate passed it on April 8, 1864, but the first vote in the House of Representatives fell short of the required two-thirds majority. Passage became part of Lincoln's reelection platform, and after his reelection, the second attempt in the House passed on January 31, 1865. After ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, it became the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 6, 1865.
Lincoln believed the federal government had limited responsibility to the millions of freedmen. He signed Senator Charles Sumner's Freedmen's Bureau bill that set up a temporary federal agency designed to meet the immediate needs of former slaves. The law opened land for a lease of three years with the ability to purchase title for the freedmen. Lincoln announced a Reconstruction plan that involved short-term military control, pending readmission under the control of southern Unionists. Eric Foner argues: Lincoln vetoed only four bills during his presidency, including the Wade-Davis Bill with its harsh Reconstruction program. The 1862 Homestead Act made millions of acres of Western government-held land available for purchase at low cost. The 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act provided government grants for agricultural colleges in each state. The Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 granted federal support for the construction of the United States' first transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869. The passage of the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railway Acts was enabled by the absence of Southern congressmen and senators who had opposed the measures in the 1850s.
Assassination. John Wilkes Booth was a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland; though he never joined the Confederate army, he had contacts with the Confederate secret service. After attending Lincoln's last public address, on April 11, 1865, in which Lincoln stated his preference that the franchise be conferred on some Black men, specifically "on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers", Booth plotted to assassinate the President. When Booth learned of the Lincolns' intent to attend a play with General Grant, he planned to assassinate Lincoln and Grant at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln and his wife attended the play "Our American Cousin" on the evening of April 14. At the last minute, Grant decided to go to New Jersey to visit his children instead of attending. At 10:15 pm, Booth entered the back of Lincoln's theater box, crept up from behind, and fired at the back of Lincoln's head, mortally wounding him. Lincoln's guest, Major Henry Rathbone, momentarily grappled with Booth, but Booth stabbed him and escaped. After being attended by Doctor Charles Leale and two other doctors, Lincoln was taken across the street to Petersen House. After remaining in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15. Stanton said, "Now he belongs to the ages." Lincoln's body was placed in a flag-wrapped coffin, which was loaded into a hearse and escorted to the White House by Union soldiers. President Johnson was sworn in later that same day. Two weeks later, Booth was located, shot and killed at a farm in Virginia by Sergeant Boston Corbett. Secretary of War Stanton had issued orders that Booth be taken alive, so Corbett was initially arrested to be court martialed. Stanton declared him a patriot and dismissed the charge.
Funeral and burial. From April 19 to 21, Lincoln lay in state, first in the White House and then in the Capitol rotunda. The caskets containing Lincoln's body and the body of his third son Willie then traveled for three weeks on a funeral train following a circuitous route from Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, stopping at many cities for memorials attended by hundreds of thousands. Many others gathered along the tracks as the train passed with bands, bonfires, and hymn singing or in silent grief. Historians emphasized the widespread shock and sorrow, but noted that some Lincoln haters celebrated his death. Poet Walt Whitman composed "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" to eulogize Lincoln. Lincoln's body was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield and now lies within the Lincoln Tomb. Philosophy and religious views. Philosophy of republicanism. Lincoln redefined the political philosophy of republicanism in the United States. Lincoln called the Declaration of Independence, which found "self-evident" that all men are created equal and have an "unalienable" right to liberty, the "sheet anchor" of republicanism, at a time when the Constitution, which "tolerated slavery", was the focus of most political discourse. John Patrick Diggins notes, "Lincoln presented Americans a theory of history that offers a profound contribution to the theory and destiny of republicanism itself" in the 1860 Cooper Union speech.
Lincoln expressed his position on the unconstitutionality of secession in his first inaugural address: As a Whig activist Lincoln was a spokesman for business interests, favoring high tariffs, banks, infrastructure improvements, and railroads, in opposition to Jacksonian democrats. 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. Nevertheless, Lincoln admired Andrew Jackson's steeliness and patriotism. According to historian Sean Wilentz, "just as the Republican Party of the 1850s absorbed certain elements of Jacksonianism, so Lincoln, whose Whiggery had always been more egalitarian than that of other Whigs, found himself absorbing some of them as well." William C. Harris found that Lincoln's "reverence for the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, the laws under it, and the preservation of the Republic and its institutions strengthened his conservatism." James G. Randall emphasizes his tolerance and moderation "in his preference for orderly progress, his distrust of dangerous agitation, and his reluctance toward ill digested schemes of reform." Randall concludes that "he was conservative in his complete avoidance of that type of so-called 'radicalism' which involved abuse of the South, hatred for the slaveholder, thirst for vengeance, partisan plotting, and ungenerous demands that Southern institutions be transformed overnight by outsiders."
Political philosophy of reunification. In an 1858 speech, Lincoln alluded to a form of American civic nationalism as closely related to his view of the nature of democracy and originating from the tenets of the Declaration of Independence as a force for national unity. Lincoln stated that it was a method for uniting diverse peoples of different ethnic ancestries into a common nationality: In Lincoln's first inaugural address, he denounced secession as anarchy and explained that majority rule had to be balanced by constitutional restraints. He said, "A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people." Religious skepticism and providence. As a young man Lincoln was a religious skeptic. He was deeply familiar with the Bible, quoting and praising it. He was private about his position on organized religion and respected the beliefs of others. He never made a clear profession of Christian beliefs. Throughout his public career, Lincoln often quoted Scripture. His three most famous speeches—the House Divided Speech, the Gettysburg Address, and his second inaugural—all contain such quotes. In the 1840s Lincoln subscribed to the Doctrine of Necessity, a belief that the human mind was controlled by a higher power. After the death of his son Edward in 1850 he more frequently expressed a dependence on God. He never joined a church, although he frequently attended First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois, with his wife beginning in 1852. While president, Lincoln often attended services at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.
In the 1850s Lincoln rarely used the language or imagery of the evangelicals; instead, he regarded the republicanism of the Founding Fathers with an almost religious reverence. The death of his son Willie in February 1862 may have caused him to look toward religion for solace. After Willie's death, he questioned the divine necessity of the war's severity. He wrote at this time that God "could have either "saved" or "destroyed" the Union without a human contest." Lincoln believed in an all-powerful God who shaped events and by 1865 was expressing that belief in major speeches. By the end of the war, he increasingly appealed to the Almighty for solace and to explain events, writing on April 4, 1864, to a newspaper editor in Kentucky: This spirituality can best be seen in his second inaugural address, in which Lincoln explains that the cause, purpose, and result of the war was God's will. Lincoln's frequent use of religious imagery and language toward the end of his life may have reflected his own personal beliefs or might have been a device to reach his audiences, who were mostly evangelical Protestants.
Health and appearance. Lincoln was described as "ungainly" and "gawky" as a youth. Tall for his age, Lincoln was strong and athletic as a teenager. He was a good wrestler, participated in jumping, throwing, and footraces, and "was almost always victorious." His stepmother remarked that he cared little about clothing. Lincoln dressed as a typical boy from a poor, backwoods family, with a gap between his shoes, socks, and pants that often exposed six or more inches of his shin. His lack of interest in his attire continued as an adult. Lincoln generally continued to enjoy good health throughout his life. In 1831, Lincoln was described as six feet three or four inches tall, weighing 210 pounds, and having a ruddy complexion. Later descriptions mentioned Lincoln's dark hair and dark complexion, which were also evident in photographs taken during his tenure as president. William H. Herndon described Lincoln as having "very dark skin"; his cheeks as "leathery and saffron-colored"; and "his hair was dark, almost black". Lincoln described himself as "black" and as having "a dark complexion". Lincoln's detractors also remarked on his appearance. For example, during the Civil War, the Charleston "Mercury" described him as having "the dirtiest complexion" and asked "Faugh! After him what white man would be President?"
Among the illnesses that Lincoln is either documented or speculated to have suffered from are depression, smallpox, and malaria. He took blue mass pills, which contained mercury, to treat constipation. It is unknown to what extent this may have resulted in mercury poisoning. Several claims have been made that Lincoln's health was declining before the assassination, as photographs of Lincoln appear to show weight loss and muscle wasting. It has also been proposed that he could have had a rare genetic disorder such as Marfan syndrome or multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B. Legacy. Historical reputation. In surveys of U.S. scholars ranking presidents since 1948, the top three presidents are generally Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, although the order varies. Between 1999 and 2011, Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan were the top-ranked presidents in eight public opinion surveys, according to Gallup. A 2004 study found that scholars in history and politics ranked Lincoln number one, while legal scholars placed him second after Washington.
Lincoln's assassination made him a national martyr. He was viewed by abolitionists as a champion of human liberty. Many, though not all, in the South considered Lincoln as a man of outstanding ability. Historians have said he was "a classical liberal" in the 19th-century sense. In the New Deal era, liberals honored Lincoln as an advocate of the common man who they claimed would have supported the welfare state, and Lincoln became a favorite of liberal intellectuals across the world. Sociologist Barry Schwartz argues that in the 1930s and 1940s Lincoln provided the nation with "a moral symbol inspiring and guiding American life." Schwartz argues that Lincoln's American reputation grew slowly from the late 19th century until the Progressive Era (1900–1920s), when he emerged as one of America's most venerated heroes, even among white Southerners. The high point came in 1922 with the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. However, Schwartz also finds that since World War II Lincoln's symbolic power has lost relevance, and this "fading hero is symptomatic of fading confidence in national greatness." He suggested that postmodernism and multiculturalism have diluted greatness as a concept.
By the 1970s Lincoln had become a hero to political conservatives—apart from neo-Confederates such as Mel Bradford, who denounced his treatment of the white South—for his intense nationalism, his support for business, his insistence on stopping the spread of slavery, his acting on Lockean and Burkean principles on behalf of both liberty and tradition, and his devotion to the principles of the Founding Fathers. Republicans linked Lincoln's name to their party. Frederick Douglass stated that in "his company, I was never reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color", and Lincoln has long been known as the Great Emancipator. By the late 1960s, however, some Black intellectuals denied that Lincoln deserved that title. Lerone Bennett Jr. won wide attention when he called Lincoln a white supremacist in 1968. He noted that Lincoln used ethnic slurs and argued that Lincoln opposed social equality and proposed that freed slaves voluntarily move to another country. Defenders of Lincoln retorted that he was a "moral visionary" who deftly advanced the abolitionist cause, as fast as politically possible. Brian Dirck stated that few Civil War scholars take Bennett (or Thomas DiLorenzo) seriously, pointing to their "narrow political agendas and faulty research".
David Herbert Donald opined in his 1996 biography that Lincoln was distinctly endowed with the personality trait of negative capability, defined by the poet John Keats and attributed to extraordinary leaders who were "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason". Lincoln has often been portrayed by Hollywood, almost always in a flattering light. Lincoln has also been admired by political figures outside the U.S., including German political theorist Karl Marx, Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, leader of the Italian Risorgimento, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Libyan revolutionary Muammar Gaddafi. Memorials and commemorations. Lincoln's portrait appears on two denominations of United States currency, the penny and the $5 bill. He appears on postage stamps across the world. While he is usually portrayed bearded, he did not grow a beard until 1860 at the suggestion of 11-year-old Grace Bedell. He was the first of five presidents to do so. He has been memorialized in many town, city, and county names, including the capital of Nebraska. The United States Navy is named after Lincoln, the second Navy ship to bear his name. The Lincoln Memorial is one of the most visited monuments in the nation's capital and is one of the most visited National Park Service sites in the country. Ford's Theatre, among the most visited sites in Washington, D.C., is across the street from Petersen House, where Lincoln died. Memorials in Springfield, Illinois, include the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Lincoln's home, and his tomb. A portrait carving of Lincoln appears with those of three other presidents on Mount Rushmore, which receives about 3 million visitors a year.
A completed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens that influenced later sculptors stands in Lincoln Park, Chicago, with recastings given as diplomatic gifts standing in Parliament Square, London, and Parque Lincoln, Mexico City. Lincoln Portrait is a 1942 classical orchestral work written by the American composer Aaron Copland to commemorate five speeches and writings of Lincoln. In 2019, Congress officially dedicated a room in the United States Capitol to Abraham Lincoln. The room is located off National Statuary Hall and served as the post office of the House while then-Representative Abraham Lincoln served in Congress from 1847 to 1849. Several states commemorate "President's Day" as "Washington–Lincoln Day".
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science. Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At around eighteen years old, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty seven (). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante called him "the master of those who know". He has been referred to as the first scientist. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and Jean Buridan. His influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, has gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
Life. In general, the details of Aristotle's life are not well-established. The biographies written in ancient times are often speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points. Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Chalcidice, about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-day Thessaloniki. He was the son of Nicomachus, the personal physician of King Amyntas of Macedon, and Phaestis, a woman with origins from Chalcis, Euboea. Nicomachus was said to have belonged to the medical guild of Asclepiadae and was likely responsible for Aristotle's early interest in biology and medicine. Ancient tradition held that Aristotle's family descended from the legendary physician Asclepius and his son Machaon. Both of Aristotle's parents died when he was still at a young age and Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. Although little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived, he probably spent some time in the Macedonian capital, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy.
In 343/42 BC, Aristotle was invited to Pella by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his thirteen-year-old son Alexander; a choice perhaps influenced by the relationship of Aristotle's family with the Macedonian dynasty. Aristotle taught Alexander at the private school of Mieza, in the gardens of the Nymphs, the royal estate near Pella. Alexander's education probably included a number of subjects, such as ethics and politics, as well as standard literary texts, like Euripides and Homer. It is likely that during Aristotle's time in the Macedonian court, other prominent nobles, like Ptolemy and Cassander, would have occasionally attended his lectures. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his own attitude towards Persia was strongly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians". Alexander's education under the guardianship of Aristotle likely lasted for only a few years, as at around the age of sixteen he returned to Pella and was appointed regent of Macedon by his father Philip. During this time, Aristotle is said to have gifted Alexander an annotated copy of the "Iliad", which reportedly became one of Alexander's most prized possessions. Scholars speculate that two of Aristotle's now lost works, "On kingship" and "On behalf of the Colonies", were composed by the philosopher for the young prince. Aristotle returned to Athens for the second and final time a year after Philip II's assassination in 336 BC.
As a metic, Aristotle could not own property in Athens and thus rented a building known as the Lyceum (named after the sacred grove of Apollo "Lykeios"), in which he established his own school. The building included a gymnasium and a colonnade (), from which the school acquired the name "Peripatetic". Aristotle conducted courses and research at the school for the next twelve years. He often lectured small groups of distinguished students and, along with some of them, such as Theophrastus, Eudemus, and Aristoxenus, Aristotle built a large library which included manuscripts, maps, and museum objects. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira. They had a son whom Aristotle named after his father, Nicomachus. This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his philosophical works. He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments have survived. Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication; they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises include "Physics", "Metaphysics", "Nicomachean Ethics", "Politics", "On the Soul" and "Poetics". Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to "logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance, and theatre."
While Alexander deeply admired Aristotle, near the end of his life, the two men became estranged having diverging opinions over issues, like the optimal administration of city-states, the treatment of conquered populations, such as the Persians, and philosophical questions, like the definition of braveness. A widespread speculation in antiquity suggested that Aristotle played a role in Alexander's death, but the only evidence of this is an unlikely claim made some six years after the death. Following Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled. In 322 BC, Demophilus and Eurymedon the Hierophant reportedly denounced Aristotle for impiety, prompting him to flee to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, Euboea, at which occasion he was said to have stated "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy" – a reference to Athens's trial and execution of Socrates. He died in Chalcis, Euboea of natural causes later that same year, having named his student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife. Aristotle left his works to Theophrastus, his successor as the head of the Lyceum, who in turn passed them down to Neleus of Scepsis in Asia Minor. There, the papers remained hidden for protection until they were purchased by the collector Apellicon. In the meantime, many copies of Aristotle's major works had already begun to circulate and be used in the Lyceum of Athens, Alexandria, and later in Rome.
Theoretical philosophy. Logic. With the "Prior Analytics", Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th-century advances in mathematical logic. Kant stated in the "Critique of Pure Reason" that with Aristotle, logic reached its completion. "Organon". Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, because it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into a set of six books called the "Organon" around 40 BC by Andronicus of Rhodes or others among his followers. The books are: The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the "Categories," the analysis of propositions and their elementary relations in "On Interpretation", to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the "Analytics") and dialectics (in the "Topics" and "Sophistical Refutations"). The first three treatises form the core of the logical theory "stricto sensu": the grammar of the language of logic and the correct rules of reasoning. The "Rhetoric" is not conventionally included, but it states that it relies on the "Topics".

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