The Lincoln Institute provides resources for scholars and groups involved in the study of the life of America's 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, and the impact he had on the preservation of the Union, the emancipation of black slaves, and the development of democratic principles. We also encourage the use of primary sources about Abraham Lincoln for use by students and scholars along with understanding of the contemporaries with whom Lincoln worked.
Visit The Lincoln Institute sites for specific information and resources on Abraham Lincoln's life including Abraham Lincoln's White House, Abraham Lincoln & Friends, Abraham Lincoln & New York, Abraham Lincoln & Freedom, as well as Abraham Lincoln's Classroom for teacher resources.
When Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduced congressional legislation in January 1854 that became the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he inadvertently sowed the seeds of his own political demise. His downfall was slow — culminating in defeat in 1860 and death in 1861,...
General Dan Sickles was a Congressman from New York. He shot Philip Barton Key for having an affair with his wife. Throughout his life, Sickles defended his "key" role in the Gettysburg victory and denigrated the leadership of Union General George Meade.
Sickl...
The dissolution of the Whig Party, the growth of the Know Nothing movement and the birth of the Republican Party caused Mr. Lincoln many trials with his friends during the mid-1850s. Some of Mr. Lincoln's former Whig colleagues - like T. Lyle Dickey, Usher F. Lin...
It was a snowy, cold night outside when Mr. Lincoln spoke at Cooper Union. But inside the lecture hall, the response was warm. Historian Benjamin Thomas wrote: "as the intense figure on the rostrum uttered [the] stirring peroration, men and women rose to their fe...
No one had a better vantage point to observe President Abraham Lincoln than his two principle secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay. They lived at the White House, worked next to the President's office, slept across the hall, accompanied him to the theater, and a...
They were big men. George Washington was 6-foot-3. Abraham Lincoln was almost 6-4. Their ambitions were equally big -- first for themselves, and then for the nation they would lead.
As young men, both future presidents trained as surveyors at periods when Americans were preoccupied by the development of the frontier and the acquisition of land. Historian John Ferling wrote: "Starting around age fifteen, George learned surveying through self-help books, such as `The Young Man's Companion,' and it is probable that he was tutored by some of the surveyors employed by the Fairfaxes." In his search for self-improvement, 16-year-old Washington famously wrote out the rules for life and behavior from "Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation." That pursuit would continue the rest of his life.
Surveying helped define both men. In 1834 Abraham Lincoln was named as a deputy surveyor of Sangamon County in Illinois; George Washington had been appointed as Culpepper County surveyor in 1749. Ferling observed that, "surveying ... was a respectable and often lucrative occupation in Washington's Virginia, as the population was growing and new frontiers were opening steadily."
Lincoln at Peoria explains how Lincoln's speech at Peoria on October 16, 1854, was the turning point in the development of his antislavery campaign and his political career and thought.
May 21, 1863 Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles writes in his diary: “Had an early call from the President, who brought a communication from Tassara to Seward, complaining of violation of neutral rights by a small pilot-boat, having a gun mounted amidships and believed to be an American vessel, which was annoying Spanish and […]...Read More
