President Lincoln said there was only one way America would be destroyed:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ouselves.”

After 11-year-old Willie Lincoln’s death in 1862, Mary Lincoln blamed herself, believing God was punishing her for having a party when he lay ill.

Following the death of the son who looked and acted most like his famous father, Mrs. Lincoln wore mourning clothes for more than a year, and she cancelled the Marine Band’s Saturday afternoon concerts on the Executive Mansion lawn.

President Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most concise and effective speeches in American history on this day in 1863.

In just 272 words, the president honored the memories of more than 7,500 killed at the bloody three-day battle of Gettysburg the previous July and urged citizens to support a Union victory.

Before Lincoln spoke, the crowd listened to one of the most famous orators of the day deliver a two-hour speech.  Lincoln’s address lasted fewer than three minutes:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

While freed slaves  called “contrabands” flooded into Washington, D.C. looking for work and living wherever they could, the literate blacks who worked in the White House and other government jobs celebrated the first anniversary of emancipation at the comfortably upholstered Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church where the speakers encourage black pride.

William E. Matthews of Baltimore said they should celebrate the birthdays of Hannibal of Carthage, Toussaint L’Ouverture of Haiti, astronomer Benjamin Banneker and other black heroes.

Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker, one of those present at the church celebration, decided “well-to-do colored people” should do something to alleviate the suffering of former slaves.

She brought it up at church and helped organized the Cotnraband Relief Society.

Mrs. Lincoln quickly contributed $200, the waiters at New York’s Metropolitan Hotel took up a collection, and Frederick Douglass not only contributed but he also lectured on the society’s behalf.

Source: Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War by Ernest B. Furguson

President Lincoln was embalmed so many times during his long train ride back to Springfield that his face was still intact when his coffin was opened in 1901.

Drs. Brown and Alexander, the embalmers, charged the federal government $100 for embalming fees and $160 for 16 days of services from the doctors and their assistant during the 13-day funeral train ride to Springfield, Ill.

In 1865, American dead were not routinely embalmed. The process was used mostly to keep soldiers’ bodies intact so they could be shipped home North or South. Because President Lincoln, the most photographed man in America, was instantly recognizable, his body was a sterling advertisement for the fledgling embalming industry.

When the Lincoln funeral train arrived in Lancaster, Pa., at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 22, about 20,000 mourners were waiting, including President James Buchanan and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

By the time the train reaches Philadelphia at 4:30 that evening, a half million people wait to follow the flag-draped coffin to Independence Hall.  The body, placed with the head next to the Liberty Bell, is viewed until the hall closes at midnight. When the doors reopen at 10 a.m., crowds have been cued up for several hours.

Source: “In This Sad World of Ours, Sorrow Comes to All: A Timetable for the Lincoln Funeral Train” by Ralph G. Newman.

Army men wrestled and swam to relax during the Black Hawk War, but few of them could successfully compete with Captain Abraham Lincoln at either.

The strong, tall, lanky president-to-be could throw down any man with his special side holds.

Daniel Green Burner said Mr. Lincoln was the strongest man he ever knew. Burner once saw Lincoln lift a full barrel of whisky containing 44 gallons to his face in order to win a $10 hat.

Source: The Lincoln Institute

What was Abraham Lincoln’s finest moment as a leader? One historian suggests it was at a dark moment in 1863 when the president told Republican Party chairman Henry J. Raymond that he doubted he would be re-elected.

Raymond suggested that Lincoln write a letter to Jefferson Davis and send a commission to offer peace without regard to slavery. Lincoln drafted such a letter. He never sent it. Nor did he appoint a commission to make the offer.

Lincoln decided it would alienate the anti-slavery Republicans. Worse, it would be morally wrong because it would violate the “solemn promise of the Emancipation Proclamation.”

Source: The Workshop of Democracy by James Mac Gregor Burns

One of Abraham Lincoln’s first and most controversial acts as president was to suspend habeas corpus in portions of Maryland. He would do it again in other border states. He also would jail politicians and editors for opposing the war and the draft.

(Habeus corpus is used to bring a prisoner before the court to determine if the person’s imprisonment or detention is lawful.)

Lincoln defended his actions, saying suspension of habeas corpus during an emergency was permitted by the Constitution.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger Taney, famed for his Dred Scott decision, opposed him. Lincoln persisted.

“Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted,” Lincoln asked, “and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?”

Historians, civil libertarians and constitutional scholars have been arguing over that ever since.

Source: Lincoln and the Second American Revolution by James M. McPherson

Thomas Austin Jones did more to help John Wilkes Booth and Davy Herold escape to Virginia than any other person. He was arrested, but he was never tried.

Jones hid the men in a pine thicket for days and supplied food, a compass and a boat for them to cross over to Virginia, but, because Davy Herold never fingered him as the man who helped them, authorities were unable to build a case against him.

In 1893, Jones outed himself, when he published a book detailing his adventures as a Confederate agent and his role in helping Booth and Herold. By then, the government did nothing to pursue the case.

Source: The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia by Edward Steers Jr.