George Washington
For Americans, that person is the president of the United States. The father of American democracy himself, George Washington, created this country on the belief that the common man should be able to govern himself. My favorite quote of his was said after Washington had served two terms in office and when asked if he would like to run once more, he said no. When a friend persisted he stay on, insisting he was adored by all of his people, Washington nobly declared, “What do you think we came from Britain for?” What George meant was that after all the fighting to declare our independence, we did not sacrifice so much to fall into the same monarchy system the pilgrims were trying to escape from.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Another man of great importance was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only president to serve four consecutive terms in office. At power during some of the worst times in American history, the Great Depression and World War II, he demonstrated the strength of human spirit. He initiated the New Deal, an economic stimulus package that created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and helped to rally the country after what he famously called, “A day that will live in infamy.”
My favorite president is Abraham Lincoln, continuously placed as one of the top three American presidents in history alongside the previous two. But unlike F.D.R. and Washington, I admire Abe not because of his many accomplishments in the Whitehouse, but because of how he got there.
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. At age nine, his mother died of milk sickness, an illness spread through the dairy products of animals who have fed on the white snakeroot, a poisonous herb. His father would later remarry to a Sarah Buch Johnston whom Abe would become closer with than the original. Upon growing into adolescence, Lincoln grew distant from his father. He felt that his father was not a success and was determined to amount to more than him.
When he reached 22, Abe left home in Illinois by canoeing down the Sangamon River to the village of New Salem in Sangamon County. He would be given a job by local businessman Denton Offutt, an American general store owner, requiring him to take goods to New Orleans by use of a flatboat on the Sangamon and Mississippi Rivers. After completing the three month task, Offutt gave him a clerical position in his store. One day Abe had accidentally overcharged a customer and ran many miles to return the money. This act is believed to be the incident which earned him the nickname "Honest Abe." Yet it is less known that Denton Offutt made him return that money.
Did you know?- Lincoln was a talented wrestler which experts say gave him the confidence synonymous with his image.
Abe began his political career in 1832, at age 23, when he announced his candidacy for the Illinois General Assembly. He finished eighth out of thirteen, not acquiring one of the top four spots. In 1834, he won an election to state legislature where he spent eight years riding the circuit of courts. After losing interest in politics, he would become a self-taught lawyer. When it came to Lincoln’s work ethic, a law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."
Mary Todd
In his romantic life, Abe would fall for countless women. Although he never seemed to be able to hold down a solid marriage until he met Mary Todd, daughter of a wealthy slaveholding family based in Lexington, Kentucky. They would soon bear four children, Robert, Edward, William, and Thomas. Unfortunately, Robert would be the only one to survive to adulthood with Edward and Thomas dying of tuberculosis, and Willie from a high fever at the age of nine. The sons’ deaths had profound impacts on both Abraham and Mary. After Lincoln died, Mary could no longer cope with all family deaths and was committed to a mental hospital. Lincoln is now believed to have suffered from depression most of his adult life.
Abe reentered into the political arena when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by Congress in 1854. This piece of legislation opened lands previously closed to slavery to the possibility of its spread by local option. While Abe never publicly criticized slavery being from Kentucky, he still saw the act as immoral. He thought that slavery would ultimately die off not being able to spread to new territories.
1856, Lincoln joined the newly formed Republican Party. Two years later he campaigned for the Senate against the creator of the act, Stephen Douglas. Though he lost the election, by participating in the popular debates he gained national reputation that won him the Republican nomination in 1860. And we all remember the rest.
In closing, I would like to share with you two things that when I first read I knew would have a profound impact on my life. The first is Abraham’s Gettysburg Address, one of the most well known speeches in American history. The second is a piece of paper I received from my sophomore history teacher, Mr. Zemanski, upon finishing his course. A picture of it can be found at the bottom of this post and yes, I did laminate it and it remains on my bedroom wall to this day. And if you’re reading this Mr. Z, thanks for believing in us students and I wish you a long and fulfilling teaching career.
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 cannot dedicate...we cannot consecrate...we cannot 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.
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