Abraham Lincoln will forever go down in history as the President who set the slaves free. In his last speech, President Lincoln thought that if the black man is free then he should be given the right to vote as well. He mentioned the "elective franchise" several times as I read through the speech. Why not? A country fighting against itself over slavery and the treatment of a race of people should be given all rights as the rest of the citizens of this country. They were entitled to those rights. But radical confederates thought that this was too much. First there was freedom and now the vote? John Wilkes Booth thought that if Lincoln was stopped then the black man would never get the vote. Booth was so very wrong. Abraham Lincoln is said to have had a nightmare about being assassinated, a few days before his death. He described seeing himself in a casket, with inconsolable people mourning around his dead body. This was Lincoln's destiny, his life purpose.
There is so much that I don't know about the history of my country, which is very sad to say. History class was the most boring subject for me in school. But when I started tracing my family history and found that my relatives fought in the Civil War (among many wars) is when I became interested. The subject was no longer those people but "my people" fought in those wars. My family is from Tennessee and Georgia and the men who fought joined the confederate army when they enlisted except for one man. It makes me wonder why they fought? Was it for the money or the cause? I sure would like to know.
Anyway, there is a wonderful movie in the theaters now called, Lincoln. Daniel Day-Lewis does a wonderful job as the President. The movie shows Lincoln not only as the President but a man fighting for something that was morally wrong. If you get the chance, go see this movie.
Two things I learned about Lincoln in my college history class. Lincoln didn't free the slaves until towards the end of war because it was a political move, it was a last-ditch attempt to win the war & it worked. The war was basically about the South seceding and taking revenue from the northern states. The second thing was that Lincoln was a poor man when he became President and he was rich when he died, much wealthier than he could have gotten from his salary alone. War was very profitable even back then.
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