HISTORY: Black History Month 2024 celebrates the life and legacy of President Abraham Lincoln
AGN.News Team
February 10, 2024
WASHINGTON (AGN.News) – This month of February 2024 is Black History Month. This month, America’s history of the struggle of African Americans and their accomplishments, despite every effort to stop them since 1865, provides another collective opportunity to celebrate.
That’s when the end of slavery was finalized. The education once denied was now available, so freed slaves went to special institutions of higher learning setup all across the country to help level the economic playing field through education.
Why? So, the once enslaved and their children’s children and all future Black citizens could get a fresh start in building bigger and better institutions across this great country.
Now, Black History Month 2024 is upon us. Black history is being celebrated here and abroad so the history of sacrifices made by African Americans will never be forgotten.
President Abraham Lincoln’s Life
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Monday, February 12, 2024, will be the 215th birthday of Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln led the United States through the American Civil War, defending the nation as a constitutional union, defeating the insurgent Confederacy, abolishing slavery, expanding the power of the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy.
Abraham Lincoln’s family and early life
Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky and was raised on the frontier, primarily in Indiana. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. congressman from Illinois.
On October 5, 1818, Nancy Lincoln died from milk sickness, leaving 11-year-old Sarah in charge of a household including her father, 9-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.
As a diversion, 19-year-old Abraham Lincoln and his friend, Allen Gentry, traveled to New Orleans by flatboat via the Ohio River and the Mississippi River to deliver cargo for Gentry’s father, James Gentry, who owned a store in the Rockport, Indiana area.
After delivering the cargo in New Orleans, they decided to see the sights and sounds of the city. Here they witnessed to sale of slaves at a slave auction. The sight of human beings being sold changed the trajectory of Lincoln’s life.
As they stood there watching a slave market in action, Gentry looked down at Lincoln’s hands and seeing that he “doubled his fists tightly, his knuckles went white.” Men wearing black coats and white hats bought field hands, “black and ugly” for $500 to $800 each.
Then the real horror begins, “When the sale of ‘fancy girls’ began, Lincoln, “unable to stand it any longer” muttered to Gentry “Allen, that’s a disgrace. If I ever get a lick at that thing, I’ll hit it hard.”
Lincoln knew those wealthy men acquired those Black women, also called “fancy girls” for sexual exploitation because they “supposedly incited passion and sexual wantonness”.
Leaving New Orleans, they journeyed back to Indiana by steamboat and carried with them the cultural diversity of New Orleans and the many experiences he witnessed along the way. What he saw set him on a lifetime mission to end slavery forever in the United States.
Abraham Lincoln: Life and marriage
In 1831, at the age of 21, as other family members prepared to move to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, Abraham struck out on his own. He made his home in New Salem, Illinois, for six years. Lincoln and some friends took goods, including live hogs, by flatboat to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he first witnessed slavery.
As a person who loved to read, Lincoln, with little formal education taught himself. He studied law, became a lawyer, and setup his law practice. He needed a legal background in order to address the slavery issue.
On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln, then twenty-eight years old, delivered his first major speech at the Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, after the murder of newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy in Alton.
Lincoln warned that no trans-Atlantic military giant could ever crush the United States as a nation. “It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher”, said Lincoln.
Prior to that, on April 28, 1836, an innocent Black man, Francis McIntosh, was burned alive in St. Louis, Missouri. Zann Gill describes how these two murders set off a chain reaction that ultimately prompted Abraham Lincoln to run for President.
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. They were married on November 4, 1842.
In 1849, he returned to his successful law practice in Springfield, Illinois. In 1854, he was angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the territories to slavery, causing him to re-enter politics. He soon became a leader of the new Republican Party (not like the party of today).
Ending slavery would not be easy
On October 16, 1854, Lincoln gave an anti-slavery speech in Peoria, Illinois addressing the need to end slavery. The pro-slavery elements continued to develop a hatred for Lincoln.
On March 6, 1857, the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford was decided by the Supreme Court. 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.
Lincoln denounced the decision and argued the decision was at variance with the Declaration of Independence; he said that while the founding fathers did not believe all men equal in every respect, they believed all men were equal “in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
The case of Dred Scott v. Sandford has been called the very worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court. The court’s view as expressed by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who was born into a slave-owning family, has been called the worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court.
He said Congress could not prohibit slavery in the U.S. territories since, in the majority view, African Americans could not be considered citizens. This, in his mind and the mind of a slaveowner, justified the slavery of over four million people. It has been said that decision contributed to dividing the country and ultimately led to the American Civil war.
Lincoln’s race to the White House
Lincoln ran for president in 1860. Lincoln campaign began cultivating a nationwide youth organization which it used to generate popular support throughout the country to spearhead voter registration drives, thinking that new voters and young voters tended to embrace new parties.
Lincoln won in the North to gain victory. On February 11, 1861, Lincoln gave a particularly emotional farewell address upon leaving Springfield; he would never again return to Springfield alive.
Lincoln traveled east in a special train. Due to secessionist plots, a then-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. On February 23, 1861, he arrived in disguise in Washington, D.C., which was placed under substantial military guard.
The Confederates made their move
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina took the lead by adopting 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, and adopted a constitution that allowed slavery to not only exist but to expand westward.
On March 4, 1861, Lincoln directed his inaugural address to the South, proclaiming once again that he had no inclination to abolish slavery in the Southern states. 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.
Pro-slavery elements in the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding from the nation. During this time, the newly formed Confederate States of America began seizing federal military bases in the South.
A little over one month after Lincoln assumed the presidency, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a United States fort on an island near Charleston, South Carolina. Following the bombardment, Lincoln mobilized forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the union.
In 1861, Lincoln assigned quotas for each state to supply troops to fight the Confederates. His former resident state of Indiana was assigned 7,500 volunteers for the Union army.
So many in Indiana volunteered in the first call-up that thousands had to be turned away. Before the war ended, Indiana had contributed 208,367 soldiers for the Union army.
President Lincoln took action
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 and more. As a result, Union enlistments from Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri increased by over 40,000.
To preserve to unity of the Union, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which announced that, in states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, the slaves would be freed. He spent the next 100 days, between September 22 and January 1, preparing the army and the nation for emancipation January 1, 1863.
Keeping his word, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in 10 states not then under Union 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.”
President Lincoln was Presidential
Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery on November 19, 1863. In 272 words, and three minutes, Lincoln asserted that the nation was born not in 1789, but in 1776, “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 brave soldiers would not be in vain, that slavery would end, and the future of democracy would be assured, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.
On April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed into law the creation of the United States Secret Service just before leaving the White House to attend a play at the Ford’s Theater that night.
On April 14, 1865, Confederate Secret Service agents, headed by the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, murdered the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. He passed away later in the early morning hours of April 15, 1865.
These Confederates were stalking him for years, even before he was sworn in as President. This political assassination was among the many issues he raised when speaking with his staff.
African Americans praise President Lincoln
This Black History Month celebrates the life and legacy of the 16th President of the United States. Ending slavery and working towards equality for all was his life’s mission.
Today, some people, thinking 2024 thoughts, may not understand what this president did for African Americans. It wasn’t just freedom from slavery, it was the beginning of a new life where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness could flourish.
That’s why African Americans can be part of the solutions to local and national problems rather than be part of the problems. In 1776, the U.S. was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”.
The Confederates lost the war and some of their descendants have tried to rewrite history and at-best ignore the cause of the war, namely the preservation of slavery.
Black History Month Honors the Fallen
The tens of thousands of Black soldiers who fought the Confederates and other enemies of America down through the years, since emancipation, deserve to be honored for their service and their sacrifices.
In the middle east country of Jordan, on January 28, 2024, three Black soldiers lost their lives as well as many others injured, in defense of the United States against our enemies.
The three soldiers were identified as Sgt. William Rivers, 46, of Willingboro, New Jersey; Spc. Kennedy Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia., according to the Army Reserve. They died on Sunday, January 28, 2024, after a one-way, unmanned attack drone struck their housing units by enemies of the United States.
Two Georgia soldiers who died in the Jan. 28 drone attack in Jordan were posthumously promoted to sergeant, Spc. Kennedy Sanders and Spc. Breonna Moffett, while the 41 soldiers injured in the strike were from National Guard units from four states.
The four states are Arizona National Guard’s 1-158th Infantry Battalion; the California National Guard’s 40th Infantry Division; the Kentucky National Guard’s 138th Field Artillery; and the New York National Guard’s 101st Expeditionary Signal Battalion.
Americans from every background, culture, social, and religious background have given their lives to preserve the unity of the Union. Lincoln said the Union was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. That’s why we fight against our enemies foreign and domestic.
Today, African Americans, as they celebrate Black History Month along with their fellow Americans, can lift up their heads and sing the song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” which has been called – the ‘Black National Anthem’ – by James Weldon Johnson who penned the lyrics, while his brother J. Rosamond Johnson composed the music in 1900.
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