The war is a bloody affair from early on, with advances in weaponry taking a murderous toll on soldiers, both North and South.
But Lincoln, here reading to son Tad, also suffers personal tragedy in February 1862 when his eleven year old, Willie, dies of typhoid fever. The President suffers intense bouts of depression after the loss, and Mary never fully recovers her mental stability.
For heroic black abolitionists like lecturer Sojourner Truth, Lincoln’s act represents the kind of personal heroism on behalf of justice that she has long sought. While the Proclamation is imperfect (the slaves left in the loyal border states are not freed), it takes great political and moral courage on Lincoln’s part to issue it. Especially since most anti-black Northerners feel they are fighting to restore the Union, not free and assimilate the slaves.
Photography Book
The turning point on the battlefield occurs on two consecutive days in the summer of 1863. On July 3 Robert E. Lee’s second invasion of the North ends with George Pickett’s ill-fated charge at Gettysburg. On July 4, the western front also collapses when Ulysses Grant’s seven week siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, ends in surrender of the Confederates under John Pemberton. Henceforth the South faces inevitable attrition and defeat.
Abraham Lincoln
Throughout the war, Lincoln’s personal secretary, John Hay, will refer to his boss as “The Ancient” in recognition of the daily wisdom he displays in dealing with one crisis after another.
First of 4 Lincoln sons, Exeter and Harvard, AL places him on Grant’s staff (safety), remote from AL, marries daughter of Iowa Senator Harlan, commits mother to asylum in ’75 after Tad dies, law in Chicago, Sec of War ’81-85 (Garfield), UK Amb ’89-93 (Harrison), head of Pullman Palace Car Co., never sought political office, buried at Arlington Cemetery.
In September 1862, the Union Army is able to stop Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of the North at the Battle of Antietam, in Sharpsburg, Maryland. Lincoln uses the occasion to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves in states which remain in rebellion against the Union as of January 1, 1863, shall be free under the order.