Abraham_Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Fun Fact: During the Civil War, telegraph wires were strung to follow the action on the battlefield. But there was no telegraph office in the White House, so Lincoln went across the street to the War Department to get the news. Fast Fact: Abhorring war, Abraham Lincoln accepted it as the only means to save the Union. Biography: Abraham Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it." Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun. The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life: "I abraham, war, lincoln, union, shall, president, civil, people, one, kentucky, government, four, died, years, year, won, within, wild, while, washington, thought, telegraph, states, south, somehow, right, republican, peace, nomination, new, national, military, let, law, issue, inaugural, illinois, god, fact, douglas, defend, confederacy, born, address, write, wounds, world