French students have some questions

[David Lockmiller]

(01-29-2014 10:42 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(01-29-2014 08:34 AM)inesclotilde Wrote:  Thank you very much for all your replies. We really appreciate! And we would like to thank the forum members for letting us ask our questions.

Inès and Clotilde, we thank you for joining the forum and asking your questions. We send our best wishes for receiving a good grade on your project!

I was going to make a reply that began with a chronological series of photographs of Abraham Lincoln. I was unable to accomplish this task beyond locating and selecting the photographs that I wished to present. Perhaps our knowledgeable Roger Norton can add these photographs in a subsequent post to the benefit of Inès and Clotilde. I believe that Roger's website may have all of the photographs.

The four photographs are:

1. Brady's Cooper Union photograph that made Lincoln President - Feb 27, 1860
2. February 24, 1861 - Lincoln sitting at a desk in Washington prior to taking Presidential Oath of Office in March, 1861
3. Nov. 8, 1863 - "Gettysburg Address" photo
4. Feb 5, 1865 - cracked glass negative photo within a couple months of his death
   

The purpose of the photos is to illustrate the physical and psychological effects upon Lincoln as the Civil War unfolded. Last night, one of the commentators made a reference to President Obama's gray hair.

The old saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes this saying can be overstated. But the saying is true in the case of President Abraham Lincoln.

But my original plan was to follow with a story that I had in mind from one of my favorite Lincoln books, "Lincoln Talks, a Biography in Anecdote" by Emanuel Hertz, entitled MAN OF SORROWS, (pp 583-84), as related by Mary A. Livermore:

The next day my friend Mrs. Hoge and myself had another interview with the President, on business entrusted to us. If we were shocked the night before at his haggard face, how much more were we pained when the broad light of day revealed the ravages which care, anxiety, and overwork had wrought. In our despondent condition it was difficult to control our feelings so as not to weep before him. Our unspoken thought ran thus: "Our national affairs must be in the very extremity of hopelessness if they thus prey on the mind and life of the President. The country had been slain by treason--he knows it--and that it cannot recover itself."

Our business ended, before we withdrew we made one more attempt to draw encouraging words from the reluctant head of the nation.

"Mr. President," we said timidly, "we find ourselves greatly depressed by the talk of last evening; you do not consider our national affairs hopeless, do you? Our country is not lost?"

"Oh, no!" he said with great earnestness. "Our affairs are by no means hopeless, for we have the right on our side. We did not want this war, and we tried to avoid it. We were forced into it; our cause is a just one, and now it has become the cause of freedom." (The Emancipation Proclamation had then been promulgated.) "And let us also hope it is the cause of God, and then we may be sure it must ultimately triumph. But between that time and now there is an amount of agony and suffering and trial for the people that they do not look for, and are not prepared for."

I saw him several times afterwards, and each time I was impressed anew with the look of pain and weariness stereotyped on his face. -- Mary A. Livermore

Heroes do not exist just on the field of battle.

Abraham Lincoln is one man who stood in time and saved democracy for the world!