Abraham Lincoln context familiar chronological, narrative style.

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Tweet   Lincoln's career, but it also uses his experiences as a lens through which users might explore and analyze his social and political context. (1818-1829). 

About Lincoln's Biography:   Lincoln's contemporaries often noted that he had lived a "representative life." By this they meant that he had shared many experiences with ordinary Americans. As a young man Lincoln moved west with his family, tilled the soil, educated himself, and overcame numerous setbacks to become a successful attorney and politician. Republican political handlers refined Lincoln's experiences into the 1860 presidential campaign's image of "the railsplitter" at work on the frontier. 

This image has remained a part of Americans' historical memories and makes Lincoln a compelling, even mythic, figure today. Lincoln/Net provides a set of online biographical materials as a means of examining this image more closely. Lincoln/Net's rich databases provide an opportunity to examine Lincoln's life in the context of antebellum Illinois' political and social development. Conversely, these biographical materials will help World Wide Web users to make sense of Lincoln/Net's rich databases in several ways. These biographical materials will tell the story of Lincoln and his context in a familiar chronological, narrative style. Lincoln/Net users may examine eight sets of biographical materials discussing successive periods in Lincoln's life and career.  As importantly, these biographical materials set Lincoln's life in the context of national events such as the rise of party politics, the Mexican War, and the American sectional crisis. Thus World Wide Web users searching through the Lincoln/Net databases may set the primary source materials they find within the story of Lincoln's life and antebellum American history. For example, a Lincoln/Net user coming upon political pamphlet materials from the campaign of 1840 can discover that this was an important, even watershed, event in American political history. After a period of considerable political instability, Americans organized their political lives around two major electoral parties, the Democrats and the Whigs. Lincoln threw himself into the new Whig Party's Illinois campaign and made a name for himself. This system of party competition defined American electoral politics for nearly twenty years and framed the sectional crisis that preceded the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln's life has comprised a major theme in American historical scholarship for over a century. These materials take their place within that tradition. But the staff of the Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project hope that these biographical materials help Lincoln/Net users to put its large databases to work. With these interpretive materials Lincoln/Net users can begin to formulate historical questions and hypotheses and use the databases' primary source materials to explore history for themselves Black Activists Sue Democrat Party For History of Racism & Abuse The "Democratic ethos" of Illinois was embodied in a man named Stephen Douglass who was the U.S. Presidential nominee for the Democratic party. He ran against Republican Abraham Lincoln who was also from Illinois.

Northern Democrat Presidential nominee Stephen Douglas ran on his party's message of White Supremacy. Illinois is symbolic because it represents the epitome of the two opposing ideologies at war: The National Republican Party (Freedom) and The National Democrat Party (Slavery). Mr88playmaker When the Civil War ended, and after Republican President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Democrats initiated Jim Crow laws to keep the black man down. Democrats didn’t much like blacks. In fact, the KKK, as you know, was founded as the the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party. The Ku Klux Klan assassinated many Republicans including Republican RepresentativeJames M. Hinds (December 5, 1833—October 22, 1868) of Little Rock. Hinds represented Arkansas in the United States Congress from June 24, 1868 through October 22, 1868. Setting the Record Straight A group of black activists led by Wayne Perryman has filed a brief against the Democrat Party for its long history of racism and discrimination of the black community. Zilla reported: Suing President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party for racism would be a joke if the Plaintiffs were anyone other than Rev. Wayne Perryman, a respected black minister and community activist. Perryman, an author, lecturer and a former newspaper publisher and radio talk show host who has received a multitude of honors and awards for his work and community service, was recently recognized by Chairman Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP for his latest research on racism and politics. On September 11, 2011, Perryman brought together blacks from the West Coast and the East Coast to sign one of the most comprehensive legal briefs ever prepared for a racial discrimination lawsuit. The suit was to filed on September 12, 2011 in US District Court against President Barack Obama and the DNC. The plaintiffs, who refer to the defendants as the “Father of Racism,” allege that as an organization, the Democratic Party has consistently refused to apologize for the role they played in slavery, Jim Crow and for other subsequent racist practices from 1792 to 2011. Mrs. Frances P. Rice, the Chair of the National Black Republican Association is also a named plaintiff in the class action lawsuit.  The case cites the collective work of over 350 legal scholars and includes Congressional records, case law, research from our nation’s top history professors, racist statements from Democratic elected officials, citations from the Democrat’s National Platforms regarding their support of slavery, excepts of speeches from Senator Obama, individual testimonies from blacks who lived in the Jim Crow South and opinions from the NAACP. Perryman said President Obama was named as a defendant not only because he is the official leader of the Democratic Party, but because of certain statements he made about his own party in his book, Dreams from My Father. Kudos to Wayne Perryman and the brave black activists who joined him in this historic pursuit of justice.

Americans established their dominion over the Illinois country with the organization of their legal system. In an environment with little central authority, Native American tribes left the pursuit of justice to the families of those wronged by criminal behavior. Native Americans seeking retribution for a murder or assault could mete out violent judgments. As Americans poured into Illinois and eventually made it a part of their nation, they replaced these notions with a justice system emphasizing due process in criminal matters and firm rules governing economic life.  The emergence of this legal system placed lawyers like Abraham Lincoln at the leading edge of frontier settlement. Most antebellum lawyers handled all sorts of cases, from the defense of accused criminals to preparing wills. Although attorneys like Lincoln maintained home offices, many traveled the judicial circuit. In a time in which most counties did not have population enough to support their own courts, judges and lawyers journeyed from one county seat to the next, trying cases as they went. This "circuit" provided far-flung frontier residents with access to courts and attorneys. The American law proved more effective for some Illinoisans than others. Women ceased to exist as individuals before the law when they married, and could not own property or sue. Illinois' severe Black Codes prevented African-Americans from testifying in court against a white person. Similarly, African-Americans accused of crimes could not receive a jury trial, and faced a judge's summary ruling.