Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln is known for freeing the slaves. But do you know the actual reason behind why he did that? He used to be my favorite president, he still is sort of, but just not the number one on my list. That’s because of some of the predicaments that happened during his presidency. What I did like about him is that he wanted to keep the country a whole. Everybody staying united. I mean that’s why it’s called the United States right? Well Lincoln was trying to keep everyone on the same page and equal. He didn’t want any war.

We think of these presidents as just presidents. But they did have a life before that. Abraham was born in 1809 in Kentucky. When he was younger he didn’t really get a schoolhouse education and was mostly self-taught. That was how it was back then. Not everyone went to school. Now today, everyone can go to school. But Lincoln did get life lessons and I think that’s the best way to learn some fundamentals for getting through life. He even taught himself law. That worked in his favor for two reasons because he got to be a state legislator and was admitted the bar in Illinois in 1836. Abraham Lincoln successfully became a great lawyer. That wasn’t the end of his success.

Lincoln later married a lady named Mary Todd in 1842. They also had four children. But he was sometimes an absent father because of all the political work he later started doing. One thing that he is known for in politics is his famous speeches. There were many that he made but one in particular was the “House Divided” speech in 1858. Lincoln was basically covering in the speech that he was in favor of keeping a Union as a whole and he worked on that through his whole presidency later on. But he figured out that there was only one way for that to happen. That one way was about the slavery debate. In order for the whole country to become united, there either has to be slavery, or no slavery at all for all the states. That wasn’t the only reason behind him making this particular speech. He also was disagreeing with Senator Stephen Douglas. Douglas supported popular sovereignty and was completely different from Lincoln. I actually agree with Abraham Lincoln’s point of view that the country had to go all slavery or none at all. It would get all the states on one page. But I would have preferred the no slavery way to go. Which that later became the way but not for the reasons you first think of. Then there was the Lincoln-Douglas debates. You can probably guess what those debates were. It was between those two senators and it was mostly about the slavery predicament. Abraham was hoping to run for Republican Senator for Illinois so that he can get rid of Stephen Douglas. Of course, the press had both of them all over the paper. But not always in a good way. If a newspaper favored Lincoln, they would fix any grammatical errors and make the speech look really intriguing while making Stephen’s speech the way it was so it didn’t look as good (and vice versa for other newspapers). Unfortunately, Lincoln lost the debate. But that didn’t just bring bad news, it also brought good. During all the debating it gave him more publicity and many people noticed him more. Because of all that recognition, he was later nominated for president in 1860. He successfully won the election and became the 16^th president of the United States. Even up to this time Lincoln still didn’t have a strong opinion on slavery or no slavery. He just wanted no conflict between all the states. But while he was president the country wasn’t exactly all united. There were states that were pro-slavery and some not. Lincoln wanted to work on reuniting the states to all be on the same page.

During his presidency the Civil War also commenced. Unlike other presidents who get frazzled by the fact that a war was beginning and anxiously started getting prepared, Lincoln welcomed the war and just started getting prepared calmly by reading up on battle tactics. That was just the type of person he was. Now this is when I decided that he wasn’t my favorite number one president. The Emancipation Proclamation was of course the famous decision that Abraham Lincoln made to abolish slavery in 1861. This sounds like a great idea and I completely agree but he didn’t exactly do it for the slaves’ best interest. Lincoln did that because it was the only way to 1, unite the country, and 2, to stop the Civil War. When I first learned about him freeing the slaves I thought that was the most amazing thing that one of our presidents did. But until I knew exactly why Abraham did it, didn’t really make it look so amazing anymore. I know that not one of our presidents are perfect. Even the president that is my number one favorite made a mistake. Of course, if you’re being watched under a microscope by the whole country, somebody is bound to find a mistake you made while being president. But, I am glad that Lincoln went the no slavery route because imagine how life would be now if that never changed?

The Gettysburg Address is another famous speech that Abraham Lincoln made but it wasn’t that long. He made it after the war and it lasted for only 3 minutes. The Union was actually in favor of the speech he made so that was one of the reasons why he was re-elected president. His second term started in March, 1865. There was also the news of the Confederacy surrendering. That led to bad news for President Lincoln. A man named John Wilkes shot Abraham Lincoln in the head because he was a Confederate sympathizer. So basically Wilkes was against Lincoln’s decisions as president. President Abraham Lincoln died on the morning April 15^th, 1865. He was buried in Springfield, Illinois.

The California Gold Rush

The California was one of the biggest gold strikes during that time. The first gold strike was in North Carolina but that one was small compared to the gold they found in California in 1848. When they found the gold they decided not to tell the public about the news. But we all know that news gets out somehow.

A man named John Marshall found little gold flakes. To me they kind of looked like cereal bits. So the person he was working with named John Sutter talked to him and they swore to secrecy between each other. Unfortunately that didn’t work out because news got out by the end of 1849. Even president Polk decided to announce it to the public. It was obvious what that was sparking. Everyone then decided to travel all the way to California no matter where they were. Everyone wanted to become wealthy. I don’t blame them because many people want that to this day. The big rush happened in 1849. It wasn’t like today where we had TV’s and cell phones where we would get the announcement right away. It took much longer to get to the whole country. The people who journeyed to California even earned the nickname Forty-niners. People even left their family to try to get the wealth. That’s because if they became wealthy then they thought they would have a better life. This gold rush helped California get established. Before the gold rush in 1848 the population was about 800 people. The next year, there was around 100,000 people there.

It wasn’t easy for everyone to travel to the other side of the country. There were three paths that they would take. Only one of them was really efficient but it wasn’t used until later into the rush. Of course there was the way to go overland through the Oregon and California Trails. The other two ways went by water. The first one went all the way around South America and then towards California. Yes you can probably guess that that was the long way to go but some did it in order to get to the final product. The last path is the most efficient. They cut through in between America and South America. That saved a lot of time.

When it was the beginning of the gold rush it was really simple to pick up a few nuggets of gold. You just had to sift through a couple layers of dirt to get a few treasures. But of course, it kept getting harder since the gold was diminishing since there was so many people looking for some. Later on, some people didn’t even get anything. Imagine going on that long journey to find out that there’s barely any of the fortune for you to find. That’s a big disappointment. For the majority of the people who found nothing, ended up resorting to lawless behavior. That wasn’t of course the right path to go down but that’s what happened back then during that time. There was a TON of gold that was retrieved during the gold rush. It was about 750,000 pounds of gold. Since there was a lot of people coming to collect that gold, it actually helped California to form into a state where a lot of people ended up staying. Settlements started to form from this successful find. In 1849 there was 100,000 people in California. If that wasn’t amazing enough, by 1860 the population was about 380,000! I’d say that’s an accomplishment for California.

So it was kind of a hit or miss with traveling all the way to California to find gold to become wealthy. You either found a couple nuggets, or nothing. But, for the people who were there in the beginning they definitely found more than the ones that came more towards the tapering end of the gold rush. I personally think to this day if something like the California Gold Rush happened, people would still rush all the way across the country to become wealthier. Of course today it would be much easier to get there because now we have planes, cars, etc.. Also, the news would get across the country within minutes because that’s how fast news spreads today.

If the state is strong enough to do something good for you, it can also do something bad to you

Government can do great things for us. But that also means that they can do bad things for us. How about the taxes? The government plunders the country with taxes but where does all that money go? They say that the government can do what the people can’t. But what I think you should say is the people provide for the government to do whatever they want to do with the country whether its good news or bad. But they don’t care if it’s terrible because they are the exception. So really, how do people automatically think, “Oh the government is doing it so it’s okay”. Yeah….that’s a complete joke. The government doesn’t care about what they do because they don’t have to oblige to it! So if you notice that….then why does the whole population have to do what they say with all the laws when the people who are making them, don’t even follow them! All the government does is take, take, aanndd take. They are set for life so they don’t care about us because they don’t have to. It’s not in THEIR best interest. But back in the day, the government actually served the people and did what was right. That’s what their supposed to do. But in the last decade we have twisted the idea of what the government is supposed to do. Yes, they are a strong group of people that control the whole country, but that doesn’t mean that they’re doing what’s right. People love to control other people… The controlling gets to their head and they just terrorize the whole country with a ton of issues that their not solving. Basically, our country is going downhill and will continue to go downhill if people don’t start waking up to reality.