Lincon
Impressive our boy Abe, I made a few notes. When I got to the Lincoln Memorial a park ranger was giving a talk, here’s what I can remember.
The battle of Gettysburg, the president of Harvard gave a 2 hour talk in the cold and rain, from memory and summed what the battle meant. 15 thousand people turned up, after 2 hours of this sort of thing, you'd be ready to head off to the pub, or what ever they had in those days.
Lincoln stands up, no one expects him to be there, and he’s taking a big security risk being there.
Lincoln reminds the audience that they are fighting to uphold the constitution
It was one of the greatest speeches ever made, it was printed in the papers and retold to the masses all over the country, and most of the country couldn’t read. The speech was meant to be retold in this fashion
Had enough yet? Don’t worry, there's more
Time came around to voting for a new president, the front runners were Abe (we're taking it all back) and some other general guy (lets give peace a chance, let them have the south), they voted for Abe and they were falling at a rate of 2000 a week
He signed an agreement that made slaves free if they dug trenches and cooked food for the war effort. This only made a handful of slaves free, but word got out and it wasn't long before people started heading north.
Window at Macey's
For Abe's 2nd inauguration speech he said that the South would not be punished if they rejoined the north and that people from the South that lost their husbands and fathers should be treated with mercy, a fellow by the name John Willks Booth, and wasn't to impressed and decided to shoot him 2 weeks later and he did. This speech paved the way for the South signing Amendment 13.
He had only 1.5 years of formal education, and was mostly self taught, reading at night with some smelly oil lamp didn't go down too well in his house
He wasn’t to popular when he started off, he had 17000 in his army fighting the Indians on the frontiers
He made slavery illegal for any new states in the US
He didn't have many soldiers and about 20 office workers to protest him when general Lee came up north to 'Have a few words' with him, word got out and the then US army headed out to 'Head them off at the pass' or Gettysburg, and they did, General retreated south to fight another day
Lincoln asked for 75000 volunteers for 3 months more as a sign of solidarity to the South
Window at Macey's
When the first train came down from New York to Baltimore, 20000 people rioted, Abe wasn't a popular guy
Lincoln suspended 'Habious Corpus', soldiers could arrest people speaking about rebellion and out went the trial by your peers, trial by military court, and they did, Lincoln meant business, he could do this as there is a clause allowing for this in case of 'Rebellion and Emergency'
General Lee the trouble maker
Abe's statue symbolism
His right hand is open, he's ready for peace
Left hand clenched, ready for war
He's holding a bushel on his left and right, symbolizes North and South, he's holding them
The marble from the memorial comes from all over the US
It's an emperor's chair
He's wearing ordinary clothes with the flag behind him
He's on the $5 bill
Window at Macey's
Went to see JFK's eternal flame (Old flames couldn't hold a candle to you), he's running up some gas bill (Marshmallows are strictly not allowed)
Went to the nations most sacred monument (the unknown soldier) and saw the changing of the guard, seems a bit excessive, compared to the changing of the guard in Sweden or Denmark, but there you go.
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