#abrahamlincoln — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #abrahamlincoln, aggregated by home.social.
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Wish granted! The #USSGeorgeWashington is now replacing the #AbrahamLincoln, but that's just kicking the can down the road, the Marine vessel #USSBoxer is already complaining of supply shortages as are the other vessels in the area with no bases for resupply...
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Wish granted! The #USSGeorgeWashington is now replacing the #AbrahamLincoln, but that's just kicking the can down the road, the Marine vessel #USSBoxer is already complaining of supply shortages as are the other vessels in the area with no bases for resupply...
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Wish granted! The #USSGeorgeWashington is now replacing the #AbrahamLincoln, but that's just kicking the can down the road, the Marine vessel #USSBoxer is already complaining of supply shortages as are the other vessels in the area with no bases for resupply...
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Wish granted! The #USSGeorgeWashington is now replacing the #AbrahamLincoln, but that's just kicking the can down the road, the Marine vessel #USSBoxer is already complaining of supply shortages as are the other vessels in the area with no bases for resupply...
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The Roaring Twenties
There are decades that become famous for what happened during them.And there are decades that become famous for what people later decided they had meant. The 1920s belong to the second category.We know how the story ends. In October 1929, the American stock market collapsed. The Great Depression followed. The prosperity of the decade gave way to unemployment, bank failures, political crisis, and social hardship. The New Deal transformed the relationship between the federal government and the […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/29/the-roaring-twenties/
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Peer AI Review
The Gazette Has Been Reviewed — And We Have Answered The Gazette has completed its first independent AI peer review. From the beginning, we wanted the project to be more than a collection of historical articles. Our Manifesto makes a simple promise: readers should be able to follow the road from our conclusions back to the evidence and the documents behind them. So we decided to test the project from the outside. We created a standardized AI Peer Review Prompt and gave it to independent […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/28/peer-ai-review/
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A Guide to the Gazette articles 01~50
A Reading Guide Through American History: Part I — Before the United States1. Before the United States, There Were Neither United nor StatesExplores the political reality of North America before 1776, showing that neither the United States nor a unified American nation yet existed.2. What Did Independence Mean in 1776?Examines the Declaration of Independence within its historical context, separating what it proclaimed from what later generations came to associate with it.3. The […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/a-guide-to-the-gazette-articles-0150/
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The End of the Old World
I. A World That Seemed PermanentFor generations, the political map of the world appeared remarkably stable.Empires dominated continents.Kings and emperors ruled vast populations.Colonial possessions stretched across oceans.International politics revolved around a handful of great powers whose existence seemed as permanent as mountains or rivers. "Some centuries end not with a date on the calendar, but with the disappearance of the world that created them." The United States had grown inside […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/the-end-of-the-old-world/
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Wilson’s Impossible Peace
I. A Peace Unlike Any BeforeWhen the guns finally fell silent in November 1918, Europe faced a problem unlike any it had known before.Previous wars had usually ended with negotiated settlements between surviving monarchs. Borders shifted. Reparations were paid. Armies returned home. "Some victories end wars. Others attempt to end war itself." This time, the foundations of the old order had collapsed.Millions had died.Entire regions had been devastated.Governments struggled to maintain […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/25/wilsons-impossible-peace/
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The Canal Between Two Oceans
I. A Dream Older Than the RepublicLong before the United States existed, sailors understood the problem.The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated by only a narrow strip of land, yet ships traveling between them faced journeys measured in months rather than days. "Some nations build roads. Some build railroads. A few build structures that permanently alter the geography of the world." After Vasco Núñez de Balboa first reached the Pacific Ocean in 1513, Spanish officials immediately […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/24/the-canal-between-two-oceans/
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The Progressive President
I. A Republic Outgrows Its InstitutionsBy the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States had become something its founders had never imagined.The frontier had largely disappeared. Railroads connected the continent. Steel framed the skylines of rapidly growing cities. Industrial corporations employed hundreds of thousands of workers. Wall Street had become the financial heart of the nation's economy. The republic had become larger, wealthier, and more complex than ever before.Yet […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/23/the-progressive-president/
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When America Crossed the Ocean
I. The Republic Facing InwardFor more than a century after independence, the United States had been occupied with itself.Its greatest questions lay within its own borders.How could a republic survive? How could a continent be connected? How could millions of immigrants become one nation?Railroads crossed the wilderness. Factories transformed raw materials into steel. Cities rose where forests had stood only decades before.Even the Civil War, devastating as it was, remained an internal […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/22/when-america-crossed-the-ocean/
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The Rise of Wall Street
I. A Street That Built NothingThere was nothing remarkable about Wall Street itself.It produced no steel. It laid no railroad. It harvested no wheat.No ships were built there, no coal was mined, and no bridges rose from its pavements.Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, decisions made on a few blocks of lower Manhattan increasingly determined which railroads would be built, which factories would expand, which companies would survive, and which industries would disappear.This […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/20/the-rise-of-wall-street/
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The Man Who Financed America
Industrial revolutions are often remembered through machines.Steam engines. Railroads. Steel mills. Factories.Yet machines alone never built a modern economy.Every railroad required investors long before it carried passengers.Every steel mill demanded capital years before it produced its first beam.Every bridge, dock, factory, and warehouse existed first as a financial commitment. The Industrial Republic needed more than engineers. It needed people capable of organizing money on a scale […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/19/the-man-who-financed-america/
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Building with Steel
No civilization is remembered only by its ideas.It is remembered by what it builds.Stone gives shape to ancient empires.Brick defines medieval cities.Concrete transforms the twentieth century. For the United States of the late nineteenth century, that material was steel Not because steel had never existed before.But because, for the first time in history, it became abundant enough to shape an entire nation.The Industrial Republic did not simply need more steel.It needed steel that ordinary […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/19/building-with-steel/
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The Man Who Standardized Industry
America did not become an industrial nation simply because it discovered oil. Nor because it possessed iron ore. Nor because it had ambitious entrepreneurs willing to invest enormous fortunes. Natural resources existed elsewhere. Factories had already transformed Britain. Railroads crossed Europe long before they connected the American continent. What made the United States different was not merely its industrial growth.It was its ability to organize industrial growth. By the 1870s, the […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/19/the-man-who-standardized-industry/
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The Trusts and the Titans
The United States did not invent wealth during the nineteenth century.Nor did it invent industry.Factories had long transformed Britain. Banks had financed empires for centuries. Merchant houses had accumulated fortunes long before the American Republic existed.What America did create was something different. It created an economy so vast that no individual business could easily govern it. The railroads connected the continent.Steel transformed construction.Millions of immigrants filled […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/18/the-trusts-and-the-titans/
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The Gilded Age
When later generations looked back upon the closing decades of the nineteenth century, they did not call them the Golden Age. They called them the Gilded Age The distinction mattered.Gold is solid.Gilding is only a thin surface laid over something else. The phrase entered American history through the novel The Gilded Age, published in 1873 by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. It was intended as satire, yet it became something greater. Historians, economists, and politicians eventually […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/17/the-gilded-age/
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The Immigrants Who Built the Cities
Between roughly 1865 and the close of the nineteenth century, the United States experienced one of the greatest movements of people in modern history. Millions crossed the Atlantic Millions crossed the Atlantic, not as conquerors or adventurers, but as workers, families, craftsmen, laborers, and dreamers. They did not arrive to change the course of American history. They came because history had already changed the course of theirs. The Civil War had preserved the Union, and the industrial […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/16/the-immigrants-who-built-the-cities/
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The Age of Steel
The nineteenth century is often remembered through the names of remarkable individuals. Lincoln preserved the Union.Carnegie built an industrial empire.Rockefeller transformed oil.Edison electrified cities. Yet before any of these men could reshape America, something more fundamental had already changed. The nation learned to produce steel. That transformation was neither dramatic nor celebrated at first. It did not begin with speeches, elections, or battles. It began inside […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/15/the-age-of-steel/
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The Railroads That Built America
There are moments in history when a nation changes without a revolution, without a new constitution, and without a single decisive battle.The transformation comes quietly.A line appears across an empty landscape.Then another. Soon the lines connect towns, rivers, forests, mountains, and finally oceans. What was once a collection of distant places becomes something entirely different.By the end of the nineteenth century, Americans often spoke of the railroad as the greatest invention of […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/13/the-railroads-that-built-america/
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Reconstruction The Unfinished Peace
In April 1865, the Civil War ended.After four years of bloodshed, the Confederate armies laid down their arms. Richmond had fallen. General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. The Union had survived.For millions of Americans, the nightmare seemed to be over.In reality, the hardest work had only begun. Winning a war and rebuilding a nation are not the same task. The United States had preserved its Constitution, abolished slavery, and prevented permanent division. Yet none of […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/12/reconstruction-the-unfinished-peace/
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If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. — why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?
You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly? — You mean the whites are intellectually the superior of blacks, and, therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Note (1854-07-01?), On Slavery (fragment)More about this quote: wist.info/lincoln-abraham/5166…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #lincoln #abrahamlincoln #debate #enslavement #justification #racism #rationalization #reasoning #slavery #superiority
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves — in their separate, and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.
The desirable things which the individuals of a people can not do, or can not well do, for themselves, fall into two classes: those which have relation to wrongs, and those which have not. Each of these branch off into an infinite variety of subdivisions. The first — that in relation to wrongs — embraces all crimes, misdemeanors, and non-performance of contracts. The other embraces all which, in its nature, and without wrong, requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.
From this it appears that if all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government.Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1854-07-01?), fragment on governmentMore about this quote: wist.info/lincoln-abraham/3093…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #lincoln #abelincoln #abrahamlincoln #community #government #humanity #judiciary #lawenforcement #publicservices #publicworks #smallgovernment #welfare
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Kaja Kallas’ poker face, Lindsey Graham cursing and Mark Rutte talking to a dog – POLITICO
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“Christmas Eve,” 1862 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 7, pp. 8-9, Christmas edition, 1862, public domain; click to enlarge).
When thinking about what life was like for the Pennsylvania volunteer soldiers who served their nation during the American Civil War, the influence of nineteenth century artists on their lives would likely not be the first thing that comes to mind. The orders they received from their superior officers in the Army and the “trickle down” effect of the directives issued by state and federal elected officials to those Union Army officers, yes, but visual artists? Probably not.
But artists and their artwork—paintings and illustrations created during and after the 1860s—did leave their mark on the psyches of soldiers in ways that were profoundly illuminating and long lasting.
Many of the most powerful artworks that were likely seen and reflected on by members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were those drawn by Thomas Nast (1840-1902), a native of Germany who had emigrated to the United States from Bavaria with his mother and siblings in 1846. He spent most of his formative years in New York City, where he took up drawing while still in school. As he aged, he came to view America as his homeland, but still grew up experiencing many German traditions—as had many 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers during their own formative years. (Company K, for example, was established in August 1861 as an “all-German company” of the 47th Pennsylvania.)
Nast’s first depiction of the Christmas season (shown above) was created for the cover and centerfold of the Christmas edition of Harper’s Weekly 1862, shortly after he was hired as a staff illustrator.
“Santa Claus in Camp,” 1863 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, January 3, 1863, public domain; click to enlarge).
He then continued to create illustrations of Santa for Harper’s Weekly in subsequent years. According to journalist Lorraine Boissoneault:
You could call it the face that launched a thousand Christmas letters. Appearing on January 3, 1863, in the illustrated magazine Harper’s Weekly, two images cemented the nation’s obsession with a jolly old elf. The first drawing shows Santa distributing presents in a Union Army camp. Lest any reader question Santa’s allegiance in the Civil War, he wears a jacket patterned with stars and pants colored in stripes. In his hands, he holds a puppet toy with a rope around its neck, its features like those of Confederate president Jefferson Davis….
According to historians at Grant Cottage, “In 1868, newly elected 18th President U.S. Grant paid tribute to Thomas Nast by saying, ‘Two things elected me, the sword of Sheridan and the pencil of Thomas Nast.’”
As a result, members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry had ample time to become well acquainted with Nast’s artistry and his support for their efforts, as part of the United States Army, to end the Civil War and preserve America’s Union. An ardent abolitionist, Nast also actively supported the federal government’s efforts to eradicate the brutal practice of chattel slavery.
Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida (Harper’s Weekly, 1864, public domain).
Nast’s first illustrations of Santa Claus and depictions of soldiers longing for family at Christmas would initially have been seen by 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers while they were stationed far from home at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida—just two months after the regiment had sustained a shockingly high rate of casualties during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862. More than one hundred members of the regiment had been killed in action, mortally wounded, grievously wounded, or wounded less seriously, but still able to continue their service.
So terrible was the outcome that it would have been enough to make an impression even on individual 47th Pennsylvanians who hadn’t been wounded. They were not only now battle tested, they were battle scarred, according to comments made by individual members of the regiment in the letters they wrote to families and friends back home during that Christmas of 1862.
No matter how strong their capacity for overcoming adversity had been before that battle, their hearts and minds would never be the same. It would take time to heal and move forward—time they were given while stationed on garrison duty for more than a year.
Fort Jefferson (Harper’s Weekly, August 26, 1865, public domain; click to enlarge).
By the time that the American Civil War was ending its third year, the mental wounds of Pocotaligo were far less fresh than they had been the previous Christmas. Still stationed in Florida on garrison duty in 1863, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was now a divided regiment. While slightly more than half of the regiment was still on duty at in Key West, as companies A, B, C, E, G, and I remained at Fort Taylor, the remaining members of the regiment—companies D, F, H, and K—were now even farther away from home—stationed at Fort Jefferson, the Union’s remote outpost that was situated so far off of Florida’s coast that it was accessible only by ship.
Letters penned to family and friends back in Pennsylvania during the early part of 1863 capture a sense of sadness and longing that pervaded the regiment—as 47th Pennsylvanians mourned the loss of their deceased comrades and thought about how deeply they missed their own families.
Gradually, as the year wore on, those feelings turned to acceptance of their respective losses and, eventually, frustration at still being assigned to garrison duty when they felt they could and should be helping the federal government bring a faster end to the war by defeating the Confederate States Army through enough tide-turning combat engagements that the Confederate States of America would finally surrender and agree to re-unify the nation.
By early 1864, the wish of those 47th Pennsylvanians was granted by senior Union Army officials. They were not only given the opportunity to return to combat, but to return to intense combat as a history-making regiment.
The only regiment from Pennsylvania to fight in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana, the 47th Pennsylvanians repeatedly displayed their valor as the blood of more and more of their comrades was spilled to eradicate slavery across the nation while also fighting to preserve the nation’s Union. By the fall of 1864, they were participating in such fierce, repeated battles across Virginia during Union Major-General Philip Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign that President Abraham Lincoln was able to secure his reelection and the tide of the American Civil War was decisively turned in the federal government’s favor once and for all.
Ruins of Charleston, South Carolina as seen from the Circular Church, 1865 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).
By April 1865, the Confederate States Army had surrendered, the war was over and President Lincoln was gone, felled by an assassin’s bullet that had too easily found its target. So, once again, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were in mourning.
Sent back to America’s Deep South that summer, they were assigned to Reconstruction duties in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina, where they helped to reestablish functioning local and state governments, rebuild shattered infrastructure, and reinvigorate a free press that was dedicated to supporting a unified nation—all while other Pennsylvania volunteer regiments were being mustered out and sent home.
Finally, after a long and storied period of service to their nation, the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers were given their honorable discharge papers at Camp Cadwalader in Philadelphia, and were then sent home to their own family and friends in communities across Pennsylvania in early January 1866.
Return to Civilian Life
“Santa Claus and His Works,” 1866 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, December 29, 1866, public domain; click to enlarge).
Attempting to regain some sense of normalcy as their post-war lives unfolded over the years between the late 1860s and the early 1900s, many of the surviving veterans of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry resumed the jobs they held prior to the war while others found new and better ways to make a living. Some became small business creators, pastors or other church officials, members of their local town councils or school boards, beloved doctors, or even inventors. One even became the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Most also married and began families, some small, some large. Still others made their way west—as far as the states of California and Washington—in search of fortune or, more commonly, places where war’s Grim Reaper would never find them again.
“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” 1866 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, December 25, 1886, public domain; click to enlarge).
As the years rolled on, they saw more and more of Thomas Nast’s work as it was published in Harper’s Weekly, particularly at Christmas. But the Santa Claus of war was now transformed by Nast as the Saint Nicholas of his childhood in Germany—kind, altruistic, loving, and jolly.
Over time, those illustrations collectively formed the “mind pictures” that the majority of American children and adults experienced when they imagined Santa Claus. So powerful has Nast’s influence been that, even today, when Americans encounter the many variations of Santa used to promote products in Christmas advertising campaigns, they see images that are often based on Nast’s nineteenth century drawings—drawings that had their genesis as beacons of light and hope during one of the darkest times in America’s history.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Nast has been helping Americans to summon and follow “the better angels of our nature” for more than one hundred and sixty years. May the power of his art help us all continue to do so this year and for the remainder of our days.
Sources:
- Boissoneault, Lorraine. “A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union Propaganda.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Magazine, December 19, 2018.
- “Drawn Together: The Friendship of U.S. Grant and Thomas Nast” (video). Wilton, New York: Grant Cottage, May 14, 2022.
- “Santa Claus,” in “Thomas Nast.” Columbus, Ohio: University Libraries, The Ohio State University, retrieved online December 23, 2023.
- “Santa Claus in Camp (from ‘Harper’s Weekly,’ vol. 7, p. 1).” New York, New York: The Met, retrieved online December 23, 2023.
- Vinson, J. Chal. “Thomas Nast and the American Political Scene,” in American Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 3, Autumn 1957, pp. 337-344. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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