The National Park Service

Articles from The National Park Service

The Significance of the Union Victory at Vicksburg
(The National Park Service, 1954)

The great objective of the war in the West – the opening of the Mississippi River and the severing of the Confederacy – had been realized with the fall of Vicksburg.

On July 9 [1863], the Confederate commander at Port Hudson, upon learning of the fall of Vicksburg, surrendered his garrison of 6,000 men. One week later the merchant steamboat Imperial tied up at the wharf at New Orleans, completing the 1,000-mile passage from St. Louis undisturbed by hostile guns. After two years of land and naval warfare, the Mississippi River was open, the grip of the South had been broken, and merchant and military traffic had now a safe avenue to the gulf of Mexico. In the words of Lincoln:


The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.

Lincoln’s Address at Cooper Union
(The National Park Service, 1956)

Before his 1860 address at the Cooper Institute (presently known as Cooper Union) Abraham Lincoln was known in the East chiefly as a rather obscure western lawyer who had gained some prestige a little over a year earlier in the debates with Douglas during the Illinois senatorial contest. The day after the address Horace Greeley’s NEW YORK TRIBUNE remarked:

No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.

This speech put within Lincoln’s grasp a chance for the Presidency.


Attached, you will find his very powerful conclusion to the address.


Click here to read about the Confederate conscription laws.

The Lincoln – Douglas Debates Observed
(The National Park Service, 1956)

These four paragraphs first appeared on the pages of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE and were written by a reporter named of Horace White at the conclusion of Lincoln – Douglas debates of 1858. The journalist did a fine job in describing the excitement at the debates and the spirit of the participating candidates.

Douglas ended in a whirlwind of applause…and Lincoln began to speak in a slow and rather awkward way. He had a thin tenor, or rather falsetto voice, almost as high pitched as a boatswain’s whistle.


The debates resulted in a close election that returned Douglas to the U.S. Senate and Lincoln to his law practice.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

Scroll to Top