Abraham Lincoln vs Barack Obama - An Overview

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th and the most beloved of all American presidents, although at the time he ingendered intense political contversy, in both the north and south. Lincoln was the first strong president since Polk. While his election precitated the Civil War, it was clear by 1860 that the southern states were preparing to seceed and only Federal military force could prevent. Abhorring war, Abraham Lincoln accepted it as the only means to save the Union. President Lincoln's leadership proceeded not only to save the Union, but also emancipate the slaves. This Civil War was no mere domestic struggle. Consider the fate of Europe if a powerful and united American Republic did not exist to confront the NAZIs in 1941 and the Russians in 1945. The amazing historical footnote is that a president with limited formal education as well as poorly schooled farm boys from Maine to Wisconsin so clearly understood this and supported the Union through 4 terrible years of Civil War.

Family

Lincoln's parents were Thomas Lincon (ca1776-1851) and Nancy Hanks (1784-1818). He had a brther and sister who died at a young age.

Father

Thomas' father had been killed by indians while clearing land. The absence of a father to support him left him with few prospects and oportunities. He tried as best he could. He was both a farmer and carpenter. He bought several farms, but there was a poor land system at the time and he was badly cheated. So Thomas kept moving and trying again. Thomas was uneducated and could barely scrawl his name. Thomas is probably the worst presidential father in American history. After his first wife died he abandoned his children, 9-year old Able and a daughter, for 6 months in their backwoods cabin. They nearly starved to death. As he grew up, Abe did not get on well with his father. Thomas who was illiterate, rediculed his son's reading and interest in education. Abraham for his part wanted to be nothing like his father.

Mother

Nancy Hanks was illiterate. She came from a large family of modest means, but thoroughly respectable. Some have claimed that she was ilegitimate, but recent scholarship has demonstrated that she was not. Nancy died when Abe was 8 years old. Abe himself widdled pegs for his mother's coffin. So Lincoln met death at an early age.

Siblings

Lincoln had an older sister Sarah who died in childhood. There was also a younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy and an older sister who died in childhood.

Childhood

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman and carpenter, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Lincoln himself never said much about his childhood. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life biefly at the urging of a campaign manager:

"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."

Physical discription

Lincoln from childhood was very tall. He towered over his friends mates. His clothes never seemed to fit him. As a man he was about a foot taller than the average man.

Political Career

Lincoln reversed the usual pattern of studying law and then becoming a politican. He first ran for the state legislature at 23 and won a seat in the second try as a Whig in 1834. There he met people with wider horizons. And he was soon was convinced to study law. Lincoln was a effective young politician and ploitics was his true love. Yet there was no real issue which motivated him. It was Stephen Douglas, the prominent Illinois Senator, that gave Lincoln an issue. Douglas proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and popular soverignity. Now Linclon saw the possibility of slavery expanding. Lincoln did not dare to challenge slavery's existence--it was after all enshired in the Constitution and most Americans accepted or supported it. He had hoped, however, that it would slowly wither away. Now there was the possibility that it would expand. Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator in 1850. Lincoln the speech accepting the nomination made perhaps his most famous speech, questioning whether America coul endure both half slave and half free. The famed Lincoln-Douglas debates framed for the entire country the issue of slavery. Douglas accused Linclon of codeling the blacks. Lincon replie that while blacks may not be equal that they are entiled to the income that they earn from their labor. Douglas also stressed the importance of majority rule. Lincoln evoked moral principles. Lincoln won a small majority, a major accomplishment in heavily Democratic Illinois. He lost the election in the Democratic state legislature. In debating with Douglas, a principal Congressional engineer of the Compromise of 1850 which had postponed Civil War, Lincoln gained a national reputation. He continued speaking out, assuming the middle ground between the abolistionists and the slave holders of the South. The Lincoln-Douglas deabates were a key element that was to enable him to win the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

Barack Hussein Obama a.k.a Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama (pronounced /bəˈɹɑːk huˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/;born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Born to a black Kenyan father and a white American mother, he spent most of his childhood in Honolulu, Hawaii. From ages six to ten, he lived in Jakarta with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer before running for public office and serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. After an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for U.S. Senate in 2003.

The following year, while still an Illinois state legislator, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote.As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he co-sponsored bipartisan legislation for controlling conventional weapons and for promoting greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In the current 110th Congress, he has sponsored legislation on lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel.

Since announcing his presidential campaign in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War while maintaining a strong defense abroad, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care as major priorities.He married in 1992 and has two daughters. He has written two bestselling books: a memoir of his youth titled Dreams from My Father, and The Audacity of Hope, a personal commentary on U.S. politics.