Abraham Lincoln Questions? EARLY LIFE!?
Abraham Lincoln Questions? 1.Can someone explain a little about his life, when he was a kid and growing up did anything interesting happen? Can you also tell us about his family? Did his stepmom bring kids? What happened to his family? 2. How did he get elected for president? 3. Anything that Abraham lincoln was involved in during the war?
Has anyone seen the new Lincoln movie?
No. No one has ever seen it. Ever.
What is the real life story of Abraham Lincoln?
Team of Rivals is one of the longest books i have ever read, It has been very well received, and is the inspiration for the recent Lincoln film. Despite being 900+ pages long, it only really focuses on a few years of his latter political career, it even glosses over things!You are not going to get a comprehensive understanding of Abraham Lincolns life in a Quora answer.The vast and varied amount of anecdotes he told through-out his life emphasize just how incredible his biography was. A lot of them were collected posthumously by those who greatly admired him and were published in a quite fun book (Lincoln's Yarns and Stories).Many of these stories were lost or omitted because of there questionable voracity...He was born in a log cabin, to absolute poverty, he was a man of questionable mental health and remarkable physique (very tall and unpredictably strong). He lived most of his life outside the public eye. Charisma and eloquence were two of his defining qualities, it is said the 'When he spoke, people listened.' His father was abusive, his mum died young, he ran away and educated himself, becoming something of an expert in an astonishing amount of fields, he took on various professions from river-boat man, to shop clerk, to well-paid lawyer, to the highest office in the land.His story is fascinating and incredible convoluted, i read a lot about him and am still surprised, take this lesser known story for example:In the early years of his marriage to Mary Todd, she, a wealthy and opinionated socialite, wrote some antagonistic and xenophobic things about a man named James Shields. He naturally took offense, and Abe naturally took responsibility. James challenged Abe to a duel, Abe accepted. As was the etiquette, Abe (the challenged) chose the weapon... A Broadsword. He also chose the location, an island in a river a stones-throw away from the Illinois border (Duels were illegal in Illinois). Abe not wanting to kill or even maim the man, casually hacked a branch off a tree, suspended above his opponents head. The strength and range advantage of Abe, made evident by this action, was enough to oblige his opponent to concede. Abe had no qualm about the duel, nor did he hold a grudge afterwards... Just one of literally hundreds of astonishing chapters in Abraham Lincolns life, if you want to know more, he is by far the most written about US presidents, and one of the most written about people to have ever lived.I hope this helps :S
Is it true abraham Lincoln had marfan's syndrome?
It hasn't been proven because his blood sample has never been tested. To do so could destroy the sample. As the others have said, there are several rare disease/disorder groups that claim Lincoln as a member. The National Marfan Foundation writes: "Abraham Lincoln was suspected of having had Marfan syndrome due to his body type, which included many Marfan-like features. In 1991, a panel, which included a representative of the NMF, was convened to discuss conducting a test on Lincoln’s DNA, which had been saved since his death. The panel was covered by the New York Times. The debate has continued in recent years and there is still no conclusive evidence either way." The link in the source section lists people who have Marfan syndrome, people who have died from Marfan syndrome, people suspected of having it (like Lincoln), and people who do not have Marfan (like Michael Phelps).
Was it a good idea for Abraham Lincoln to wait for the Union Army to win a battle beforeissuingtheproclamation?
It was strategic. If Lincoln would have issued the Emancipation Proclamation before the north won a battle, it would give the impression that he just wanted blacks to fight only because he was loosing the war. After the Union won Antietam, he issued the proclamation. This bolstered the Union cause from one of defying states rights, to defending the freedom of men in bondage. Was a great battle cry.
"Lincoln Lawyer": Is it a good movie?
Thanks for A2A. Luckily , I watched this movie 3-4 months back otherwise I wouldn't have been able to answer your question.The Lincoln Lawyer is one of the best Matthew McConaughey movies I have ever seen (I loved Interstellar, WoWS, Dazed and Confused, Killer Joe, Frailty and Mud the most). He plays his role brilliantly. Other actors are equally good. It seems that he was made for this role.If you like courtroom dramas then you will love it. Its one of my favorite courtroom dramas (Witness for The Prosecution is my favorite courtroom drama). So watch it without any second thoughts.
Why do most people think of Lincoln as an anti-slavery President? Wasn't he really more a pro-reunification president?
The best way to answer this question is to begin by defining terms. When Lincoln wrote on August 22, 1862 in his famous open letter to Horace Greeley, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the union and is not either to save or to destroy slavery," he was employing a word --"union"-- that meant different things to different people (and still does, by the way). For Lincoln and the Republicans, the union was never merely a collection of states. Nor was it a centralized federal government or some abstract attachment to a paper Constitution. This is the key point and what always leads to confusion. For Lincoln especially, the "union" was "the people" --as in "We the people" and what should properly be considered the fundamental and most revolutionary American doctrine of popular sovereignty. Look carefully at all of Lincoln's wartime speeches and statements and you will see that behind the phrase "save the union," Lincoln always meant to protect the results of the 1860 election which he believed had defined the popular will through a legitimate electoral process. That's how he justified calling himself a unionist even though he led a sectional party. That's why he refused practically all compromises during the secession crisis because he believed that they failed to acknowledge how much the election mattered. And that's why he pursued increasingly "hard war" policies against the Confederacy, including emancipation, that ultimately turned the war into what he had once warned against, "a remorseless, revolutionary struggle." In other words, Lincoln was both anti-slavery and pro-union. In fact, he considered those positions one and the same, because he defined "union" as the popular will which by the 1860 election results had determined that the future of the country was to be free, or, as Lincoln put it at Gettysburg, to be "a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." He was always willing to reunify the country on those terms, and never willing to consider anything less. This is, by the way, exactly the question that Steven Spielberg's new movie, "Lincoln," intends to examine by focusing on the last few months of the war and what the movie-makers present as the fundamental choice that Lincoln navigated during that period between pushing for a Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery or pursuing potential peace talks with Confederates.
How historically accurate is "Lincoln" the movie?
It's a mistake to worry about whether "Lincoln" the movie is historically accurate. It's historically inspired and inspiring but by definition any work of art that blends fiction (such as invented dialogue) with fact should never be considered "accurate." Spielberg himself acknowledges all this when he describes his movie as a "dream" and as a work of "historical fiction" (see his Dedication Day speech, November 19, 2012 at Gettysburg on YouTube for a good example). That doesn't mean that the movie has no use in the history classroom or for the lifelong history student. "Lincoln" the movie creates an unforgettable historical mood or experience that almost no actual history of the period can match. It truly feels like "writing history with lightning" (Woodrow Wilson on another powerful movie, "Birth of a Nation"). But accurate history sticks to the evidence and Spielberg and scriptwriter Tony Kushner don't. When they want to convey the complicated dynamic of the Lincoln household, they take that responsibility seriously and consult several leading historical studies to create a layered account but at the end of the day they simply invent the most compelling scenes such as a bitter bedroom argument between First Husband and wife or a stunning scene where Abraham Lincoln slaps his oldest son (which, by the way, would NEVER have happened). They also condense, conflate and simplify the politics behind the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which is the focal point of the movie. Just compare the Spielberg / Kushner interpretation to the best academic account of the subject ("Final Freedom" (2001) by Michael Vorenberg) and you realize how many corners the movie has to cut and nuances it has to ignore. Watching the movie, for example, it's easy to forget that Lincoln was pushing for approval from a lame duck Congress where his numbers were worse than they would be in the newly elected Congress. Why would he do that? The movie also struggles to portray the details of the lobbying effort (relying heavily on invention, imagination and more than a little corny comic relief). Yet this movie probably does better on this difficult subject than any other American film. So, accurate? No. But excellent anyway? Absolutely. In other words, don't go to this movie (or any historical movie) to learn the facts. Go to imagine the experience and to enjoy the illusion that a great filmmaker can create.