America. But they needed assistance to do so. He asked congress to pass a bill, and Congress Responded on july 4th, 1864, with the first, last, and only time america passed a law to encourage immigration. Lincolns act to encourage immigration was a signature piece of legislation that many of you, who i know have been familiar during the civil war celebration, went by without a single moments attention. Lincoln knew that immigrants played a major role in the building of industrial america, and to his dying day he related to the immigrant in a manner that few of his contemporaries would or could. He told an amusing story about being poor and being able to relate to immigrants. Once again he went back to his flat boat voyage. 8 a month he earned, and he owned one pair of buckskin breeches. Now if you know the nature of buckskin when wet and dried in the sun, lyincoln reminisces, it will shrink. And my britches kept shrinking. And wilhile i was growing talle they were growing shorter and a
Nomination. The failure to do anything about high prices and the failure to do anything about housing. My duty as president requires that i use every means within my power to get the laws of that people need on matters of such importance and urgency. On american00 artifacts, we take a look at the new society and National Museum of African American history and culture with its director. The museum opens its doors to the public in september of this year. Were able to get amazing collections of movie posters such as the ones behind you. That is an early oscar poster from the 1920s and then this is part of our job is to help people relearn history they think they know. That movie posters from spencer williams. He is known by most people as playing amos and andy did he was one of the most important black film directors in the late 30s and 40s. And sunday night at 8 00 on the presidency, historian john talk about the process of writing a president ial biography. For our complete American His
Becomes that, i think the term they use was the wind. This wire and wind that came through georgia. Sarah reuben made an interesting point about the destruction itself. I thought it was interesting, i left it out of my talk. She said we have the sense of the march to the sea as being the giant tidal wave this tsunami. 60 miles across from one end to the other as it goes out to the sea. She said in reality it was more like fingers of destruction. Stitches through the landscape. Because the army was advancing down roads. And most places they stayed a day. If that much. So the destruction, the destruction is limited to how far off the roads they can go. So she said there are vast areas in between those roads. That were untouched by it. And those people of course applied food and help to the other people who had lost so much during the march. Its interesting, because i had not even thought about this. We do have this image of tsunami of fire going across and if fact it really is more like
It was exactly in the tradition of my brothers book profiles in courage. And then gerald ford got up and talked about partial vindication. I remember watching this and thinking here i was convinced it was an act of maximum corruption, that the pardon was. And then it is examined many years later, dispassionately. And what looked like corruption actually is an act of courage. And that is sobering for somebody in my business. You can say, oh, yeah, this is the following this war made no sense. This was a good war and so forth. And the decades go by and it may look quite differently. Jimmy carter, as somebody using lincoln in december 1979, as he was gearing up to run for reelection, in one of his speeches, carter said, at the height of the civil war, lincoln said, i have but one task and that is to save the union. Then carter went on to compare his responsibility in getting the 50 iranian hostages out as the same problem. He said he would devote his concerted efforts to that. And you loo
Right . Which is supposed to be saying a Little Something about his masculinity, and he is accompanied, of course, by the peace democrat riding a donkey. The whole idea is to say this is a ludicrous, ludicrous combination. In the end nothing matters more than the fall of atlanta. Nothing matters more than the belief that the war is again being won, and the result in the end was abraham lincolns very comfortable electoral victor. You will see here he takes 91 of the electoral vote, but the one thing id want to stress is that his opponent takes 45 of the popular vote. 45 of northerners cast a ballot for a party who has declared the war a failure and has unanimously repudiated emancipation. Its important to us because when we think about our reunified United States in the aftermath of the civil war, what conclusion must we draw . Clearly a large majority of the American Free population was not enthusiastic about emancipation, and to come back to a final theme that has been the bedrock of