When he took the oath of office, it was over a divided Union. South Carolina had seceded and several other southern states had followed its example. Lincoln said, “the Union must be preserved” and he issued a call for seventy-five thousand soldiers. At this call there withdrew from the Union several states which loved the Union but believed in the supreme power of the states and the constitutional right of secession. The reverse at Manassas distressed but did not daunt Lincoln. As commander-in-chief of the army and the navy, he appointed officers and supervised their movements. There were three great military tasks necessary for the northern forces,--to control the Mississippi River, to blockade southern ports, and to capture Richmond. The sea forces under Farragut and Porter successfully performed their tasks. In Virginia one unsuccessful or incompetent general after another was put forward and supported,--McClellan, Halleck, Pope, and Hooker. Meanwhile the great commanders, Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman, were fighting undiscovered in the west. At last they were brought forward and put at the head of magnificent armies to “end the job.” As a military measure, in 1863, President Lincoln made the emancipation proclamation granting freedom to slaves. In November, of that year he made his famous address, consecrating the military cemetery at Gettysburg. Not long before the presidential election of 1864, Lincoln issued a call for five hundred thousand soldiers; friends urged him to wait a few weeks as this call for troops might injure his chance of re-election. He refused saying, “What is the presidency worth to me if I have no country?” In his second inaugural address are the famous words, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in.” The end was already in sight. The capital of the Confederacy fell and Lee’s little army was forced to surrender. Lincoln expressed only sympathy for the defeated and desolate South. But his plans for reunion in peace and kindness were not to be carried out. Just as the great victory was accomplished he was struck down by the hand of an assassin, John Wilkes Booth. His death was an even greater loss to the South than to the North which mourned so bitterly, the heroic man of the people, the martyred president. Ulysses Simpson Grant April 27, 1822, was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, who by an error of which you will hear later had his name changed to Ulysses Simpson Grant. His father was Jesse Grant, an Ohio tanner. Grant’s ancestors had settled in New England in the seventeenth century and some had served in the French and Indian War and some had served in the Revolution, so he was of good American stock.