AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace

of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C.. It has been the residence of
every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800.

Under the United States Constitution, the President of the United States is
the head of state and head of government of the United States. As chief of the
executive branch and head of the federal government as a whole, the presidency is
the highest political office in the United States by influence and recognition.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN
1861-1865
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th
President of the United States, serving
from March 1861 until his assassination
in April 1865.
The son of a Kentucky
frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle
for a living and for learning. He was
born February 12, 1809, made
extraordinary efforts to attain
knowledge while working on a farm,
splitting rails for fences, and keeping
store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a
captain in the Black Hawk War.
He married Mary Todd, and they
had four boys, only one of whom lived
to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against
Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost
the election, but in debating with
Douglas he gained a national reputation
that won him the Republican
nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he
built the Republican
Party into a strong
national organization.
Further, he rallied most
of the northern
Democrats to the Union
cause. On January 1,
1863, he issued the
Emancipation
Proclamation that
declared forever free
those slaves within the
Confederacy.
Lincoln never let the
world forget that the
Civil War involved an
even larger issue.

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

The assassination of United States
President Abraham Lincoln took place
on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, as the
American Civil War was drawing to a
close. The assassination occurred five
days after the commander of the
Confederate Army of Northern
Virginia, General Robert E. Lee,
surrendered to Lieutenant General
Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army
of the Potomac.

Original plan:
Kidnapping the
president
In March 1864, Ulysses S.
Grant, the commanding general of
all the Union's armies, decided to
suspend the exchange of
prisoners-of-war. Harsh as it may
have been on the prisoners of both
sides, Grant realized the exchange
was prolonging the war by
returning soldiers to the
outnumbered and manpowerstarved South. John Wilkes Booth,
a Southerner and outspoken
Confederate sympathizer,
conceived a plan to kidnap
President Lincoln and deliver him
to the Confederate Army, to be
held hostage until the North
agreed to resume exchanging
prisoners.

Day of the assassination :

On April 14, Booth's morning started at the stroke of midnight. Lying
wide awake in his bed at the National Hotel, he wrote his mother that all was
well, but that he was "in haste". In his diary, he wrote that "Our cause being
almost lost, something decisive and great must be done".

Lincoln's day started well

for the first time in a while.
Hugh McCulloch, the new
Secretary of the Treasury,
remarked that on that morning,
"I never saw Mr. Lincoln so
cheerful and happy". No one
could miss the difference. For
months, the President had
looked pale and haggard.
Lincoln himself told people how
happy he was. This caused First
Lady Mary Todd Lincoln some
concern, as she believed that
saying such things out loud was
bad luck. Lincoln paid her no
heed. He met with his cabinet
that day and later had a brief
meeting with Vice President
Andrew Johnson.

Booth shoots
President Lincoln
The Lincoln party arrived late and settled
into the Presidential Box, which was actually
two corner box seats with the dividing wall
between them removed.
The box was supposed to be guarded by a
policeman named John Frederick Parker
who, by all accounts, was a curious choice
for a bodyguard. During the intermission,
Parker went to a nearby tavern with
Lincoln's footman and coachman. It is
unclear whether he ever returned to the
theatre, but he was certainly not at his post
when Booth entered the box.
About 10:25 pm, a man came in and walked slowly along the side on which
the "Pres" box was and I heard a man say, "There's Booth" and I turned my head
to look at him. He was still walking very slow and was near the box door when he
stopped, took a card from his pocket, wrote something on it, and gave it to the
usher who took it to the box. In a minute the door was opened and he walked in.

Upon hearing the gunshot,Major Henry Rathbone,who accepted Lincolns

invitation to join him, quickly jumped from his seat and tried to prevent Booth
from escaping. Booth dropped the pistol and drew a knife, stabbing the major
violently in the left forearm reaching the bone. Rathbone quickly recovered and
again tried to grab Booth as he was preparing to jump from the sill of the box.

Charles Leale, a young army doctor who was attending the play, discovered Lincoln
paralyzed, and barely breathing. Leale lowered the President to the floor believing that
Lincoln had been stabbed in the shoulder by the knife. A second doctor in the audience,
Charles Sabin Taft, was lifted bodily from the stage over the railing and into the box.
Taft and Leale cut away Lincoln's blood-stained collar and opened his shirt, and
Leale, feeling around by hand, discovered the bullet hole in the back of his head right
next to his left ear.
Leale said :"His wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln