As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln found his policies and personality were " blasted from all sides ": Radical Republicans demanded harsher treatment of the South, War Democrats desired more compromise, Copperheads despised him, and irreconcilable secessionists plotted his death.

At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness.

Foner argues that Lincoln was a moderate in the middle, opposing slavery primarily because it violated the republicanism principles of the Founding Fathers, especially the equality of all men and democratic self-government as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

Anti-slavery Northerners mobilized in 1860 behind moderate Abraham Lincoln because he was most likely to carry the doubtful western states.

Garfield became a member of the Radical Republicans, led by Chase, in contrast with the moderate wing of the party, led by Lincoln and Montgomery Blair.

From 1863 to 1869, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson ( who became president on April 14, 1865 ) took a moderate position designed to bring the South back to normal as soon as possible, while the Radical Republicans ( as they called themselves ) used Congress to block the moderate approach, impose harsh terms, and upgrade the rights of the Freedmen ( former slaves ).

President Lincoln was the leader of the moderate Republicans and wanted to speed up Reconstruction and reunite the nation painlessly and quickly.

In 1863, President Lincoln proposed a moderate plan for the Reconstruction of the captured Confederate State of Louisiana.

Lincoln is typically portrayed as taking the moderate position and fighting the Radical positions.

Johnson was following the moderate Lincoln Presidential Reconstruction policy to get the states readmitted as soon as possible.

In addition, the Club for Growth also makes independent expenditures to pressure certain moderate Republicans to vote more conservatively ( e. g. running ads against Senators George Voinovich of Ohio, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island after these Senators objected to certain aspects of President Bush's tax cuts ).

Audiences came away impressed by the power of her convictions, which included occasional attacks on Lincoln for being too moderate.

Before his assassination in April 1865, Abraham Lincoln had announced moderate plans for reconstruction to reintegrate the former Confederates as fast as possible.

Lincoln also helped form the Moderate Dems Working Group, a coalition of moderate Senate Democrats whose stated goal is to work with Senate leadership and the administration toward finding bipartisan solutions to controversial political issues.

* Salmon P. Chase: U. S. Treasury Secretary under President Lincoln ; Supreme Court chief justice ; sought 1868 Democratic nomination as moderate.

* Harris, William C. With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union ( 1997 ) Lincoln as moderate and opponent of Radicals.

In the 2006 elections after many moderate Republicans were defeated, including then-Senator Lincoln Chafee, Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons of Connecticut, Charlie Bass of New Hampshire and Jim Leach of Iowa, the prominence of Rockefeller Republicans dwindle even further.

The Times published its first report from the United States on December 4, and its correspondent, W. H. Russell, wrote of American reactions, “ There is so much violence of spirit among the lower orders of the people and they are … so saturated with pride and vanity that any honorable concession … would prove fatal to its authors .” Times editor John T. Delane, however, took a moderate stance and warned the people not to “ regard the act in the worst light ” and to question whether it made sense that the United States, despite British misgivings about Seward that went back to the earliest days of the Lincoln administration, would “ force a quarrel upon the Powers of Europe .”

Military and Reconstruction issues were another matter, and Lincoln as the leader of the moderate and conservative factions of the Republican Party often crossed swords with the Radical Republicans, led by Stevens and Sumner.

Lincoln ran for election as governor in his own right in 1809, but he was perceived by moderate Federalists as overly partisan and lacked the charisma of Sullivan.

A moderate Northerner much in line with Buchanan's thought in the sectional controversies of the day, Toucey held that post until 1861 and the arrival of the Abraham Lincoln administration.

Moreover, Lincoln had been made famous in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and was well known for his eloquence and his moderate position on slavery.

Like Lincoln, he can distinguish his relation to God from the constitutional responsibilities a questionable decision exacts of him.

After he had finished the first two volumes of his Lincoln, Sandburg went to work assembling a book of songs out of hobo and childhood days and from the memory of songs others had taught him.

Isaac Pitt, one of the men from Lincoln, had taken a musket ball in his belly ; ;

Abraham Lincoln ( February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865 ) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865.

Lincoln also agreed with the customary obligation of a son to give his father all earnings from work done outside the home until age 21.

Lincoln became increasingly distant from his father, in part because of his father's lack of education.

In 1840, Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd, who was from a wealthy slave-holding family in Lexington, Kentucky.

Abraham Lincoln suffered from " melancholy ", a condition which now is referred to as clinical depression.

He partnered with Stephen T. Logan from 1841 until 1844, when he began his practice with William Herndon, whom Lincoln thought " a studious young man ".

Lincoln also supported the Wilmot Proviso, which, if it had been adopted, would have banned slavery in any U. S. territory won from Mexico.

Lincoln handled many transportation cases in the midst of the nation's western expansion, particularly the conflicts arising from the operation of river barges under the many new railroad bridges.

In late 1854, Lincoln ran as a Whig for the U. S. Senate seat from Illinois.

Then and throughout the war, Lincoln came under heavy, often vituperative attack from antiwar Democrats, called Copperheads.

In addition, Lincoln had to contend with reinforcing strong Union sympathies in the border slave states and keeping the war from becoming an international conflict.

To learn technical military terms, Lincoln borrowed and studied Henry Halleck's book, Elements of Military Art and Science from the Library of Congress.

Lincoln learned from his chief of staff General Henry Halleck, a student of the European strategist Jomini, of the critical need to control strategic points, such as the Mississippi River ; he also knew well the importance of Vicksburg and understood the necessity of defeating the enemy's army, rather than simply capturing territory.

President Lincoln ( center right ) with, from left, Generals Sherman, Grant and Admiral Porter – 1868 painting of events aboard the River Queen ( steamboat ) | River Queen in March, 1865

Meade's failure to capture Lee's army as it retreated from Gettysburg, and the continued passivity of the Army of the Potomac, persuaded Lincoln that a change in command was needed.

During his raid on Washington, D. C. in 1864, Lincoln was watching the combat from an exposed position ; Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes shouted at him, " Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!

Lincoln spent many hours a week talking to politicians from across the land and using his patronage powers — greatly expanded over peacetime — to hold the factions of his party together, build support for his own policies, and fend off efforts by Radicals to drop him from the 1864 ticket.

When Lincoln vetoed the bill, the Radicals retaliated by refusing to seat representatives elected from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

* Abraham Lincoln: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress