Lincoln Was the 16Th President of the United States, Serving from March 1861 Until His Assassination in April 1865
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(February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln successfully led his country through its greatest constitutional, military and moral crisis preserving the Union while ending slavery, and promoting economic and financial modernization. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s. After a series of debates in 1858 that gave national visibility to his opposition to the expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost a Senate race to his arch- rival, Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln, a moderate from a swing state, secured the Republican Party nomination. With almost no support in the South, Lincoln swept the North and was elected president in 1860. His election was the signal for seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederacy. The departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of Congress, but no formula for compromise or reconciliation was found, and the war came. He reached out to War Democrats and managed his own re-election in the 1864 presidential election. 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. His Gettysburg Address of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history. It was an iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. (April 13, 1743- July 4, 1826) Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, third president of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia, voiced the aspirations of a new America as no other individual of his era. As public official, historian, philosopher, and plantation owner, he served his country for over five decades. Jefferson practiced law and served in local government as a magistrate, county lieutenant, and member of the House of Burgesses in his early professional life. As a member of the Continental Congress, he was chosen in 1776 to draft the Declaration of Independence, which has been regarded ever since as a charter of American and universal liberties. The document proclaims that all men are equal in rights, regardless of birth, wealth, or status, and that the government is the servant, not the master, of the people. In 1790 he accepted the post of secretary of state under his friend George Washington. His tenure was marked by his opposition to the pro-British policies of Alexander Hamilton. In 1796, as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Republicans, he became vice-president after losing to John Adams by three electoral votes. Jefferson was succeeded as president in 1809 by his friend James Madison, and during the last seventeen years of his life, he remained at Monticello. During this period, he sold his collection of books to the government to form the nucleus of the Library of Congress. Jefferson embarked on his last great public service at the age of seventy-six, with the founding of the University of Virginia. He spearheaded the legislative campaign for its charter, secured its location, designed its buildings, planned its curriculum, and served as the first rector. (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) Washington was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, serving as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and later as the new republic's first President. He also presided over the convention that drafted the Constitution. Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named for him, as is the State of Washington on the nation's Pacific Coast. Washington had a vision of a great and powerful nation that would be built on republican lines using federal power. He sought to use the national government to preserve liberty, improve infrastructure, open the western lands, promote commerce, found a permanent capital, reduce regional tensions and promote a spirit of American nationalism. At his death, Washington was hailed as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen". The Federalists made him the symbol of their party but for many years, the Jeffersonians continued to distrust his influence and delayed building the Washington Monument. As the leader of the first successful revolution against a colonial empire in world history, Washington became an international icon for liberation and nationalism, especially in France and Latin America. He is consistently ranked among the top three presidents of the United States, according to polls of both scholars and the general public. (1811-1877) An American pioneer railroad builder in Chile and Peru, Henry Meiggs was born in Catskill, N.Y., on July 7, 1811. He went into the business of providing transport for the gold miners and quickly succeeded in accumulating a fortune which he lost even more quickly than he had acquired it. Meiggs next turned up in Chile. He was soon active in planning and executing projects for building bridges and establishing the first extensive railroad lines in his new homeland. He worked very closely with the governments of the time and earned a new fortune from these activities. His crowning achievement in Chile was the completion in 1863 of the railroad linking the capital city of Santiago with its port on the Pacific Ocean, Valparaiso. In 1868 Meiggs moved to Peru. The country was in the grip of a railroad-building fever, and President José Balta was extremely interested both in having railroads constructed. While Meiggs was busy in Peru, he was approached by President Tomás Guardia of Costa Rica, who proposed construction of a railroad from the Caribbean port of Limón to the national capital, San José, in the Central Plateau. Although Meiggs received a contract for the construction of this road, the enterprise was actually carried out by one of his nephews, Minor Cooper Keith, and it was completed 14 years after Meiggs's death, in Lima on Sept. 29, 1877. This was due to the murder of President Balta in 1872 and the serious undermining of the financial stability of Peru in the middle 1870s, resulting in the unwillingness and inability of the Peruvian government to complete its payments to the American plunger and railroad man. (August 20, 1778-October 24, 1842) O’Higgins was a Chilean landowner and one of the leaders of its struggle for Independence. Although he had no formal military training, O'Higgins took charge of the ragged rebel army and fought the Spanish from 1810 to 1818 when Chile finally achieved its Independence. Today, he is revered as the liberator of Chile and the father of the nation. Bernardo was the illegitimate child of Ambrosio O'Higgins, an Irishman who immigrated to the New World and rose in the ranks of the Spanish bureaucracy, eventually reaching the high post of Viceroy of Peru. As a young man, he went to England, where he lived on a pittance that his father sent him. While there, Bernardo was tutored by legendary Venezuelan Revolutionary Francisco de Miranda. O'Higgins was an important supporter of the September 18 movement in Chile which began the nations' struggle for Independence. When it became apparent that the actions of Chile would lead to war, he raised two cavalry regiments and an infantry militia, mostly recruited from families who worked his lands. As he had no training, he learned how to use weapons from veteran soldiers. Juan Martinez de Rozas was President, and O'Higgins supported him, but Rozas was accused of corruption and criticized for sending valuable troops and resources to Argentina to help the independence movement there. In July of 1811 Rozas stepped down, replaced by a moderate junta. O'Higgins turned the tide of the battle and emerged a national hero. The ruling junta in Santiago had seen enough of Carrera after his fiasco at Chillán and his cowardice at El Roble and made O'Higgins commander of the army. O'Higgins, argued against the move, saying that a change of high command was a bad idea, but the junta had decided: O'Higgins would lead the army. ( July 8, 1850 - June 12 ,1939) Humberstone was an English chemistry engineer, who arrived to America in 1875, to work in offices of salitre of Tarapaca and Chile, giving important advances in that industry. He was born in Dover, England. When he was born he moved to London with his family, where he studied engineer. When he was 17, he worked in a rail-road called London Nothwestem, there he learnt Mechanic and chemistry. In 1878, he developed a new system called Shanks, to elaborate sodium carbonate. This new system was implemented in every office of salitre. In 1879, while the Pacific war was begun, many workers of salitre went away for safelty because the Chilean military, one of them was Humberstone, who was a close friend of Bolivian president, Hilarión Daza. Thanks to his system to find water of machines in the dessert, he became in a trust man to one of the most important men in salitre industry, John Thomas North, who named Humberstone as administrator of many offices. Humbestone was called as “the father of salitre” and he changed his name to Santiago, which is the Spanish translation.