Abraham Lincoln (National Union America)

Abraham Lincoln was the first National Unionist President of the United States of America having previously been Republican duriing the 1860 Presidential election. He was nominated by the National Union Party with former Democrat Andrew Johnson as the Vice Presidential candidate. In the 1864 election he became the first National Unionist president and saw the Union through the Civil War and on into reconstruction.

Nomincation
"I am very grateful for the renewed confidence which has been accorded to me, both by the convention and by the National [Union] League. I am not insensible at all to the personal compliment there is in this; yet I do not allow myself to believe that any but a small portion of it is to be appropriated as a personal compliment. The convention and the nation, I am assured, are alike animated by a higher view of the interests of the country for the present and the great future, and that part I am entitled to appropriate as a compliment is only that part which I may lay hold of as being the opinion of the convention and of the League, that I am not entirely unworthy to be instructed with the place I have occupied for the last three years. I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that "it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams." [1]

Innaguration
"Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether". With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." [2]

Reconstruction
text

Source Citation

 * 1) Abraham Lincoln (June 27, 1864). "Letter Accepting the Presidential Nomination ". Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
 * 2) Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings (Library of America edition, 2009) p 45