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1. In the Wake of the Wapiti
In the Wake of the Wapiti
Description
Filmed near Red Eagle (Montana?); includes footage of camp, porcupine, elk, moose and mountain goats. Includes title panels: "Fool hens"; "The trail needed patching"; "Leaving our horses we crept cautiously to the edge of a steep bank and peered over"; "The idea was to lie in wait at the stream crossing below the lick -- and it worked"; and "In the moose country."
2. Lincoln's cabinet reading Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln's cabinet reading Emancipation Proclamation
Description
The victory at Antietam was won on September 17, and the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation came forth on the 22nd. It was Lincoln’s own resolution and act; but practically it bound the nation, and permitted no step backward. In spite of its limitations, it was the actual abolition of slavery. Thus he wrote his name upon the books of history with the title dearest to his heart, -the liberator of the slave.
3. Parlor in the home, Springfield
Parlor in the home, Springfield
Description
His time had not yet come when, in 1846, he was elected to Congress. In a clever speech in the House of Representatives, he denounced President Polk for having unjustly forced war upon Mexico, and he amused the Committee of the Whole by a witty attack upon General Cass. More important was the expression he gave his anti-slavery impulses by offering a bill looking to the emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, and by his repeated votes for the famous Wilmot Proviso, intended to exclude slavery from the Territories acquired from Mexico. But when, at the expiration of his term, in March, 1849, he left his seat, he gloomily despaired of ever seeing the day when the cause nearest to his heart would be rightly grasped by the people, and when he would be able to render any service to his country in solving the great problem. Nor had his career as a member of Congress in any sense been such as to gratify his ambition. Indeed, if he ever had any belief in a great destiny for himself, it must have been weak at that period; for he actually sought to obtain from the new Whig President, General Taylor, the place of Commissioner of the General Land Office, willing to bury himself in one of the administrative bureaus of the government. Fortunately for the country, he failed; and no less fortunately, when, later, the territorial governorship of Oregon was offered to him, Mrs. Lincoln’s protest induced him to decline it. Returning to Springfield, he gave himself with renewed zest to his law practice, acquiesced in the Compromise of 1850 with reluctance and a mental reservation, supported in the presidential campaign of 1852 the Whig candidate in some spiritless speeches, and took but a languid interest in the politics of the day. But just then his time was drawing near.
4. Lincoln taking oath of office
Lincoln taking oath of office
Description
His inaugural address foreshadowed his official course in characteristic manner. Although yielding nothing in point of principles, it was by no means a flaming anti-slavery manifesto, such as would have pleased the more ardent Republicans. It was rather the entreaty of a sorrowing father speaking to his wayward children. In the kindliest language he pointed out to the secessionists how ill-advised their attempt at disunion was, and why, for their own sakes, they should desist. Almost plaintively he told them that, while it was not their duty to destroy the union, it was his sworn duty to preserve it; that the least he could do, under the obligations of his oath was to possess and hold the property of the United States; that he hoped to do this peaceably; that he abhorred war for any purpose, and that they would have none unless they themselves were the agressors. It was a masterpiece of persuasiveness; and while Lincoln had accepted many valuable amendments suggested by Seward, it was essentially his own.
5. Lincoln's debate with Douglas
Lincoln's debate with Douglas
Description
In the assault on the Missouri Compromise which broke down all legal barriers to the spread of slavery, Stephen Arnold Douglas was the ostensible leader and central figure; and Douglas was a senator of Illinois, Lincoln’s State, and in Illinois all eyes turned to Lincoln as Douglas’s natural antagonist. When, in 1858, Douglas’s senatorial term being about to expire, Lincoln was formerly designated by the Republican convention of Illinois as their candidate for the Senate, to take Douglas’s place, and the two contestants agreed to debate the questions at issue face to face in a series of public meetings, the eyes of the whole American people were turned eagerly to that one point; and the spectacle reminded one of those lays of ancient times telling of two armies, in battle array, standing still to see their two principal champions fight out the contested cause between the lines in single combat.
6. The Berry and Lincoln store
The Berry and Lincoln store
Description
The Black Hawk war over, he turned to politics. The step from the captaincy of a volunteer company to a candidacy for a seat in the legislature seemed a natural one. But his popularity, although great in New Salem, had not spread far enough over the district, and he was defeated. Then the wretched hand-to-mouth struggle began again. He “set up in store business” with a dissolute partner, who drank whiskey while Lincoln was reading books. The result was a disastrous failure and a load of debt. Thereupon he became a deputy surveyor, and was appointed postmaster of New Salem, the business of the post office being so small that he could carry the incoming and outgoing mail in his hat. All this could not lift him from poverty, and his surveying instruments and horse and saddle were sold by the sheriff for debt.
7. Lincoln as a student
Lincoln as a student
Description
But while all this misery was upon him, his ambition rose to higher aims. He walked many miles to borrow from a schoolmaster a grammar with which to improve his language. A lawyer lent him a copy of Blackstone, and he began to study law. People would look wonderingly at the grotesque figure lying in the grass, “with his feet up a tree,” or sitting on a fence, as, absorbed in a book, he learned to construct correct sentences and made himself a jurist. At once he gained a little practice, pettifogging before a justice of the peace for friends, without expecting a fee. Judicial functions, too, were thrust upon him, but only at horse races or wrestling matches, where his acknowledged honesty and fairness gave his verdicts undisputed authority.
8. Home of Abraham Lincoln
Home of Abraham Lincoln
Description
He married Mary Todd of Kentucky. He continued to “ride the circuit,” read books while travelling in his buggy, told funny stories to his fellow lawyers in the tavern, chatted familiarly with his neighbors around the stove in the store and at the post-office, and his hours of melancholy brooding as of old, and became more and more widely known and trusted and beloved among the people of his State for his ability as a lawyer and politician, for the uprightness of his character and the ever-flowing spring of sympathetic kindness in his heart. His main ambition was confessedly that of political distinction; but hardly any one would at that time have seen in him the main destined to lead the nation through the greatest crisis of the century.
9. Lincoln and family
Lincoln and family
Description
As the state of society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes away, the world will read with increasing wonder of the man who, not only of the humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and most unpretending of citizens, was raised to a position of power unprecedented in our history; who was the gentlest and most peace-loving of mortals, unable to see any creature suffer without a pang in his own breast, and suddenly found himself called to conduct the greatest and bloodiest of our wars; who wielded the power of government when stern resolution and relentless force were the order of the day, and then won and ruled the popular mind and heart by the tender sympathies of his nature; who was a cautious conservative by temperament and mental habit, and led the most sudden and sweeping social revolution of our time; who, preserving his homely speech and rustic manner even in the most conspicuous position of that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur; who, in his heart the best friend of the defeated South, was murdered because a crazy fanatic took him for its most cruel enemy; who, while in power, was beyond measure lampooned and maligned by sectional passion and an excited party spirit, and around whose bier friend and foe gathered to praise him – which they have since never ceased to do – as one of the greatest of Americans and the best of men.
10. Emancipation Proclamation first reading to slaves
Emancipation Proclamation first reading to slaves