President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers' Home (U.S. Military Asylum; The Old Soldiers' Home)

Four presidents of the United States escaped the heat and humidity of summer in Washington, DC at The Old Soldiers' Home on a hill three miles from the White House.  During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln spent June ...

Abraham Lincoln's memory of Knob Creek Farm

My earliest recollection. . .is of the Knob Creek place

Abraham Lincoln, 1860

Abraham Lincoln’s family moved here from his birthplace at Sinking Spring Farm in 1811, when the future president was just two years old. Lincoln’s earliest memories were of life ...

Lincoln's Friend Johnston

Quincy lawyer and newspaper editor Andrew Johnston became acquainted with Abraham Lincoln in the Illinois Legislature when Lincoln served as representative and Johnson as assistant clerk. Like Lincoln, a Whig, Johnston was a law partner of Lincoln favorite Archibald Williams ...

Lincoln's Honored Friend

"Archie Williams was one of the strongest-minded and clearest-minded men in Illinois" (A. Lincoln). Lincoln and his friend Archibald Williams had much in common. Both were born in Kentucky and moved to Illinois. Williams coming to Quincy in 1829. Like ...

Lincoln's 1854 Visit

On November 1, 1854 an incensed Lincoln attached the immorality of slavery in a speech at Kendall Hall. Lincoln was awakened from a five-bear political slumber by Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act, attacking it in a series of speeches in central Illinois ...

Lincoln's Quincy

With a population of nearly 13,000 in 1858, Quincy was the Adams County seat and the third largest city in Illinois. Quincy boasted a strong, growing economy based on its transportation, milling, pork packing, and light industry. In 1853 the ...

Lincoln's Confidante

Quincy's Eliza Caldwell Browning and Abraham Lincoln first met in 1836. She was a new bride, and he had just received his law license. When Eliza discovered Lincoln's "great merits," the two established an easy rapport. Their nearly thirty-year friendship ...

Lincoln's Carthage Speech

Abraham Lincoln defended himself against political attacks during much of the speech he delivered here on the courthouse grounds on October 22, 1858. Stephen A. Douglas, who had spoken here eleven days earlier, had accused Lincoln of being too cozy ...

Lincoln's Failed Murder Case

Abraham Lincoln lost a murder case here in April, 1839 A drunken Irish deckhand, William Fraim, killed a shipmate while their steamboat was docked at Frederick on the Illinois River in Schuyler County. When the shipmate blew cigar smoke in ...

Lincoln's Religion

Abraham Lincoln was often accused by his detractors---and even by some of his friends---of not being a Christian.

Just before becoming President, Lincoln shared the following with his friend Dr. Newton Bateman: "I know there is a God, and that He ...