Saturday, August 29, 2009

Ulysses S Grant

Ulysses S Grant was the commander of the Union army during the Civil war and president in 1869. He was said to not have a good political background nor was he a person with great person when it came to divine power or devotion to others. When he was asked to be one of the generals for the was he felt a great obligation to help, so he left his wife and children. Within the war Grant had failed many times, but he was given many chances to redeem himself.

Some people say that Grant was the hero of the Civil war and others say he didnt do a good job. As the battles continued on many began to question Grant's military leadership. At the battle of Shiloh, he fought one of the bloodiest battles during the war. Some wanted for him to be replaced with someone with more experience but President Lincoln did not agree because he knew he couldnt find a man who would fight quite like Grant. Grant was determined to move on towards victory with the help of Lincoln's support.

not finished

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Lincoln's worldview

Lincoln's worldview consisted off slavery and economic policy but were matters he had to deal with. During his childhood, he grew up around the church and the religious life, but in his later years he started to drift away from it and take on more secular ideas, which he based off of his worldview. Yet even though he knew about God, he stayed away from church and wanted nothing to do with redemption and Jesus. His worldview was one that was known to very unique, his wife had said he was a " religious man" but he chose to do things on his own. It has been told that he did not want any sort of a relationship with God.

When Lincoln started to become a man, many things started to influence him. He began to read and study the teaching of the 18Th century philosophers. Though he believed there was a God, there teachings began to influence what he believed. So though he knew about God, the philosophers spoke down about him and were totally against any sort of religion. His worldview was a mixture of things, it sounds to me as if he wasn't sure what he believed or wanted so he took many other people's ideas and made it into his own worldview.

"In Lincoln, Land, and Labor the French scholar Olivier Fraysse traces Lincoln's problematic relationship with and ideas about the land and those who worked it, revealing Lincoln as as intelligent and ambitious man who in fact turned his back on his rural roots for a time in favor of the opportunities offered in law and politics. In revealing Lincoln's estrangement from the rural masses and analyzing his perception of the differences between free and slave labor, Fraysse illuminates Lincoln's ideas on agriculture and industry, the disposal of public lands, and the place of blacks and Indians in American life." Book.Internet

" He evidently grasped how interdependent governments were, whether monarchies or republics, and what a useful emollient diplomacy might be. Ideology could be set aside in the cause of his worldview, just as Churchill was to swallow his anti-Communist ideals when it came to saving Europe from the Nazis. Book. Internet "Lincoln’s ideas, whatever they were, were not easy to grasp. While he accepted the notion of providence, and referred to it often, he rarely spoke publicly of Jesus Christ. In New Salem Lincoln associated with freethinkers who doubted the divinity of Jesus, and he wrote an essay mocking the idea that Jesus was the son of God. Lincoln’s friends, anxious to protect his budding political career, threw the manuscript into the fire." Internet. source

Lincoln's worldview came from a mixture of things. He developed it from everything that went on in his life. His influence came from his parents, being president, people around him and simply everything going on during his lifetime. "Abraham Lincoln's religious beliefs are a matter of controversy. Lincoln frequently referenced God and quoted the Bible, yet never formally joined any church. He was private about his beliefs and respected the beliefs of others. Since his assassination, many attempts have been made to define his beliefs as either religious or secular. He was said to be an admirer of the deist author Thomas Paine. According to biographer Rev. William Barton, Lincoln likely had written an essay something of this character, but it was not likely that it was burned in such a manner. While Lincoln never joined any church, there is disagreement about whether he experienced a conversion to Christianity later in life, particularly during his tenure as president." Internet. source (class notes)