The Day of Jubilee is Come, sure!

Below is an account of Lincoln's visit to a battlefield.

Lincoln never missed an occasion to thank the troops and General Grant at the time where almost everyone universally disapproved of Grant and the army's performance.
Notice also how the troops cheered Lincoln. Lincoln knew and stated on numerous occasions that it was the soldiers and generals who fought the war. His bind with the fighting men was powerful and misunderstood by many civilians and critics. The men who were risking thier lives had an unwavering faith in Lincoln's loyalty and many attempts by the Northern media to cut that 'mystic cord' between the President and his army failed miserably.

Also notice how the black troops cheered Lincoln and saw in him their liberator.
The African-Americans who fought and died for their freedom loved Lincoln. Many African-Americans today who live in freedom do not. The indoctrinated population today thinks of Lincoln as a political opportunist who used African-Americans and the issue of slavery to his ends. Ask yourself why? What happended to that powerful bond of gratitude that won the war?

Think about it but also remember. There is no real freedom without gratitude, there is no real freedom without accepting the sacrifices of others, whether that other is the President of the United States, a Union slodier at Gettysburg or a US Marine in Baghdad.


LINCOLN'S UNEXPECTED VISIT TO A BATTLEFIELD

As Grant and Sherman grappled with the enemy, Lincoln did what he could to sustain the army and to boost civilian morale. On every possible occasion —even on such an unlikely one as the resumption of White House concerts by the Marine Hand—he asked his listeners to give three cheers for "Grant and all the armies under his command." Again and again, he expressed gratitude to the soldiers, to the officers, and especially to "that brave and loyal man," the "modest General at the head of our armies." After his renomination, when the Ohio delegation serenaded him with a brass band, he responded: "What we want, still more than Baltimore conventions or presidential elections, is success under Gen. Grant," and he urged his hearers to bend all their energies to support "the brave officers and soldiers in the field."

He continued to have great faith in Grant, but he was conscious of the swelling chorus of criticism of the general. Many doubted Grant's strategic ability and pointed out that in shifting his base to the James River he was simply repeating what McClellan had done—with far fewer casualties. "Why did he not take his army south of the James at once, and thus save seventy-five thousand men?" asked Senator Grimes, who pronounced Grant's campaign a failure. Even in the President's own household there was distrust of the general. "He is a butcher," Mary Lincoln often said, "and is not fit to he at the head of an army."

The outcry against Grant made the President want to see for himself what was happening with the Army of the Potomac, and on June 20, accompanied by Tad, he made an unheralded visit to Grant's headquarters at City Point. Looking, as Horace Porter, one of Grant's aides, wrote, "very much like a boss undertaker" in his black suit, the President announced as he landed: "I just thought I would jump aboard a boat and come down and see you. I don't expect I can do any good, and in fact I'm afraid I may do harm, but I'll put myself under your orders and if you find me doing anything wrong just send me off right away."
For the next two days he visited with Grant, Meade, Butler, and the troops. Much of the time he rode Grant's large hay horse, Cincinnati. Though he managed the horse well, he was, as Porter remembered, "not a very dashing rider,' and as his trousers gradually worked up above his ankles, he gave "the appearance of a country farmer riding into town wearing his Sunday clothes."

As news of the President's arrival reached the troops, they gave cheers and enthusiastic shouts. When he rode out to see the African-American troops of the Eighteenth Corps, the soldiers "cheered, laughed, cried, sang hymns of praise, and shouted... 'God bless Master Lincoln!' “God save Father Abraham!' The day of jubilee is come, sure."

Telling frequent anecdotes and showing interest in every detail of army life, the President appeared to have no object in his visit, but his purpose emerged when there was talk of anticipated military maneuvers. Quietly he interposed, "I cannot pretend to advise, but I do sincerely hope that all may be accomplished with as little bloodshed as possible."
Tired and sunburned, Lincoln returned to the White House on June 23, and Gideon Welles remarked that the trip had "done him good, physically, and strengthened him mentally." He took satisfaction in repeating what Grant had told him: "You will never hear of me farther from Richmond than now, till I have taken it.... It may take a long summer day, but I will go in." But Attorney General Bates found the President "perceptibly disappointed at the small measure of our success, in that region."
More than ever Lincoln realized that the war would be long and costly.

(Source "Lincoln" by D.H. Donald)

Proclamation of Thanksgiving

Proclamation of Thanksgiving
Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863
This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders like this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.

The holiday we know today as Thanksgiving was recommended to Lincoln by Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent magazine editor. Her letters to Lincoln urged him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise."

According to an April 1, 1864 letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary that he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

Why Billy Hates Lincoln?

I would like to thank all our friends at the Moorpark Rotary Gettysburg Reenactment event. It was a great day and thanks for letting us to be a part of it.

I am writing here in response to some accusations against my friend Dan Ancell, Abe Lincoln impersonator, as well as our film “The Wounded Warrior” by certain Mr. Billy Bearden from Georgia who obviously neither met Dan Ancell nor saw the film.
Mr. Bearden wrote the letter below in response to an article posted in Moorpark Acorn newspaper in October 27, 2006

http://www.moorparkacorn.com/news/2006/1027/front_page/001.html

His letter is accompanied by another even longer attachment full of ‘facts’ proving how racist Lincoln was.
I usually get a lot of these "facts" and as Mr. Bearden’s fellow Georgian said, frankly, I don't give a damn.
In this case, I feel compelled though to throw a couple words in defense of my friend Dan Ancell, a Lincoln reenactor, who is put down by Mr. Bearden for being, well, a Lincoln reenactor.

See, Billy hates Lincoln so very much that anyone who supports and relates to Lincoln in any way is automatically hated and dismissed by him.
This is what Mr. Bearden advised our company to do:
"Hopefully, Mr. Kochar [that's me] will tell the truth to the public in his movie about the Real President Lincoln, not the same 3rd grade Bovine Excrement foisted on our children by public schools and people like Mr. Dan Ancell”.r>
What Billy didn't know was that Mr. Kochar [me] grew up with that above mentioned 3rd grade Bovine Excrement foisted by public schools. My school, though, was not in Georgia or New York. My school was in the former Soviet Union where Mr.Kochar was foisted with the Bovine Excrement that would constantly depict Lincoln as a racist who fought for economic gain and never cared about slavery.
It was not people like Mr. Dan Ancell but rather people sharing Billy's worldview of anti-Americanism that were my teachers at the 3rd grade. In fact, what Billy didn't know was that I was, amazingly, familiar with all of Billy's accusations as taught by my communist teachers who propagated a regime that slaughtered millions of people around the world and aimed at destroying lives of people like Billy in Georgia and Dan Ancell in Los Angeles alike.

When I immigrated to America, I was struck by the similarity between the progressive talking points and ‘facts’ of my communist teachers and the mindset that crippled Billy in Georgia and filled him with so much hatred towards his own country and President.

What struck me even more was the fact that both the communists in the USSR and Lincoln haters in the US have always focused on how imperfect Lincoln and the Union were, yet, never mentioned the fact of the Confederates being the ones who owned slaves and, yes, fought, a war to preserve slavery as a state right.
It was hard to comprehend how Lincoln was depicted as a racist for some dubious out-of-context remarks and the slave owners were depicted as the freedom fighters while fighting to preserve a right for free labor (speaking of economics).

It was also very hard to understand why a 'racist' like Lincoln would be so hated by all the slave owners in the South and slave state communists in the Soviets, and, finally, why the most outspoken racist actor Wilkes Booths would kill another racist- Lincoln.

So, I decided to make a movie about all this to clarify it for once and forever. I included the ‘facts’ of Billy and interviewed people like Billy but I also tried to focus on the positive and the inspiring that came out as a result of that tragic war, just like my friend Dan Ancell who inspires children to read books and have faith in goodness rather than telling them the negative truth about slave owners dragging the North and the South into the fratricide and fighting for a God-awful cause.

As my friend Dan Ancell, I urge you to read the mysterious book of the American History and the story of its great son Abraham Lincoln instead of reading irrelevant footnotes compiled by hateful and self righteous distorters of history; compilations that are so alarmingly similar to the footnotes taught to a generation of people enslaved by communism.

Democratic Convention - "THE CHICAGO SURRENDER"

Here is another interesting fact from 1860's as found in "Lincoln" by D.H. Donald and explored in The Wounded Warrior.
This traces the origins of the split on war that still torments the Democratic Party.

Poor Old Mr. Peace Democracy's Plan for stopping that mad bull, Rebellion.

...Then, in the last days of August [1864], with the assembling of the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, the outlook for Lincoln's reelection suddenly brightened. When he asked the newspaperman Noah Brooks to be his informal observer at the convention, the President predicted the outcome:

"They must nominate a Peace Democrat on a war platform, or a War Democrat on a peace platform; and I personally can't say that I care much which they do."

The Democrats lived up to his expectations. Their platform announced that "after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war,... justice, humanity, liberty and the public welfare demand... a cessation of hostilities," with a view to ending the war "on the basis of the Federal Union of the States." It was not exactly a peace platform, for the Democrats, like the Republicans, were pledged to preserve the Union; but the condemnation of the war and the call for an end of fighting made it easy to brand the platform "the Chicago Surrender." Then the convention nominated General George H. McClellan, the leading War Democrat, for President. The two wings of the Democratic party had struck a bargain: the Peace Democrats, most conspicuously represented by Vallandigham, dictated the platform while their opponents named the presidential candidate. In effect, the Democrats chose to make party harmony their principal goal, even at the risk of defeat in the election.

From all quarters McClellan's friends warned that the platform was a "wet blanket"; "universally condemned," it had probably been "concocted to destroy their candidate." After some delay the general disavowed the peace plank. He could not look in the face of his "gallant comrades of the army and navy, who have survived so many bloody battles, and tell them that their labors and die sacrifice of so many of our slain and wounded brethren had been in vain." But die damage was done. As one of McClellan's admirers said, his letter accepting the nomination of a party on whose platform he could not run amounted to "twaddle and humbug."