Scorned and ridiculed by many critics during his presidency, Lincoln became a martyr and almost a saint after his death. His words and deeds lived after him and will be revered as long as there is a United States. Indeed, it seems quite likely that without his determined leadership the United States would have ceased to exist.

Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates. Douglas accepted, and the two met in seven three-hour debates in every part of the state. Why could the country not continue to exist half slave and half free as it had for seventy years? asked Douglas. Lincoln's talk about the "ultimate extinction" of slavery would drive the South into secession.

In 1854 a seismic political upheaval occurred that propelled Lincoln back into politics. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, rammed through Congress under the leadership of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas… revoked the ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north of 36° 30'. This repeal of a crucial part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 opened Kansas Territory to slavery. It polarized the free and slave states more sharply than anything else had done.

After retiring from the legislature in 1841, Lincoln devoted most of his time to his law practice. In 1841 he formed a partnership with Stephen T. Logan, who helped him become more thorough and meticulous in preparing his cases. The Springfield courts sat only a few weeks a year, requiring Lincoln to ride the circuit of county courts throughout central Illinois for several months each spring and fall. Most of his cases involved damage to crops by foraging livestock, property disputes, debts, and assault and battery, with an occasional murder trial to liven interest.

[Charles] Robinson became a key figure during the violence known as "Bleeding Kansas." Leader of a free-soil faction that considered blacks as potential equals, he opposed accepting the results of the fraudulent election of a proslavery legislature. During the statehood controversy and thereafter he faced a rival in James H. Lane (1814-1866), a political opportunist who favored excluding blacks from the territory.

In 1860 Hunter furthered his career through deft manipulation of the newly elected president Abraham Lincoln. From Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Hunter began a correspondence with Lincoln. His ploy resulted in an invitation from the president to travel aboard the inaugural train from Illinois to the nation's capital. Soon after the Civil War began, Hunter wrangled command of a division even though he was only a colonel in the regular army, having been promoted in May 1861.

SCHIMMELFENNIG, ALEXANDER, Brigadier-General U. S.

Henry Lewis Baugher was born in Abbottstown, Adams County, Pennsylvania on July 19, 1804 to tanner Christian Frederick and his wife Ann Catharine Matter Baugher.  He was educated in Reverend David McConaughty's school in Gettysburg and entered Dickinson College in 1822.  He was admitted to the Belles Lettres Literary Society that same year.  At the commencement ceremony in 1826, Baugher, who received secondary honors, gave the Latin Salutatory Address.

Colquitt reentered politics in 1859, when he was elected to the Georgia legislature. A strong secessionist, he served as a presidential elector for the ticket of John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane in the 1860 election, representing the southern wing of the Democratic party that demanded an unequivocal endorsement of slavery. The following year Colquitt was elected as a delegate to the Georgia secession convention, which voted to break from the Union in January 1861.

GIDDINGS, De Witt Clinton, a Representative from Texas; born in Susquehanna County, Pa., July 18, 1827; pursued an academic course; studied law in Honesdale, Pa.; was admitted to the bar in Texas in 1852 and commenced practice in Brenham, Tex.; served in the Confederate Army throughout the Civil War; member of the State constitutional convention in 1866; successfully contested as a Democrat the election of William T.