These are some of the things you might read about in those old newspapers. Such news would probably have taken up little space; perhaps they would have been found down at the bottom of a column if the newspaper were American. But if the paper was printed between 1861 and 1864, the greater part of it would be about a war that was going on in our own country at that time. This was a war between our own people, a family quarrel, which we call the Civil War.
Two parts of our country, the North and the South, did not agree on several matters, chief of which was the question whether the South could own slaves. So they went to war with each other. Each side fought for what it believed was right, and thousands upon thousands gave their lives for what they believed. The war lasted for four years, from 1861 to 1865, before it was decided that no one could ever again own slaves in the United States.
Some of you who read these pages had grandfathers or great-grandfathers who fought in this war. Some of these fought for the South; some fought for the North. Some of them may have died for the South; some of them may have died for the North.
The President of the United States at this time was a man named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a very poor boy who had been born in a log cabin. He had taught himself to read by the light of a blazing knot of wood at night after his day’s work was done. As he was very poor, he had only a few books, and these he read over and over again. One of these books was the same “Æsop’s Fables” that you read. When Lincoln was a young man, he became a storekeeper. One day he found that he had given a poor woman a smaller package of tea than she had paid for, and so he closed the store and walked many miles to her house in order to return the change. People began to call him Honest Abe after that, for he was always very honest and kind-hearted.
Lincoln visiting camp and shaking hands with the soldiers.
He studied hard and became a lawyer and at last was elected President of the United States. One day while he was in a theater watching a play he was shot and killed by one of the actors who thought Lincoln had not done right in freeing the slaves.
Lincoln was one of our greatest Presidents. Washington started our country; Lincoln prevented its splitting into two parts, and kept it together as one big united land to grow into the great country it now is.
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Three New Postage-Stamps