Comparison: Kenndy and Lincoln

Kennedy and Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States of America. He served as President when the country was under war. Abe Lincoln was born in 1806 and grew up in the countryside as a pioneer.

His mother died at a young age and he had a sister. His father married a widow that had three children and Abe Lincoln liked her very much. Every day he attended school and worked very hard on his father's farm.
John F. Kennedy was born in 1917 and died in 1963. John grew up in Massachusetts in a very wealthy and politically powerful family.

His father was ambassador for Great Britain and his mother was the daughter to John F. Fitzgerald, who was a congressman and major of Boston. John Kennedy was a Harvard Graduate. He was the one in the family expected to accomplish great things.

JFK has 3 children, John Jr., Caroline and Patrick. John Jr. died in a plane crash, while on his way to his brother Robert's daughter Cory's wedding.

Patrick died when he was 6 weeks old while JFK was in office. Caroline is the only persona live in this family. JFK's brother Robert ran for President after him but was assassinated in 1968. He was the Attorney General before this.

His other brother, Ted is now the U.S. Senator for Massachusetts and also his older brother Joe was killed in World War II, flying a plane.JFK was enlisted in the Navy during World War II and was awarded for being brave.

AFter the war, he got a seat in Congress in a Boston district. When he was Senator, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Profiles in Courage. Kennedy was elected in 1960. While he was in office, he suffered back pain from injuries from the war.

Kennedy was then assassinated in 1963.
One of Lincoln's first opponents was Douglas, they were running for U.S. Senate. Douglas was a two-term Senator with a great background and Lincoln was self-educated and only had one term in Congress.

The odds were stacked against Lincoln's "vast moral evil" of slavery, he started to make more Republicans like him, and they thought he would be great for the Presidency in 1860. Besides Lincoln who was running was J.C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat). John Bell (Constitutional Union) and Stephen Douglas (Northern Democrat).

Lincoln won the Presidency with 180 electoral votes and 1,865,593 popular votes.Lincoln was part of the republican party. At first, that party thought Senator William H. Seward, would be their candidate for president, but they rejected him and his talk of "irrepressible conflict" between North and South. So Lincoln became the new candidate, and he pledged to stop anymore spread of slavery.

The Southern thought Lincoln would be the worst thing to ever happen to the U.S. and they viewed him as a "black republican". After the civil war another big issue was the Reconstruction. But he was assassinated before he could put his plan into effect.Lincoln's Vice President Andrew Johnson, he took over Lincoln's plan to reconstruct, but he changed it a little.

One difference was that he tried to take the voting privileges away from planters and wealthy landowners of the South. But, however, the Southerners did like his policies, because he thought that white men alone must manage the South. The South states agreed to Johnson's terms and they then set up new governments and elected representatives to Congress. After the Freedman's Bureau and Civil Rights act was passed, but Johnson vetoed them.

But Congress cam back and overrode the presidents vetoes and the also made the 14th amendment. Johnson was impeached shortly after because he removed the Secretary of War and he can't do that.
Kennedy was the nominee for the Democratic party, who was running for President. Running against him was Vice President, Richard M. Nixon, who was on the Republic party.

NIxon hoped that Eisenhower's popularity would help him in the running. But Kennedy won the election by less than 119,000 votes. Two main reasons why Kennedy won, was the televised debate and the civil rights issue.On the televised debate, both candidates were knowledgeable on their issues.

But however, this was more of an "image" debate. Kennedy looked healthier and was quick and cool, while Nixon was just the opposite. Kennedy also scored some more points, when they got Martin Luther King out of his sentence, of four months of hard labor, just for a minor traffic violation. This got more African-Americans to vote for Kennedy.Kennedy's Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Johnson started off as an English teacher at Sam Houston High School in Houston. When Johnson was President, he signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Johnson was big on Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
After Lincoln's election, many Southern states, fearing Republican control in the government, seceded from the Union.

Lincoln faced the greatest internal crisis of any U.S. President. After the fall of Ft. Sumner, Lincoln raised an army and decided to fight to save the Union from falling apart. Despite enormous pressures, loss of life, battlefield setbacks, generals who weren't ready to fight, assassination threats, etc.

, Lincoln stuck with this pro-Union policy for 4 long years of Civil War. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. This was Lincoln's declaration of freedom for all slaves in the areas of the Confederacy not under Union control. Also, on November 19, 1863, Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address which dedicated the battlefield there to the soldiers who had perished. He called on the living to finish the task the dead soldiers had begun.Lincoln's domestic policies included support for the Homestead Act.

This act allowed poor people in the East to obtain land in the West. Also, Lincoln signed legislation entitled the National Banking Act which established a national currency and provided for the creation of a network of national banks. In addition, he signed tariff legislation that offered protection to American industry and signed a bill that chartered the first transcontinental railroad. Lincoln's foreign policy was geared toward preventing foreign intervention in the Civil War.

Lincoln was re-elected as President with Andrew Johnson as his running mate. Lincoln defeated the Democrat George McClellan on November 8, 1864. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant.

Two days later Lincoln addressed a crowd outside the White House. Among other things, he suggested he would support voting rights for certain blacks. This infuriated a racist and Southern sympathizer who was in the audience: the actor John Wilkes Booth who hated everything the President stood for.
President Kennedy started new expectations in American politics. He represented a new generation of politicians.

In his inaugural address, he said: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." He described his policies as those of the New Frontier. He asked for legislation to speed economic growth, cut unemployment, rehabilitate depressed areas, aid education and provide additional medical care for the elderly. Congress was slow in approving the legislation that Kennedy requested, but eventually many were approved.
Kennedy fought hard on behalf of civil rights. During his term of office, a black man, James Meredith, enrolled at the formerly all-white University of Mississippi.

He had to be protected by the National Guard. Street rioting then happen. It was a time when "freedom riders" were moving throughout the South, attempting to desegregate areas under public domain. The Justice Department, under the leadership of the President's brother, Robert Kennedy, worked to uphold the civil rights of the those protesting racial discrimination in the South. Also JFK visit Berlin to speak with Nikita Khrushchev about his vision of a new frontier, which means tearing down the wall.
MOVIE REVIEW
The movie starts out with some edited clips from documented history which show part of the story and the scenes leading up to the assassination are shown.

New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison played by Kevin Costner hears of this , and sees the breaking news of it all on television along with a friend. The next weekend is as crazy to everyone in the Jim's office as the entire staff witnesses on television the murder of JFK's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald played by Gary Oldman. Things slow down but Garrison is still interested in the assassination ,so he starts an investigation of the presidents death three years later, in 1966.Throughout the course of the investigation which ends after a trial in 1969, when Garrison and his partner Mark Lane, unsuccessfully prosecuted a businessman named Clay Shaw played by Tommy Lee Jones. Clay Shaw is accused of setting up the plan to kill Kennedy.While talking with Shaw , Jim also shows why he thinks the Magic bullet and Single bullet theory are almost impossible to occur.

After Garrison talks with many people who know of anything with the assassination like; Mr. X(he's part of the black ops), Mr. Farry(friends with Clay Shaw, later killed , unknown death), he finds a lot of info that is against Shaw.'I think the movie like a thriller which great photography and awesome history tied into to it. Both the editing and camera work were awarded Oscars.

ASSASSINS
John Booth grow up with a very possessive mother and a dramatic father. By early adulthood, John Wilkes Booth became one of the most popular actors of his day, respected by men and adored by women for his handsome face, but those boyhood dreams of fame were never satisfied. Until the American Civil War (1861-1865)happen. Here he found the chance he had been waiting for, where he could hero from air, and become more noticeable. Choosing the side of the underdog Southern Confederacy, he became their Brutus and, like that character in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The person in his way of this was Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.

By pulling down this Colossus of Rhodes, Booth believed his name would parallel with Folklore's most romantic heroes. But what he really was deep down inside was of the world's greatest villains. And the assassin of Abe Lincoln.
Lee Harvey Oswald was born on October 18, 1939 in New Orleans. Oswald never stayed in one place. He was always moving around.

He joined the U.S. Marines when he turned 17 years old. He managed to get out of the U.S. and go to the Soviet Union in 1959.

After a while in Moscow, he renounced his American citizenship. In 1962, he returned to the U.S.A.

Ann-Margaret talked to Oswald about assassinating JFK, this would be a great way to redeem himself with Elvis. After Oswald shot from the warehouse, he ran to a theater and got arrested. On November 24th, Ruby shot and killed Oswald.
Booth's motives for killing Lincoln were: He deeply believed in the Southern cause, a conviction he shared with millions in the Southern states.

He also considered Lincoln a dictator--a political view that many in the North and South held. Lincoln's appearance at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865 simply provided the opportunity for Booth to follow through on his long established plans to save the Southern way of life. After assassinating Lincoln, Booth exclaimed, "Sic semper tyrannis" (Thus Always to Tyrants). This state motto of Virginia was the rallying cry of the American Revolutionaries against King George and became Booth's personal battle cry against Lincoln. Booth believed that, like other dictators int history, Lincoln deserved to die by the hands of the people he he thought he ruled.

This was Booth keep in mind when he went to the theater on April 14, 1865.
On April 14, 1865, while watching a special performance of the comedy, "Our American Cousin," President Abraham Lincoln was shot. With him at Ford's Theater that night were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, a twenty-eight year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancee, Clara Harris. After the play was in progress, a person with a pistol stepped into the presidential box, and shot Abe.

The president slumped forward.
The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, dropped the pistol and waved a dagger. Rathbone lunged at him, and though slashed in the arm, forced the killer to the railing. Booth leapt from the balcony and caught the spur of his left boot on a flag draped over the rail, and shattered a bone in his leg on landing. Evev with his injury, he ran out the back door, and disappeared into the night on horseback.

JFK and his brother, RFK, attacked organized crime in an effect expose the Mafia to the public and curtail its power. Jfk and the Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana shared the same mistress, Judith Campbell Exner. Giancana helped JFK win the election in Illinois and on the east coast. JFK refused to allow the CIA and American troops to attack Cuba thereby creating the infamous Bay of Pigs in 1961. Following that incident, General Charles P. Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA, went around Washington calling President Kennedy a traitor.

The CIA solicited the services of the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro.
President John F. Kennedy was planning to come to Dallasin 1963 to make a speech, as Texas was a very conservative state and he needed it to support him for re-election. When he arrived in Dallas on November 22, 1963 he gave a speech, and then was to be in a motorcade, which would drive throughout downtown Dallas.

As his car drove past the Texas Book Depository three shots were fired. One of them hit the president in the head, and he was taken to the hospital where he died shortly after 1pm.Oswald was captured that evening in the Texas Movie Theatre and he was taken into custody and he said he was innocence. On November 24 the police station received death threats against Oswald, so they decided they would transfer him to a more secure prison until his trial. During the transfer on November 25, 1963 the owner of a strip-tease joint in Dallas named Jack Rubenstein (Ruby) came out of a mob of reporters and shot Oswald in the abdomen.

Oswald died a few hours later, and was buried in a hidden grave Fort Worth.
Nations responses and queations
Abraham Lincoln had a very tragic death that affected everyone around the U.S. He left a lot of work for Johnson to fix.

The main problems he left was the reconstruction plans for the U.S after the civil war.Just like Kennedy many people liked him, and when the train carried abe's body to his home town, many people lined up to watch it pass.
Kennedy was loved by many citizens around the united states. Not only for his politicle views but for his love for his family.

The nation loved to watch Kennedy debates with Richard Nixon and how let John Kennedy Jr play in Camelot while he addressed his people. Even during the bay of pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis, most of the nation still stayed on his side, but there were just as many people who didn't. But for most people his death was a tragdy. Though out the years people have expressed there views on his death by writing books , peoms and making movies. Some famous books on his death or by Jfk himself are: Cover Up, by Stewart Galanor, Assassination Science by James Fetzer, Six Seconds in Dallas by Josiah Thompson and Profiles in Courage ( which talks about his life in WWII and on his ship PT109) by John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Also a famous movie that came out in the early 1990's about Jim Garrison's investigation, was very helpful to understand what was happen around that time of the nation.
There were many questions surrounding JFK death, here are some of the common ones.How did such a singular man just happen to get a job working at one of the best sniping points in Dallas, through which the President's open car motorcade just happened to pass? Why did this lone nut just happen to have ties to violent, subversive groups like the Cuban revolutionaries, the K.G.

B. and F.B.I.? Wasn't it convenient that the future Mrs. Onassis was spared the anguish of a trial when Oswald was silenced the next day by Jack Ruby, a dachshund-toting strip-club owner with long-standing ties to the Mafia? And what was Richard Nixon doing in Dallas the morning of November 22?
Evidence of varying reliability has linked Oswald to every group that had a reason to want Kennedy dead.

In the years before Kennedy's death, Oswald worked as a radar operator at U-2 spy plane bases, defected to the Soviet Union and married the niece of a KGB colonel. On returning to the US, Oswald propagandized for Castro's Cuba out of a New Orleans building he shared with an ex--FBI agent trying to overthrow Castro. In the fall of 1963, Oswald moved to Dallas where he had FBI contacts, got a job in a Texas Book Depository and was accused of killing the president.
Official answers to these questions can be found in the report of the Warren Commission set up by President Johnson. The Warren Report, completed in September, 1964, is quite ordered and readable for a government document that has so much involed in it. The report makes it clear that Oswald did indeed commit the murder alone, out of misguided communist ideals and perverse desire to achieve fame in the only way he could imagine.

You start to think when 26 volumes of evidence taken to research the one-volume report, as well as evidence and leads that were ignored, that problems with the commission's stand start to arise.
Looking over the evidence the Warren Report is based upon leads to that, the Commission took great liberties in smoothing over contradictions in the information and failed to follow up on evidence suggesting that Oswald had confederates. As evidence came in, the Commission went with what it believe.
OPINION
I can only imagine how America felt in November 1963. John F. Kennedy created this era of optimism and hope.

After he died his dreams he had set for our country went along with him. America was left with sorrow and despair. No one alive then had ever imagined that would happen, not to them, not to their country. I also feel that the CIA killed JFK , just from reading Earl Warren's report, and the JFK Records Act, because some evidence is still being held back from the public and no one really knows what happen from Parkland Hospital to the autopsy room at Bethesda Naval Hospital.Was Kennedy's nody played with? I believe so.

Plus i also think that there was more than one shot fired at Kennedy after watching Abraham Zapruder flim because its almost impossible that one bullet went through Kennedy and still wounded John Connally in a few places.