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Originally a tolbooth was the booth at a fair in which dues were collected and offenders against fair regulations were detained. Later the term was applied to a town prison, particularly in Scotland.
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Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the USA. He was born in 1809 at Hardin County, Kentucky and died in 1865 when he was assassinated at a theatre by John Wilkes Booth. Both in Kentucky and in Indiana, to which in 1816 the family removed, as well as in Illinois, whither they went in 1830, Abraham Lincoln had the privations and also the training of a backwoodsman's life.
In his youth he earned money to educate himself by splitting rails for a neighbour, and so earned the nickname 'rail-splitter'. About this time he also made a flat-boat voyage to New Orleans.
In the Black Hawk War of 1832 he served as captain and private. He tried keeping store and failed, studied law, was postmaster of New Salem in Illinois, and deputy surveyor of the county. As a politician he had better success, and after one defeat served in the Legislature from 1834 to 1842. Meanwhile he removed to Springfield and built up a law practice. From 1847 to 1849 he was a Whig Congressman, but was not notably prominent.
His importance dates from the Kansas-Nebraska controversy. In its progress he became the Republican State leader, and in 1858 he took part with Stephen A Douglas in a series of joint debates in canvassing for the US Senatorship. Abraham Lincoln was defeated, but the discussion had aroused great interest, and his utterances, e.g.: 'a house divided against itself cannot stand', brought him into national prominence. In February, 1860, he delivered a remarkable political speech at the Cooper Institute, New York.
He was pressed for the Presidency by many Western Republicans in the Chicago Convention in May, though Seward was in the lead at the outset. Amid great excitement Abraham Lincoln was nominated on the third ballot, and elected, by 180 electoral votes, over Douglas, Breckenridge and Bell. This first victory of the Republicans decided the Secessionists, and when the new President delivered his conciliatory inaugural address the country was drifting toward civil war.
In the Cabinet Seward had the Department of State, Chase the Treasury, Cameron, and soon afterward Stanton, War, Welles the Navy, Caleb B. Smith the Interior, Edward Bates was Attorney-General, and Montgomery Blair Postmaster-General. Immediately on the fall of Port Sumter the President, on April the 15th, 1861, called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the Rebellion. He soon issued a call for additional troops, instituted a blockade, and summoned Congress to meet in extra session on July the 4th.
As the 'War President' Abraham Lincoln is identified with a great part of the history of the struggle. Foreign complications, military and naval movements, domestic politics, as well as routine administrative duties, all claimed his attention; to the people and the armies he was endeared as 'Father Abraham' innumerable anecdotes are related bearing on his humour, strong common sense and sympathy.
On September the 22nd, 1862, profiting by the partial success of Antietam, he issued a preliminary proclamation fixing the coming January the 1st as the date for freeing slaves in insurgent States. The Emancipation Proclamation to that effect accordingly appeared at the opening of 1863. On the nineteenth of November 1863, he pronounced on the battlefield of Gettysburg his short but famous eulogy.
He was renominated by the Republicans on June the 8th, 1864, and elected over McClellan, receiving 212 electoral votes. 'Malice toward none, charity for all' was the burden of his second inaugural. He had visited Richmond after its fall, and was pondering the questions of reconstruction, when on the night of April the 14th he was shot in Ford's Theatre at the capital, and died the next morning.
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Booth Gardner was an American politician. He was a Democratic governor of Washington from 1985 until 1993.
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Charles Booth was an English sociologist. He was born in 1840 at Liverpool and died in 1916. He wrote a number of important studies of the poor and especially aged poor living in Britain.
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Newton Booth was an American politician. He was a Republican governor of California from 1871 until 1875.
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William Booth was the founder and first general of the Salvation Army. He was born in 1829 at Nottingham and died in 1912. He started his career as a Methodist minister, but left to carry out more general evangelistic work. In 1865 he started a mission in the East End of London which in 1878 assumed the name of the Salvation Army.
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Barton Booth was an English actor during the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. He was born in 1681 and died in 1733. He was placed under Dr. Busby, at Westminster School, but he eloped from school at the age of seventeen, and joined a company of strolling players. After performing in the Irish capital to great applause he retuned to London in 1701, where, having joined the Drury Lane Company, his reputation reached its height with his performance of Cato in Addison's famous tragedy.
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Edwin Thomas Booth was an American actor. He was born in 1833 and died in 1893. The son of the distinguished English actor, Junius Brutus Booth, he made his debut at the Boston Museum in 1849 and went on to become successful across the USA and in England and Germany for his portrayal of characters in Shakespeare's plays, particularly in Hamlet, and was the leading American tragedian. In 1882 he made a tour in Europe, and was well received. His brother was the infamous John Wilkes Booth.
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James Booth (real name David Greeves-Booth) is an English actor. He was born in 1933 at London. An accomplished character actor he made his film debut in debut in the 1959 'Jazzboat' and starred as a reluctant hero in the 1964 'Zulu'.
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John Wilkes Booth was an American actor and the brother of Edwin Booth. He was born in 1839 and died in 1865. A violent secessionist, on the night of April 14th 1865 he shot and killed President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington. He was concealed for a time by friends in Maryland, but fled to Virginia where he was caught in a barn and shot dead by his pursuers on April the 26th 1865.
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The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
©1993 - 2009 The Probert Encyclopaedia
Southampton, United Kingdom
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