Historian Rick Britton talks about TODAY IN U.S. HISTORY: On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln became the 16th president of the United States. In his inauguration speech Lincoln extended an olive branch to the South. Since Lincoln’s election, seven states had left the Union. Worried that the election of the nation’s first anti-slavery Republican would threaten the South’s institution of slavery, the lower South seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. In the process, some of those states seized federal properties such as armories and forts. By the time Lincoln arrived in Washington, D.C., for his inauguration, the threat of war hung heavy in the air. Lincoln took a cautious approach in his remarks. He was trying to keep the states of the upper South–North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware–in the Union.
In his inaugural address, Lincoln promised not to interfere with the institution of slavery where it existed. However, he also took a firm stance against secession and the seizure of federal property. He closed his remarks with an eloquent reminder of the nation’s common heritage: “In your hand, my fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. . . . We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. . . . [Here’s the most famous line] The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Six weeks later, the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Civil War began.

ALSO: At the Senior Center at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 9, Rick will be presenting a talk on “Richmond’s Medieval Homes.” … telling the story of how two English structures built in the Middle ages—Agecroft Hall & Virginia House—were purchased in the 1920s by well-to-do Virginians, dismantled, and then reconstructed in a beautiful Richmond west-end neighborhood. The talk is FREE and open to the public. Two weeks later—on Wednesday, March 23—a bus group is headed to Richmond to tour those two homes. For more info call the Senior Center Travel Office at (434) 974-6538.