title: Tony Goldwyn

text: Goldwyn played Captain von Trapp (opposite Laura Osnes as Maria) in a concert performance of "The Sound of Music" at Carnegie Hall on April 25, 2012. The benefit included opera singer Stephanie Blythe as the Mother Abbess, Brooke Shields as Baroness Schraeder and Patrick Page as Max. As a director, Goldwyn has directed four feature films, "A Walk on the Moon", "Someone Like You", "The Last Kiss", and "Conviction". He has also directed many episodes of television series such as "Without a Trace", "The L Word", "Dexter", ", Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal." In 2014, he directed the pilot episode of the WE tv series, "The Divide", of which he also served as executive producer along with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Richard LaGravenese. Goldwyn starred as President Fitzgerald Grant III in the ABC legal/political drama "Scandal" from 2012 to 2018. In 2013, Goldwyn was cast in the Lifetime original movie, "Outlaw Prophet", as Warren Jeffs. In 2014, he appeared in "Divergent" as Andrew Prior, Caleb (Ansel Elgort) and Tris' (Shailene Woodley) father. In 2015, he signed on to star in James Gunn's horror thriller film "The Belko Experiment". In June 2018, Goldwyn was cast as Ben Lefevre in the Netflix supernatural series "Chambers". On 20 January 2021 during the , Goldwyn was the host of the Virtual Parade Across America aired on television networks, organized by the Biden Inaugural Committee. Also in 2021, Goldwyn appeared in "King Richard", which was acclaimed and earned several accolades.


title: Tony Goldwyn

text: Goldwyn has been married to production designer Jane Michelle Musky (born 27 May 1954) since 1987. They have two daughters, Anna and Tess. Additionally, Goldwyn's brother John is a former executive of Paramount Pictures and the executive producer of "Dexter". His brother Peter is also a film producer and the current President of Samuel Goldwyn Films. A former president of the Creative Coalition, Goldwyn is also heavily involved with arts advocacy. He is also a spokesperson of the AmeriCares Foundation. He was an avid supporter of Hillary Clinton and in 2016 directed a commercial featuring his "Scandal" co-star Kerry Washington, as well as Viola Davis, Ellen Pompeo, and Shonda Rhimes to support Clinton's presidential campaign. Goldwyn also serves as an ambassador for The Innocence Project, a non-profit organization that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted and reform the criminal justice system and on the Board of Governors for the Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF).


The 1936 United States presidential election was the 38th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1936. In the midst of the Great Depression, incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Governor Alf Landon of Kansas. Roosevelt won the highest share of the popular and electoral vote since the largely uncontested 1820 election. The sweeping victory consolidated the New Deal Coalition in control of the Fifth Party System.


title: 1936 United States presidential election

text: Roosevelt and Vice President John Nance Garner were re-nominated without opposition. With the backing of party leaders, Landon defeated progressive Senator William Borah at the 1936 Republican National Convention to win his party's presidential nomination. The populist Union Party nominated Congressman William Lemke for president.


text: The election took place as the Great Depression entered its eighth year. Roosevelt was still working to push the provisions of his New Deal economic policy through Congress and the courts. However, the New Deal policies he had already enacted, such as Social Security and unemployment benefits, had proven to be highly popular with most Americans. Landon, a political moderate, accepted much of the New Deal but criticized it for waste and inefficiency.


text: Roosevelt went on to win the greatest electoral landslide since the rise of hegemonic control between the Democratic and Republican parties in the 1850s. Roosevelt took 60.8% of the popular vote, while Landon won 36.5% and Lemke won just under 2%. Roosevelt carried every state except Maine and Vermont, which together cast eight electoral votes. By winning 523 electoral votes, Roosevelt received 98.49% of the electoral vote total, which remains the highest percentage of the electoral vote won by any candidate since 1820. Roosevelt also won the highest share of the popular vote since 1820, though Lyndon Johnson would later win a slightly higher share of the popular vote in 1964. While Roosevelt won the largest portion of electoral votes to date, Ronald Reagan won more electors while achieving a lesser popular vote victory in 1984, as the electoral college had expanded. Roosevelt's 523 electoral votes marked the first of only three times in American history when a presidential candidate received over 500 electoral votes in a presidential election and made Roosevelt the only Democratic president to accomplish this feat.


text: Before his assassination, there was a challenge from Louisiana Senator Huey Long. But, due to his untimely death, President Roosevelt faced only one primary opponent other than various favorite sons. Henry Skillman Breckinridge, an anti-New Deal lawyer from New York, filed to run against Roosevelt in four primaries. Breckinridge's challenge of the popularity of the New Deal among Democrats failed miserably. In New Jersey, President Roosevelt did not file for the preference vote and lost that primary to Breckinridge, even though he did receive 19% of the vote on write-ins. Roosevelt's candidates for delegates swept the race in New Jersey and elsewhere. In other primaries, Breckinridge's best showing was 15% in Maryland. Overall, Roosevelt received 93% of the primary vote, compared to 2.5% for Breckinridge.


text: The Democratic Party Convention was held in Philadelphia between July 23 and 27. The delegates unanimously re-nominated incumbents President Roosevelt and Vice-President John Nance Garner. At Roosevelt's request, the two-thirds rule, which had given the South a "de facto" veto power, was repealed.


text: Following the landslide defeat of former President Herbert Hoover at the previous presidential election in 1932, combined with devastating congressional losses that year, the Republican Party was largely seen as rudderless. In truth, Hoover maintained control of the party machinery and was hopeful of making a comeback, but any such hopes were dashed as soon as the 1934 mid-term elections, which saw further losses by the Republicans and made clear the popularity of the New Deal among the public. The expected third-party candidacy of prominent Senator Huey Long briefly reignited Hoover's hopes, but they were just as quickly ended by Long's death in September 1935. While Hoover thereafter refused to actively disclaim any potential draft efforts, he privately accepted that he was unlikely to be nominated, and even less likely to defeat Roosevelt in any rematch. Draft efforts did focus on former Vice-President Charles G. Dawes and Senate Minority Leader Charles L. McNary, two of the few prominent Republicans not to have been associated with Hoover's administration, but both men quickly disclaimed any interest in running.


text: The 1936 Republican National Convention was held in Cleveland, Ohio, between June 9 and 12. Although many candidates sought the Republican nomination, only two, Governor Landon and Senator William Borah from Idaho, were considered to be serious candidates. While County Attorney Earl Warren from California, Governor Warren Green of South Dakota, and Stephen A. Day from Ohio won their respective primaries, the seventy-year-old Borah, a well-known progressive and "insurgent," won the Wisconsin, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Oregon primaries, while also performing quite strongly in Knox's Illinois and Green's South Dakota. The party machinery, however, almost uniformly backed Landon, a wealthy businessman and centrist, who won primaries in Massachusetts and New Jersey and dominated in the caucuses and at state party conventions.


text: With Knox withdrawing to become Landon's selection for vice-president (after the rejection of New Hampshire Governor Styles Bridges) and Day, Green, and Warren releasing their delegates, the tally at the convention was as follows:


text: Many people, most significantly Democratic National Committee Chairman James Farley, expected Huey Long, the colorful Democratic senator from Louisiana, to run as a third-party candidate with his "Share Our Wealth" program as his platform. Polls made during 1934 and 1935 suggested Long could have won between six and seven million votes, or approximately fifteen percent of the actual number cast in the 1936 election.


text: Popular support for Long's Share Our Wealth program raised the possibility of a 1936 presidential bid against incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt. When questioned by the press, Long gave conflicting answers on his plans for 1936. While promising to support a progressive Republican like Sen. William Borah, Long claimed that he would only support a Share Our Wealth candidate. At times, he even expressed the wish to retire: "I have less ambition to hold office than I ever had." However, in a later Senate speech, he admitted that he "might have a good parade to offer before I get through". Long's son Russell B. Long believed that his father would have run on a third party ticket in 1936. This is evidenced by Long's writing of a speculative book, "My First Days in the White House", which laid out his plans for the presidency after the 1936 election.


text: Long biographers T. Harry Williams and William Ivy Hair speculated that Long planned to challenge Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination in 1936, knowing he would lose the nomination but gain valuable publicity in the process. Then he would break from the Democrats and form a third party using the Share Our Wealth plan as its basis. He hoped to have the public support of Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest and populist talk radio personality from Royal Oak, Michigan; Iowa agrarian radical Milo Reno; and other dissidents like Francis Townsend and the remnants of the End Poverty in California movement. Diplomat Edward M. House warned Roosevelt "many people believe that he can do to your administration what Theodore Roosevelt did to the Taft administration in '12."


text: In spring 1935, Long undertook a national speaking tour and regular radio appearances, attracting large crowds and increasing his stature. At a well attended Long rally in Philadelphia, a former mayor told the press "There are 250,000 Long votes" in this city. Regarding Roosevelt, Long boasted to the "New York Times"' Arthur Krock: "He's scared of me. I can out promise him, and he knows it." While addressing reporters in late summer of 1935, Long proclaimed:


text: As the 1936 election approached, the Roosevelt administration grew increasingly concerned by Long's popularity. Democratic National Committee Chairman James Farley commissioned a secret poll in early 1935 "to find out if Huey's sales talks for his 'share the wealth' program were attracting many customers". Farley's poll revealed that if Long ran on a third-party ticket, he would win about 4 million votes (about 10% of the electorate). In a memo to Roosevelt, Farley wrote: "It was easy to conceive of a situation whereby Long by polling more than 3,000,000 votes, might have the balance of power in the 1936 election. For example, the poll indicated that he would command upwards of 100,000 votes in New York State, a pivotal state in any national election and a vote of that size could easily mean the difference between victory and defeat ... That number of votes would mostly come from our side and the result might spell disaster".


text: In response, Roosevelt in a letter to his friend William E. Dodd, the US ambassador to Germany, wrote: "Long plans to be a candidate of the Hitler type for the presidency in 1936. He thinks he will have a hundred votes at the Democratic convention. Then he will set up as an independent with Southern and mid-western Progressives ... Thus he hopes to defeat the Democratic Party and put in a reactionary Republican. That would bring the country to such a state by 1940 that Long thinks he would be made dictator. There are in fact some Southerners looking that way, and some Progressives drifting that way ... Thus it is an ominous situation".


text: However, Long was assassinated in September 1935. Some historians, including Long biographer T. Harry Williams, contend that Long had never, in fact, intended to run for the presidency in 1936. Instead, he had been plotting with Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest and populist talk radio personality, to run someone else on the soon-to-be-formed "Share Our Wealth" Party ticket. According to Williams, the idea was that this candidate would split the left-wing vote with President Roosevelt, thereby electing a Republican president and proving the electoral appeal of Share Our Wealth. Long would then wait four years and run for president as a Democrat in 1940.


text: Prior to Long's death, leading contenders for the role of the sacrificial 1936 candidate included Idaho Senator William Borah, Montana Senator and running mate of Robert M. La Follette in 1924 Burton K. Wheeler, and Governor Floyd B. Olson of the Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party. After Long's assassination, however, the two senators lost interest in the idea, while Olson was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer.


text: Father Coughlin, who had allied himself with Dr. Francis Townsend, a left-wing political activist who was pushing for the creation of an old-age pension system, and Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, was eventually forced to run Representative William Lemke (R-North Dakota) as the candidate of the newly created "Union Party", with Thomas C. O'Brien, a lawyer and former District Attorney for Boston, as Lemke's running-mate. Lemke, who lacked the charisma and national stature of the other potential candidates, fared poorly in the election, barely managing two percent of the vote, and the party was dissolved the following year.


text: William Dudley Pelley, Chief of the Silver Shirts Legion, ran on the ballot for the Christian Party in Washington State, but won fewer than two thousand votes.


text: This election is notable for "The Literary Digest" poll, which was based on ten million questionnaires mailed to readers and potential readers; 2.27 million were returned. The "Literary Digest" had correctly predicted the winner of the last five elections, and announced in its October 31 issue that Landon would be the winner with 57.1% of the vote (v Roosevelt) and 370 electoral votes.


text: The cause of this mistake has often been attributed to improper sampling: more Republicans subscribed to the "Literary Digest" than Democrats, and were thus more likely to vote for Landon than Roosevelt. Indeed, every other poll made at this time predicted Roosevelt would win, although most expected him to garner no more than 360 electoral votes. However, a 1976 article in "The American Statistician" demonstrates that the actual reason for the error was that the "Literary Digest" relied on voluntary responses. As the article explains, the 2.27 million "respondents who returned their questionnaires represented only that subset of the population with a relatively intense interest in the subject at hand, and as such constitute in no sense a random sample ... it seems clear that the minority of anti-Roosevelt voters felt more strongly about the election than did the pro-Roosevelt majority." A more detailed study in 1988 showed that both the initial sample and non-response bias were contributing factors, and that the error due to the initial sample taken alone would not have been sufficient to predict the Landon victory.


text: The magnitude of the error by the "Literary Digest" (39.08% for the popular vote for Landon v Roosevelt) destroyed the magazine's credibility, and it folded within 18 months of the election, while George Gallup, an advertising executive who had begun a scientific poll, predicted that Roosevelt would win the election, based on a quota sample of 50,000 people.


text: His correct predictions made public opinion polling a critical element of elections for journalists, and indeed for politicians. The Gallup Poll would become a staple of future presidential elections, and remains one of the most prominent election polling organizations.


text: Landon proved to be an ineffective campaigner who rarely travelled. Most of the attacks on FDR and Social Security were developed by Republican campaigners rather than Landon himself. In the two months after his nomination, he made no campaign appearances. Columnist Westbrook Pegler lampooned, "Considerable mystery surrounds the disappearance of Alfred M. Landon of Topeka, Kansas ... The Missing Persons Bureau has sent out an alarm bulletin bearing Mr. Landon's photograph and other particulars, and anyone having information of his whereabouts is asked to communicate direct with the Republican National Committee."


text: Landon respected and admired Roosevelt and accepted most of the New Deal but objected that it was hostile to business and involved too much waste and inefficiency. Late in the campaign, Landon accused Roosevelt of corruption – that is, of acquiring so much power that he was subverting the Constitution:


text: Franklin Roosevelt's most notable speech in the 1936 campaign was an address he gave in Madison Square Garden in New York City on 31 October. Roosevelt offered a vigorous defense of the New Deal. The most memorable section of the speech was, in the opinion of most observers, this passage:


text: Roosevelt won in a landslide, carrying 46 of the 48 states and bringing in many additional Democratic members of Congress. After Lyndon B. Johnson's 61.05% share of the popular vote in 1964, Roosevelt's 60.8% is the second-largest percentage in U.S. history (since 1824, when the vast majority of or all states have had a popular vote), and his 98.49% of the electoral vote is the highest in two-party competition.


text: The Republican Party saw its total in the United States House of Representatives reduced to 88 seats and in the United States Senate to 16 seats in their respective elections and only won four governorships in the 1936 elections. Roosevelt won the largest number of electoral votes ever recorded at that time, and has so far only been surpassed by Ronald Reagan in 1984, when seven more electoral votes were available to contest. Garner also won the highest percentage of the electoral vote of any vice president.


text: Landon won only eight electoral votes, tying William Howard Taft's total in his unsuccessful re-election campaign in 1912. As of 2020, this is the equal lowest total electoral vote total for a major-party candidate; the lowest number since was Reagan's 1984 opponent, Walter Mondale, who won only thirteen electoral votes.


text: Roosevelt's net vote totals in the twelve largest cities increased from 1,791,000 votes in the 1932 election to 3,479,000 votes which was the highest for any presidential candidate from 1920 to 1948. Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio, which had voted for Hoover in the 1932 election, voted for Roosevelt in the 1936 election. Although the majority of black voters had been Republican in the 1932 election Roosevelt won two-thirds of black voters in the 1936 election.


text: Norman Thomas, who had received 884,885 votes in the 1932 election saw his totals decrease to 187,910.


text: Roosevelt also took 98.57% of the vote in South Carolina, the largest recorded vote percentage of any candidate in any one state in any U.S Presidential election (this excludes Andrew Jackson in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Missouri in 1832, who won 100% of the vote in these states as he was unopposed).


text: This was the last Democratic landslide in the West, as Democrats won every state except Kansas (Landon's home state) by more than 10%. West of the Great Plains States, Roosevelt only lost eight counties. Since 1936, only Richard Nixon in 1972 (winning all but 19 counties) and Ronald Reagan in 1980 (winning all but twenty counties) have even approached such a disproportionate ratio. After 1936, the West rapidly became a Republican stronghold, the only region that has been consistent in the party it supports for such a long time.


text: Of the 3,095 counties, parishes and independent cities making returns, Roosevelt won in 2,634 (85 percent) while Landon carried 461 (15 percent); this was one of the few measures by which Landon's campaign was more successful than Hoover's had been four years prior, with Landon winning 87 more counties than Hoover did, albeit mostly in less populous parts of the country. Democrats also expanded their majorities in Congress, winning control of over three-quarters of the seats in each house.


text: The election saw the consolidation of the New Deal coalition; while the Democrats lost some of their traditional allies in big business, high income voters, businessmen and professionals, they were replaced by groups such as organized labor and African Americans, the latter of whom voted Democratic for the first time since the Civil War, and made major gains among the poor and other minorities. Roosevelt won 86 percent of the Jewish vote, 81 percent of the Catholics, 80 percent of union members, 76 percent of Southerners, 76 percent of Blacks in northern cities, and 75 percent of people on relief. Roosevelt also carried 102 of the nation's 106 cities with a population of 100,000 or more.


text: Some political pundits predicted the Republicans, whom many voters blamed for the Great Depression, would soon become an extinct political party. However, the Republicans would make a strong comeback in the 1938 congressional elections, and while they would remain a potent force in Congress, they were not able to regain control of the House or the Senate until 1946, and would not regain the Presidency until 1952.


text: The Electoral College results, in which Landon only won Maine and Vermont, inspired Democratic Party chairman James Farley - who had in fact declared during the campaign that Roosevelt would lose only these two states - to amend the then-conventional political wisdom of "As Maine goes, so goes the nation" into "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont." In fact, since then the states of Vermont and Maine voted for the same candidate in every election except the 1968 presidential election. Additionally, a prankster posted a sign on Vermont's border with New Hampshire the day after the 1936 election, reading, "You are now leaving the United States."


text: This was the last election in which Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota would vote Democratic until 1964. Of these states, only Indiana would vote Democratic again after 1964 (for Barack Obama in 2008), making this the penultimate time a Democrat won any of the great plains states.


The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, absent from the ballot in ten slave states, won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states already had abolished slavery, and a national electoral majority comprising only Northern electoral votes. Lincoln's election thus served as the main catalyst of the American Civil War. This marked the first time ever that a Republican was elected president.


title: 1860 United States presidential election

text: The United States had become increasingly sectionally divided during the 1850s, primarily over extending slavery into the Western territories. The incumbent president, James Buchanan, like his predecessor, Franklin Pierce, was a Northern Democrat with Southern sympathies. Buchanan also adamantly promised not to seek re-election. From the mid-1850s, the anti-slavery Republican Party became a major political force, driven by Northern voter opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in "Dred Scott v. Sandford". From the election of 1856, the Republican Party had replaced the defunct Whig Party as the major opposition to the Democrats. A group of former Whigs and Know Nothings formed the Constitutional Union Party, which sought to avoid disunion by resolving divisions over slavery with some new compromise.


text: The 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago nominated Lincoln, a moderate former one-term Whig Representative from Illinois. Its platform promised not to interfere with slavery in the South but opposed extension of slavery into the territories. The 1860 Democratic National Convention adjourned in Charleston, South Carolina, without agreeing on a nominee, but a second convention in Baltimore, Maryland, nominated Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas's support for the concept of popular sovereignty, which called for each territory's settlers to decide locally on the status of slavery, alienated many radical pro-slavery Southern Democrats, who wanted the territories, and perhaps other lands, open to slavery. With President Buchanan's support, Southern Democrats held their own convention, nominating Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. The 1860 Constitutional Union Convention nominated a ticket led by former Tennessee Senator John Bell.


text: Lincoln's main opponent in the North was Douglas, who won the popular vote in two states, Missouri and New Jersey. In the South, Bell won three states and Breckinridge swept the remaining 11. Lincoln's election motivated seven Southern states, all voting for Breckinridge, to secede before the inauguration and the secession of four more, including two that voted for Bell, after Lincoln mobilized Federal troops to protect Federal property and coerce the seven initially seceding states. The election was the first of six consecutive Republican victories.


text: The 1860 presidential election conventions were unusually tumultuous, due in particular to a split in the Democratic Party that led to rival conventions.


text: The Republican National Convention met in mid-May 1860 after the Democrats had been forced to adjourn their convention in Charleston. With the Democrats in disarray and a sweep of the Northern states possible, the Republicans felt confident going into their convention in Chicago. William H. Seward from New York was considered the front-runner, followed by Salmon P. Chase from Ohio, and Missouri's Edward Bates. Abraham Lincoln from Illinois, was lesser-known, and was not considered to have a good chance against Seward. Seward had been governor and senator of New York and was an able politician with a Whig background. Also running were John C. Frémont, William L. Dayton, Cassius M. Clay, and Benjamin Wade, who might be able to win if the convention deadlocked.


text: As the convention developed, however, it was revealed that frontrunners Seward, Chase, and Bates had each alienated factions of the Republican Party. Seward had (undeservingly) been painted as a radical, and his speeches on slavery predicted inevitable conflict, which spooked moderate delegates. He also was firmly opposed to nativism, which further weakened his position. He had also been abandoned by his longtime friend and political ally Horace Greeley, publisher of the influential "New-York Tribune".


text: Chase, a former Democrat, had alienated many of the former Whigs by his coalition with the Democrats in the late 1840s. He had also opposed tariffs demanded by Pennsylvania and even had opposition from his own delegation from Ohio. However, Chase's firm antislavery stance made him popular with the radical Republicans. But what he offered in policy he lacked in charisma and political acumen.


text: The conservative Bates was an unlikely candidate but found support from Horace Greeley, who sought any chance to defeat Seward, with whom he now had a bitter feud. Bates outlined his positions on the extension of slavery into the territories and equal constitutional rights for all citizens, positions that alienated his supporters in the border states and Southern conservatives, while German Americans in the party opposed Bates because of his past association with the Know Nothings.


text: Into this mix came Lincoln. Lincoln was not unknown; he had gained prominence in the Lincoln–Douglas debates and had represented Illinois in the House of Representatives. He had been quietly eyeing a run since the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, ensuring that the debates were widely published and that a biography of himself was published. He gained great notability with his February 1860 Cooper Union speech, which may have ensured him the nomination. He had not yet announced his intentions to run, but it was a superb speech. Delivered in Seward's home state and attended by Greeley, Lincoln used the speech to show that the Republican party was a party of moderates, not crazed fanatics, as the South and Democrats claimed. Afterward, Lincoln was in much demand for speaking engagements. As the convention approached, Lincoln did not campaign actively, as the "office was expected to seek the man". So it did at the Illinois state convention, a week before the national convention. Young politician Richard Oglesby had secretly found several fence rails from the Hanks-Lincoln farm that Lincoln may have split as a youngster and paraded them into the convention with a banner that proclaimed Lincoln to be "The Rail Candidate" for president. Lincoln received a thunderous ovation, surpassing his and his political allies' expectations. Lincoln's campaign managers had printed and distributed thousands of fake convention admission tickets to Lincoln supporters to ensure and increase the crowd's support.


text: Even with such support from his home state, Lincoln faced a difficult task if he was to win the nomination. He set about ensuring that he was the second choice of most delegates, realizing that the first round of voting at the convention was unlikely to produce a clear winner. He engineered that the convention would happen in Chicago, which would be inherently friendly to the Illinois-based Lincoln. He also made sure that the Illinois delegation would vote as a bloc for him. Lincoln did not attend the convention in person and left the task of delegate wrangling to several close friends.


text: The first round of voting predictably produced a lead for Seward, but not a majority, with Lincoln in second place. The second round eliminated most of the minor contenders, with voters switching to Seward or mostly to Lincoln. The convention remained deadlocked, however, and skillful political maneuvering by Lincoln's delegate wranglers convinced the delegates to abandon Seward in favor of Lincoln. Lincoln's combination of a moderate stance on slavery, long support for economic issues, his western origins, and strong oratory proved to be exactly what the delegates wanted in a president. On the third ballot on May 18, Lincoln secured the presidential nomination overwhelmingly. Senator Hannibal Hamlin from Maine was nominated for vice president, defeating Cassius M. Clay. Hamlin was surprised by his nomination, saying he was "astonished" and that he "neither expected nor desired it."


text: The party platform promised not to interfere with slavery in the states, but opposed slavery in the territories. The platform promised tariffs protecting industry and workers, a Homestead Act granting free farmland in the West to settlers, and the funding of a transcontinental railroad. There was no mention of Mormonism (which had been condemned in the Party's 1856 platform), the Fugitive Slave Act, personal liberty laws, or the Dred Scott decision. While the Seward forces were disappointed at the nomination of a little-known western upstart, they rallied behind Lincoln, while abolitionists were angry at the selection of a moderate and had little faith in Lincoln.


text: At the Democratic National Convention held in Institute Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1860, 50 Southern Democrats walked out over a platform dispute, led by the extreme pro-slavery "Fire-Eater" William Lowndes Yancey and the Alabama delegation: following them were the entire delegations of Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas, three of the four delegates from Arkansas, and one of the three delegates from Delaware.


text: Six candidates were running: Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois, James Guthrie from Kentucky, Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter from Virginia, Joseph Lane from Oregon, Daniel S. Dickinson from New York, and Andrew Johnson from Tennessee, while three other candidates, Isaac Toucey from Connecticut, James Pearce from Maryland, and Jefferson Davis from Mississippi (the future president of the Confederate States) also received votes.


text: Douglas, a moderate on the slavery issue who favored "popular sovereignty", was ahead on the first ballot, but was 56½ votes short of securing the nomination. On the 57th ballot, with Douglas was still ahead, but 51½ votes short of the nomination, the exhausted and desperate delegates agreed on May 3 to cease voting and adjourn the convention.


text: While the Democrats convened again at the Front Street Theater in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 18, 110 Southern delegates (led by "Fire-Eaters") boycotted the convention or walked out after the convention informed them they would not adopt a resolution supporting extending slavery into territories whose voters did not want it.


text: While some considered Horatio Seymour a compromise candidate for the National Democratic nomination at the reconvening convention in Baltimore, Seymour wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper declaring unreservedly that he was not a candidate for either spot on the ticket. After two ballots - the 59th ballot overall - the remaining Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois for president. The election would now pit Lincoln against his longtime political rival, whom Lincoln had lost to in the Illinois senate race just two years earlier. That two candidates were from Illinois showed the importance of the West in the election.


text: After the convention concluded with no vice presidential nominee, Douglas offered the vice presidential nomination to Herschel V. Johnson from Georgia, who accepted.


text: The delegates who walked out of the convention at Charleston reconvened in Richmond, Virginia on June 11. When the Democrats reconvened in Baltimore, they rejoined (except South Carolina and Florida, who had stayed in Richmond).


text: When the convention seated two replacement delegations on June 18, they walked out again or boycotted the convention, accompanied by nearly all other Southern delegates and erstwhile Convention chair Caleb Cushing, a New Englander and former member of Franklin Pierce's cabinet.


text: This larger group met immediately in Baltimore's Institute Hall, with Cushing again presiding. They adopted the pro-slavery platform rejected at Charleston, and nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge for president, and Senator Joseph Lane from Oregon for vice president.


text: Yancey and some (less than half) of the bolters - almost entirely from the Lower South - met on June 28 in Richmond, along with the South Carolina and Florida delegations, at a convention that affirmed the nominations of Breckinridge and Lane.


text: Besides the Democratic Parties in the Southern states, the Breckinridge/Lane ticket was also supported by the Buchanan administration. Buchanan's own continued prestige in his home state of Pennsylvania ensured that Breckinridge would be the principal Democratic candidate in that populous state. Breckinridge was the last sitting vice president nominated for president until Richard Nixon in 1960.


text: The Constitutional Union Party was formed by remnants of both the defunct Know Nothing and Whig Parties who were unwilling to join either the Republicans or the Democrats. The new party's members hoped to stave off Southern secession by avoiding the slavery issue. They met in the Eastside District Courthouse of Baltimore and nominated John Bell from Tennessee for president over Governor Sam Houston of Texas on the second ballot. Edward Everett was nominated for vice president at the convention on May 9, 1860, one week before Lincoln.


text: John Bell was a former Whig who had opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution. Edward Everett had been president of Harvard University and Secretary of State in the Millard Fillmore administration. The party platform advocated compromise to save the Union with the slogan "The Union as it is, and the Constitution as it is."


text: By 1860, very little remained of the Liberty Party, after most of its membership left to join the Free Soil Party in 1848 and nearly all of what remained of it joined the Republicans in 1854. The remaining party was also called the Radical Abolitionists. A convention of one hundred delegates was held in Convention Hall, Syracuse, New York, on August 29, 1860. Delegates were in attendance from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. Several of the delegates were women.


text: Gerrit Smith, a prominent abolitionist and the 1848 presidential nominee of the original Liberty Party, had sent a letter in which he stated that his health had been so poor that he had not been able to be away from home since 1858. Nonetheless, he remained popular in the party because he had helped inspire some of John Brown's supporters at the Raid on Harpers Ferry. In his letter, Smith donated $50 to pay for the printing of ballots in the various states.


text: There was quite a spirited contest between the friends of Gerrit Smith and William Goodell in regard to the nomination for the presidency. In spite of his professed ill health, Gerrit Smith was nominated for president and Samuel McFarland from Pennsylvania was nominated for vice president.


text: In Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, slates of presidential electors pledged to Smith and McFarland ran with the name of the Union Party. They received a total of 176 votes in the general election, 0.004% of the total.


text: The People's Party was a loose association of the supporters of Governor Samuel Houston. On April 20, 1860, the party held what it termed a national convention to nominate Houston for president on the San Jacinto Battlefield in Texas. Houston's supporters at the gathering did not nominate a vice presidential candidate, since they expected later gatherings to carry out that function. Later mass meetings were held in northern cities, such as New York City on May 30, 1860, but they too failed to nominate a vice presidential candidate. Houston, never enthusiastic about running for the presidency, soon became convinced that he had no chance of winning and that his candidacy would only make it easier for the Republican candidate to win. He withdrew from the race on August 16, and urged the formation of a Unified "Union" ticket in opposition to Lincoln.


text: In their campaigning, Bell and Douglas both claimed that disunion would not necessarily follow a Lincoln election. Nonetheless, loyal army officers in Virginia, Kansas and South Carolina warned Lincoln of military preparations to the contrary. Secessionists threw their support behind Breckinridge in an attempt either to force the anti-Republican candidates to coordinate their electoral votes or throw the election into the House of Representatives, where the selection of the president would be made by the representatives elected in 1858, before the Republican majorities in both House and Senate achieved in 1860 were seated in the new 37th Congress. Mexican War hero Winfield Scott suggested to Lincoln that he assume the powers of a commander-in-chief before inauguration. However, historian Bruce Chadwick observes that Lincoln and his advisors ignored the widespread alarms and threats of secession as mere election trickery.


text: Indeed, voting in the South was not as monolithic as the Electoral College map would make it seem. Economically, culturally, and politically, the South was made up of three regions. In the states of the "Upper" South, later known as the "Border States" (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri along with the Kansas territories), unionist popular votes were scattered among Lincoln, Douglas, and Bell, to form a majority in all four. In the "Middle" South states, there was a unionist majority divided between Douglas and Bell in Virginia and Tennessee; in North Carolina and Arkansas, the unionist (Bell and Douglas) vote approached a majority. Texas was the only Middle South state that Breckinridge carried convincingly. In three of the six "Deep" South states, unionists (Bell and Douglas) won divided majorities in Georgia and Louisiana or neared it in Alabama. Breckinridge convincingly carried only three of the six states of the Deep South (South Carolina, Florida, and Mississippi). These three Deep South states were all among the four Southern states with the lowest white populations; together, they held only nine percent of Southern whites.


text: Among the slave states, the three states with the highest voter turnouts voted the most one-sided. Texas, with five percent of the total wartime South's population, voted 75 percent Breckinridge. Kentucky and Missouri, with one-fourth the total population, voted 73 percent pro-union Bell, Douglas and Lincoln. In comparison, the six states of the Deep South making up one-fourth the Confederate voting population, split 57 percent Breckinridge versus 43 percent for the two pro-union candidates. The four states that were admitted to the Confederacy after Fort Sumter held almost half its population, and voted a narrow combined majority of 53 percent for the pro-union candidates.


text: In the eleven states that would later declare their secession from the Union and be controlled by Confederate armies, ballots for Lincoln were cast only in Virginia,


text: where he received 1,929 votes (1.15 percent of the total). Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the votes Lincoln received were cast in border counties of what would soon become West Virginia – the future state accounted for 1,832 of Lincoln's 1,929 votes.


text: Lincoln received no votes at all in 121 of the state's then-145 counties (including 31 of the 50 that would form West Virginia), received a single vote in three counties and received ten or fewer votes in nine of the 24 counties where he polled votes. Lincoln's best results, by far, were in the four counties that comprised the state's northern panhandle, a region which had long felt alienated from Richmond, was economically and culturally linked to its neighbors Ohio and Pennsylvania and would become the key driver in the successful effort to form a separate state. Hancock County (Virginia's northernmost at the time) returned Lincoln's best result – he polled over 40% of the vote there and finished in second place (Lincoln polled only eight votes fewer than Breckinridge). Of the 97 votes cast for Lincoln in the state's post-1863 boundaries, 93 were polled in four counties along the Potomac River and four were tallied in the coastal city of Portsmouth.


text: Some key differences between modern elections and the those of the mid-nineteenth century are that at the time, not only was there was no secret ballot anywhere in the United States, but the state did not print and distribute ballots. In theory, any document containing a valid or at least non-excessive number names of citizens of a particular state (provided they were eligible to vote in the electoral college within that state) might have been accepted as a valid presidential ballot, however what this meant in practice was that a candidate's campaign was responsible for printing and distributing their own ballots (this service was typically done by supportive newspaper publishers). Moreover, since voters did not choose the president directly, but rather presidential electors, the only way for a voter to meaningfully support a particular candidate for president was cast a ballot for citizens of his state who would have pledged to vote for the candidate in the Electoral College. In ten southern slave states, no citizen would publicly pledge to vote for Abraham Lincoln, so citizens there had no legal means to vote for the Republican nominee. In most of Virginia, no publisher would print ballots for Lincoln's pledged electors. While a citizen without access to a ballot for Lincoln could theoretically have still voted for him by means of a write-in ballot provided his state had electors pledged to Lincoln and the voter knew their identities, casting a ballot in favor of the Republican candidate in a strongly pro-slavery county would have incurred (at minimum) social ostracization (of course, casting a vote for Breckinridge in a strongly abolitionist county ran a voter the same risk).


text: In the four slave states that did not secede (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware), Lincoln came in fourth in every state except Delaware (where he finished third). Within the fifteen slave states, Lincoln won only two counties out of 996, Missouri's St. Louis and Gasconade Counties. In the 1856 election, the Republican candidate for president had received no votes at all in twelve of the fourteen slave states with a popular vote (these being the same states as in the 1860 election, plus Missouri and Virginia).


text: The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860, and was noteworthy for the exaggerated sectionalism and voter enthusiasm in a country that was soon to dissolve into civil war. Voter turnout was 81.2%, the highest in American history up to that time, and the second-highest overall (exceeded only in the election of 1876).


text: Since Andrew Jackson had won re-election in 1832, all six subsequent presidents had only won one term, while the last four of those had won with a popular vote under 51 percent.


text: Lincoln won the Electoral College with less than 40 percent of the popular vote nationwide by carrying states above the Mason–Dixon line and north of the Ohio River, plus the states of California and Oregon in the Far West. Unlike every preceding president-elect, Lincoln did not carry even one slave state.


text: There were no ballots distributed for Lincoln in ten of the Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.


text: Lincoln was therefore the second President-elect to poll no votes in some states which had a popular vote (the first was John Quincy Adams, who polled no ballots in the popular votes of two states in the election of 1824, the only other election in which there were four major candidates, none of whom distributed ballots in every state). It should be further noted that, prior to introduction of the secret ballot in the 1880s, the concept of ballot access did not exist in the sense it does today: there was no standardized state-issued ballot for a candidate to "appear" on. Instead, presidential ballots were printed and distributed by agents of the candidates and their parties, who organized slates of would-be electors publicly pledged to vote for a particular candidate. The 1824 and 1860 presidential elections were the only two prior to the introduction of the secret ballot where a winning candidate was so unpopular in a particular region that it was impossible to organize and print ballots for a slate of eligible voters pledged to vote for that candidate in an entire state.


text: Since 1860, and excluding unreconstructed Southern states in 1868 and 1872, there have been two occasions where a Republican presidential candidate failed to poll votes in every state, while national Democratic candidates have failed to appear on all state ballots in three elections since the introduction of the secret ballot, though in all three, the Democratic candidate nonetheless won the presidency , but none of them were off the ballot in as many states as Lincoln in 1860.


text: Lincoln won the second-lowest share of the popular vote among all winning presidential candidates in U.S. history. Lincoln's share of the popular vote would likely have been even lower if there had been a popular vote in South Carolina, though conversely it would likely have been marginally higher had he been on the ballot in all of the Southern states. The Republican victory resulted from the concentration of votes in the free states, which together controlled a majority of the presidential electors.


text: Lincoln's strategy was deliberately focused, in collaboration with Republican Party Chairman Thurlow Weed, on expanding on the states Frémont won four years earlier: New York was critical with 35 Electoral College votes, 11.5 percent of the total, and with Pennsylvania (27) and Ohio (23) as well, a candidate could collect 85 votes, whereas 152 were required to win. The Wide Awakes young Republican men's organization massively expanded registered voter lists, and although Lincoln was not even on the ballot in most Southern states, population increases in the free states had far exceeded those seen in the slave states for many years before the election of 1860, hence free states dominated in the Electoral College.


text: The split in the Democratic party is sometimes held responsible for Lincoln's victory despite the fact that Lincoln won the election with less than 40% of the popular vote, as much of the anti-Republican vote was "wasted" in Southern states in which no ballots for Lincoln were circulated. Lincoln also won outright majorities in enough states, that if he lost all states that he took with pluralities, he would still have enough electoral votes to win.


text: At most, a single opponent nationwide would have deprived Lincoln of only California, Oregon, and four New Jersey electors, whose combined total of eleven electoral votes would have made no difference to the result since every other state won by the Republicans was won by a clear majority of the vote: in this scenario, Lincoln would have received 169 electoral votes, 17 more than the 152 required to win.


text: In the four states of New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey where anti-Lincoln votes were combined into fusion tickets, Lincoln still won three and split New Jersey; despite this, a shift of 25,000 votes to the fusion ticket in New York would have left Lincoln with 145 electoral votes - seven votes short of winning the Electoral College - and forced a contingent election in the House of Representatives. Of the five states that Lincoln failed to carry despite polling votes, he received 20 percent of the vote in only one (Delaware), and 10 percent of the vote in only one more (Missouri).


text: Like Lincoln, Breckinridge and Bell won no electoral votes outside of their respective sections. While Bell retired to his family business, quietly supporting his state's secession, Breckinridge served as a Confederate general. He finished second in the Electoral College with 72 votes, carrying eleven of fifteen slave states (including South Carolina, whose electors were chosen by the state legislature, not popular vote). Breckinridge stood a distant third in national popular vote at eighteen percent, but accrued 50 to 75 percent in the first seven states that would form the Confederate States of America. He took nine of the eleven states that eventually joined, plus the border slave states of Delaware and Maryland, losing only Virginia and Tennessee. Breckinridge received very little support in the free states, showing some strength only in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.


text: Bell carried three slave states (Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia) and lost Maryland by only 722 votes. Nevertheless, he finished a remarkable second in all slave states won by Breckinridge or Douglas. He won 45 to 47 percent in Maryland, Tennessee and North Carolina and canvassed respectably with 36 to 40 percent in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida. Bell himself had hoped that he would take over the former support of the extinct Whig Party in free states, but the majority of this support went to Lincoln. Thus, except for running mate Everett's home state of Massachusetts, and California, Bell received even less support in the free states than did Breckinridge, and consequently came in last in the national popular vote, at 12.62%.


text: Douglas was the only candidate who won electoral votes in both slave and free states (free New Jersey and slave Missouri). His support was the most widespread geographically; he finished second behind Lincoln in the popular vote with 29.52%, but last in the Electoral College. Douglas attained a 28 to 47% share in the states of the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Trans-Mississippi West, but slipped to 19 to 39% in New England. Outside his regional section, Douglas took 15 to 17% of the popular vote total in the slave states of Kentucky, Alabama, and Louisiana, then 10 percent or less in the nine remaining slave states. Douglas, in his "Norfolk Doctrine", reiterated in North Carolina, promised to keep the Union together by coercion if states proceeded to secede: the popular vote for Lincoln and Douglas combined was 69.17% of the turnout.


text: The 1860 Republican ticket was the first successful national ticket that did not feature a Southerner, and the election marked the end of Southern political dominance in the United States. Between 1789 and 1860, Southerners had been president for two-thirds of the era, and had held the offices of Speaker of the House and President pro tem of the Senate during much of that time. Moreover, since 1791, Southerners had comprised a majority of the Supreme Court.


text: Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, "Presidential ballots, 1836–1892" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.


text: Lincoln's victory and imminent inauguration as president was the immediate cause for declarations of secession by seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) from 20 December 1860 to 1 February 1861. They then formed the Confederate States of America.


text: All of the secessionist activity was motivated by fear for the institution of slavery in the South. If the President (and, by extension, the appointed federal officials in the South, such as district attorneys, marshals, postmasters, and judges) opposed slavery, it might collapse. There were fears that abolitionist agents would infiltrate the South and foment slave insurrections. (The noted secessionist William Lowndes Yancey, speaking at New York's Cooper Institute in October 1860, asserted that with abolitionists in power, "Emissaries will percolate between master [and] slave as water between the crevices of rocks underground. They will be found everywhere, with strychnine to put in our wells.") Less radical Southerners thought that with Northern antislavery dominance of the federal government, slavery would eventually be abolished, regardless of present constitutional limits.


text: Bertram Wyatt-Brown argues that secessionists desired independence as necessary for their honor. They could no longer tolerate Northern state attitudes that regarded slave ownership as a great sin and Northern politicians who insisted on stopping the spread of slavery.


text: Another bloc of Southerners resented Northern criticism of slavery and restrictions on slavery but opposed secession as dangerous and unnecessary. However, the "conditional Unionists" also hoped that when faced with secession, Northerners would stifle anti-slavery rhetoric and accept pro-slavery rules for the territories. It was that group that prevented immediate secession in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas when


text: Lincoln took office on 4 March 1861. He took no action against the secessionists in the seven "Confederate" states but also declared that secession had no legal validity and refused to surrender federal property in those states. (He also reiterated his opposition to slavery anywhere in the territories.) The standoff continued until mid-April, when Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Confederate troops to bombard and capture Fort Sumter.


text: Lincoln then called for troops to put down rebellion, which wiped out the possibility that the crisis could be resolved by compromise. Nearly all "conditional Unionists" joined the secessionists. The Virginia convention and the reconvened Arkansas convention both declared secession, as did the legislatures of Tennessee and North Carolina; all four states joined the Confederacy.


title: Login

text: In computer security, logging in (or logging on, signing in, or signing on) is the process by which an individual gains access to a computer system by identifying and authenticating themselves. The user credentials are typically some form of username and a matching password, and these credentials themselves are sometimes referred to as "a" login (or logon, sign-in, sign-on). In practice, modern secure systems often require a second factor such as email or SMS confirmation for extra security. Social login allows a user to use existing user credentials from a social networking service to sign in to or create an account on a new website.


title: Login

text: Logging in is usually used to enter a specific page, website or application, which trespassers cannot see. Once the user is logged in, the login token may be used to track what actions the user has taken while connected to the site. Logging out may be performed explicitly by the user taking some actions, such as entering the appropriate command or clicking a website link label as such. It can also be done implicitly, such as by the user powering off his or her workstation, closing a web browser window, leaving a website, or not refreshing a website within a defined period.


title: Login

text: A login page may have a return URL parameter, which specifies where to redirect back after logging in or out. For example, it is codice_1 on this site.


title: Login

text: In the case of websites that use cookies to track sessions, when the user logs out, session-only cookies from that site will usually be deleted from the user's computer. In addition, the server invalidates any associations with the session, thereby making any session-handle in the user's cookie store useless. This feature comes in handy if the user is using a public computer or a computer that is using a public wireless connection. As a security precaution, one should not rely on implicit means of logging out of a system, especially not on a public computer; instead, one should explicitly log out and wait for the confirmation that this request has taken place.


title: Login

text: Logging out of a computer, when leaving it, is a common security practice preventing unauthorised users from tampering with it. There are also people who choose to have a password-protected screensaver set to activate after some period of inactivity, thereby requiring the user to re-enter his or her login credentials to unlock the screensaver and gain access to the system. There can be different methods of logging in that may be via image, fingerprints, eye scan, password (oral or textual input), etc.


title: Login

text: The terms became common with the time sharing systems of the 1960s and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) in the 1970s. Early home computers and personal computers did not generally require them until Windows NT, OS/2 and Linux in the 1990s.


title: Login

text: The noun "login" comes from the verb "(to) log in" and by analogy with the verb "to clock in". Computer systems keep a "log" of users' access to the system. The term "log" comes from the chip log historically used to record distance travelled at sea and was recorded in a ship's log or log book. To "sign in" connotes the same idea, but it's based on the analogy of manually signing a log book or visitors book.


title: Login

text: While there is no agreed difference in meaning between the three terms ("login", "logon" and "sign"-"in"), different technical communities tend to prefer one over another – Unix, Novell, Linux and Apple typically use "login", and Apple's style guide says ""Users log in to a file server (not log on to)..."." By contrast, Microsoft's style guides traditionally suggested the opposite and prescribed "log on" and "logon". In the past, Microsoft reserved "sign-in" to when accessing the Internet, but from Windows 8 onward it has moved to the "sign-in" terminology for local authentication.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary Ann Todd Lincoln (December 13, 1818July 16, 1882) served as First Lady of the United States from 1861 until the assassination of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary Lincoln was a member of a large and wealthy, slave-owning Kentucky family. She was well educated. Born Mary Ann Todd, she dropped the name Ann after her younger sister, Ann Todd (later Clark), was born. After finishing school during her teens, she moved to Springfield, Illinois, where she lived with her married sister Elizabeth Edwards. Before she married Abraham Lincoln, she was courted by his long-time political opponent Stephen A. Douglas. The Lincolns had four sons of whom only the eldest, Robert, survived both parents. Their family home and neighborhood in Springfield is preserved at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary Lincoln staunchly supported her husband throughout his presidency and was active in keeping national morale high during the Civil War. She acted as the White House social coordinator, throwing lavish balls and redecorating the White House at great expense; her spending was the source of much consternation. She was seated next to Abraham when he was assassinated in the President's Box at Ford's Theatre on Tenth Street in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. The deaths of her husband and three of her sons weighed heavily on her.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary Lincoln suffered from numerous physical and mental health issues during her life. She had frequent migraines, which were exacerbated by a head injury in 1863. She was depressed for much of her life; some historians think she may have had bipolar disorder. She was briefly institutionalized for psychiatric disease in 1875, but later retired to the home of her sister. She died of a stroke in 1882 at age 63. Periodic surveys conducted by the Siena College Research Institute since 1982 have consistently found Lincoln to be among the most poorly regarded first ladies in the assessments of historians. Historians see Lincoln as having been a meddling and disruptive presence in her husband's White House, in large part due to her likely mental illness.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary was born in Lexington, Kentucky, as the fourth of seven children of Robert Smith Todd, a banker, and Elizabeth "Eliza" (Parker) Todd. Her family were slaveholders, and Mary was raised in comfort and refinement. When Mary was six, her mother died in childbirth. Two years later, her father married Elizabeth "Betsy" Humphreys and they had nine children together. Mary had a difficult relationship with her stepmother.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: From 1832, Mary and her family lived in what is now known as the Mary Todd Lincoln House, an elegant 14-room residence at 578 West Main Street in Lexington, Kentucky.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary's paternal great-grandfather, David Levi Todd, was born in County Longford, Ireland, and immigrated through Pennsylvania to Kentucky. Another great-grandfather, Andrew Porter, was the son of an Irish immigrant to New Hampshire and later Pennsylvania. Her great-great maternal grandfather Samuel McDowell was born in Scotland, and emigrated to Pennsylvania. Other Todd ancestors came from England.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: At an early age Mary was sent to Madame Mentelle's finishing school, where the curriculum concentrated on French and literature. She learned to speak French fluently and studied dance, drama, music, and social graces. By age 20, she was regarded as witty and gregarious with a grasp of politics. Like her family, she was a Whig.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary began living with her sister Elizabeth Porter Edwards in Springfield, Illinois, in October 1839. Elizabeth was married to Ninian W. Edwards, son of a former governor. He served as Mary's guardian. Mary was popular among the gentry of Springfield, and though she was courted by the rising young lawyer and Democratic Party politician Stephen A. Douglas and others, she chose Abraham Lincoln, a fellow Whig.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary Todd married Abraham Lincoln on November 4, 1842, at her sister Elizabeth's home in Springfield, Illinois. She was 23 years old and he was 33 years of age.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Robert and Tad (Thomas) survived to adulthood and the death of their father, and only Robert outlived his mother.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: While Lincoln pursued his increasingly successful career as a Springfield lawyer, Mary supervised their growing household. Their house, where they resided from 1844 until 1861, still stands in Springfield, and has been designated the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. During Lincoln's years as an Illinois circuit lawyer, Mary was often left alone for months at a time to raise their children and run the household. Mary supported her husband socially and politically, not least when Lincoln was elected president in 1860.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary cooked for Lincoln often during his presidency. Raised by a wealthy family, her cooking was simple, but satisfied Lincoln's tastes, which included imported oysters.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: During her White House years, Mary Lincoln faced many personal difficulties generated by political divisions within the nation. Her family was from a border state where slavery was permitted. Several of her half-brothers served in the Confederate Army and were killed in action, and one brother served the Confederacy as a surgeon.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary staunchly supported her husband in his quest to save the Union and was strictly loyal to his policies. Considered a "westerner" although she had grown up in the more refined Upper South city of Lexington, Mary worked hard to serve as her husband's First Lady in Washington, D.C., a political center dominated by eastern culture. Lincoln was regarded as the first "western" president, and critics described Mary's manners as coarse and pretentious. She had difficulty negotiating White House social responsibilities and rivalries, spoils-seeking solicitors, and baiting newspapers in a climate of high national intrigue in Civil War Washington. She refurbished the White House, which included extensive redecorating of all the public and private rooms as well as the purchase of new china, which led to extensive overspending. The president was very angry over the cost, even though Congress eventually passed two additional appropriations to cover these expenses. Mary also was a frequent purchaser of fine jewelry and on many occasions bought jewelry on credit from the local Galt & Bro. jewelers. Upon President Lincoln's death, she had a large amount of debt with the jeweler, which was subsequently waived and much of the jewelry was returned.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary suffered from severe headaches, described as migraines, throughout her adult life, as well as protracted depression. Her headaches seemed to become more frequent after she suffered a head injury in a carriage accident during her White House years. A history of mood swings, fierce temper, public outbursts throughout Lincoln's presidency, as well as excessive spending, has led some historians and psychologists to argue that Mary suffered from bipolar disorder. Another theory holds that Mary's manic and depressive episodes, as well as many of her physical symptoms, could be explained as manifestations of pernicious anemia. Mary Lincoln's grief over Willie's death was so devastating that she took to her bed for three weeks, so desolated that she could not attend his funeral or look after Tad. Mary was so distraught for many months that Lincoln had to employ a nurse to look after her.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: During her White House years, she often visited hospitals around Washington to give flowers and fruit to wounded soldiers. She took the time to write letters for them to send to their loved ones. From time to time, she accompanied Lincoln on military visits to the field. Responsible for hosting many social functions, she has often been blamed by historians for spending too much money on the White House.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: As the Civil War ended, Mrs. Lincoln expected to continue as the First Lady of a nation at peace. President Lincoln awoke on the morning of April 14, 1865, in a pleasant mood. Robert E. Lee had surrendered several days before to Ulysses Grant, and now the President was awaiting word from North Carolina on the surrender of Joseph E. Johnston. The morning papers carried the announcement that the President and his wife would be attending the theater that evening. At one point, Mary developed a headache and was inclined to stay home, but Lincoln told her he must attend because newspapers had announced that he would. She sat with her husband watching the comic play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre, along with their guests Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris. During the third act, the President and Mrs. Lincoln drew closer together, holding hands while enjoying the play. Mary whispered to her husband, who was holding her hand, "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" The president smiled and replied, "She won't think anything about it". That was the last conversation the Lincolns ever had. Five minutes later, at about 10:15 pm, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. She was holding Abraham's hand when Booth's bullet struck the back of his head. Mrs. Lincoln accompanied her mortally wounded husband across the street to the Petersen House, where he was taken to a back bedroom and laid crosswise on the bed there, where Lincoln's Cabinet was summoned, except William Seward, who had been seriously attacked by Lewis Powell, just as Booth was about to carry out his assassination at Ford's Theater, several minutes earlier. Their oldest son, Robert, sat with Lincoln throughout the night and to the following morning– Saturday, April 15, 1865. At one point, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ordered Mary from the room as she was so unhinged with grief.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: President Lincoln remained in a coma for approximately nine hours. He died at 7:22 a.m., at the age of 56. Shortly before 7a.m. Mary was allowed to return to Lincoln's side, and, as Dixon reported, "she again seated herself by the President, kissing him and calling him every endearing name." As he died his breathing grew quieter, his face more calm. According to some accounts, at his last drawn breath, on the morning after the assassination, he smiled broadly and then expired. Historians, most notably author Lee Davis have emphasized Lincoln's peaceful appearance when and after he died: "It was the first time in four years, probably, that a peaceful expression crossed his face." Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Lincoln Administration, Maunsell Bradhurst Field wrote, "I had never seen upon the President's face an expression more genial and pleasing." The President's secretary, John Hay, said, "A look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features".


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: After her husband's death, she received messages of condolence from all over the world, many of which she attempted to answer personally. To Queen Victoria she wrote:


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: I have received the letter which Your Majesty has had the kindness to write. I am deeply grateful for its expressions of tender sympathy, coming as they do, from a heart which from its own sorrow, can appreciate the "intense grief" I now endure.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: As a widow, Mrs. Lincoln returned to Illinois and lived in Chicago with her sons. Her husband had left an estate of $80,000 which should have been enough to keep her in comfort, if not in style. In 1868, Mrs Lincoln, who had a lavish, unstable relationship with money, advertised in the "New York" "World" for aid and attempted to sell her personal effects at auction, which shocked the public. She and her young son Tad moved to Europe and settled in Frankfurt for several years. During this time the Seligman family helped look after her, paying the cost of the voyage, sending her money and advocating on her behalf.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: In 1868, her former modiste (dressmaker) and confidante, Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907), published "Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House". She had been born into slavery, purchased her freedom and that of her son, and became a successful businesswoman in Washington, D.C. Although this book provides valuable insight into the character and life of Mary Todd Lincoln, at the time the former First Lady (and much of the public and press) regarded it as a breach of friendship and confidentiality. Keckley was widely criticized for her book, especially as her editor had published letters from Mary Lincoln to her. It has now been gratefully accepted by many historians and biographers and been used to flesh out the President and First Lady's personalities behind the scenes in the Executive Mansion and been used as the basis for several motion pictures and TV mini-series during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: In an act approved by a low margin on July 14, 1870, the United States Congress granted Mrs. Lincoln a life pension of $3,000 a year ($ in dollars). Mary had lobbied hard for such a pension, writing numerous letters to Congress and urging patrons such as Simon Cameron and Joseph Seligman to petition on her behalf. She insisted that she deserved a pension just as much as the widows of soldiers, as she portrayed her husband as a fallen commander. At the time it was unusual for widows of presidents, and Mary Lincoln had alienated many congressmen, making it difficult for her to gain approval.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: The death of her son Thomas (Tad) in July 1871, following the deaths of two of her other sons and her husband, brought on an overpowering grief and depression. Her surviving son, Robert Lincoln, a rising young Chicago lawyer, was alarmed at his mother's increasingly erratic behavior. In March 1875, during a visit to Jacksonville, Florida, Mary became unshakably convinced that Robert was deathly ill; hurrying to Chicago, she found him healthy. During her visit with him, she told him that someone had tried to poison her on the train and that a "wandering Jew" had taken her pocketbook but returned it later. She also spent large amounts of money there on items she never used, such as draperies and elaborate dresses (she wore only black after her husband's assassination). She walked around the city with $56,000 in government bonds sewn into her petticoats (underskirts). Despite this large amount of money and the $3,000-a-year stipend from Congress, Mrs. Lincoln had an irrational fear of poverty.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: In 1872, she went to spiritualist photographer, William H. Mumler, who produced a photograph of her that appears to faintly show Lincoln's ghost behind her (photo in Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana). The College of Psychic Studies, referencing notes belonging to William Stainton Moses, claims that the photo was taken in the early 1870s, that Lincoln had assumed the name of 'Mrs. Lindall', and that Lincoln had to be encouraged by Mumler's wife to identify her husband on the photo. P.T. Barnum, testifying against Mumler in his eventual fraud trial, presented a photo featuring himself with the 'ghost' of Abraham Lincoln, demonstrating for the court how easy it was to make one of Mumler's images. The image is recognized now as a hoax created via double exposure (by inserting a previously prepared positive glass plate featuring the image of the "deceased" into the camera in front of an unused sensitive glass plate).


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Due to her erratic behavior, Robert initiated proceedings to have her institutionalized. On May 20, 1875, following a trial, a jury committed her to a private asylum in Batavia, Illinois. After the court proceedings, she was so despondent that she attempted suicide. She went to several pharmacies and ordered enough laudanum to kill herself, but an alert pharmacist frustrated her attempts and finally gave her a placebo.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Three months after being committed to Bellevue Place, she devised her escape: She smuggled letters to her lawyer, James B. Bradwell, and his wife Myra Bradwell, who was not only her friend but also a feminist lawyer. She also wrote to the editor of the "Chicago Times". Soon, the public embarrassments that Robert had hoped to avoid were looming, and his character and motives were in question, as he controlled his mother's finances. The director of Bellevue at Mary's trial had assured the jury she would benefit from treatment at his facility. In the face of potentially damaging publicity, he declared her well enough to go to Springfield to live with her sister Elizabeth as she desired.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary Lincoln was released into the custody of her sister in Springfield. In 1876 she was declared competent to manage her own affairs. The earlier committal proceedings had resulted in Mary being profoundly estranged from her son Robert, and they did not see each other again until shortly before her death.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mrs. Lincoln spent the next four years traveling throughout Europe and took up residence in Pau, France. Her final years were marked by declining health. She suffered from severe cataracts that reduced her eyesight; this condition may have contributed to her increasing susceptibility to falls. In 1879, she suffered spinal cord injuries in a fall from a stepladder. She traveled to New York in 1881 and lobbied for an increased pension after the assassination of President Garfield raised the issue of provisions for his family. She faced a difficult battle, due to negative press over her spending habits and rumors about her handling of her personal finances, including $56,000 in government bonds left to her by her husband. Congress eventually granted the increase, along with an additional monetary gift.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: During the early 1880s, Mary Lincoln was confined to the Springfield, Illinois, residence of her sister Elizabeth Edwards. On July 15, 1882, exactly eleven years after her youngest son died, she collapsed at her sister's home, lapsed into a coma, and died the next morning of a stroke at age 63. Her funeral service was held at First Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Biographies have been written about Mary Lincoln as well as her husband. Barbara Hambly's "The Emancipator's Wife" (2005) is considered a well-researched historical novel that provides context for her use of over-the-counter drugs containing alcohol and opium, which were frequently given to women of her era. Janis Cooke Newman's historical novel "Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln" (2007), in which Mary tells her own story after incarceration in the asylum in an effort to maintain and prove her sanity, is considered by Mary's recent biographer, Jean H. Baker, to be 'close to life' in its depiction of Mary Lincoln's life. The grief experienced through her widowhood is a theme of Andrew Holleran's 2006 novel, "Grief".


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Another historical novel in which Mary Todd Lincoln is depicted is "Courting Mr. Lincoln" (2019) by Louis Bayard, centering on Lincoln's relationships with Mary Todd and Joshua Fry Speed, Abraham Lincoln's good friend, in Springfield from 1839 to 1842.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Mary Lincoln has been portrayed by several actresses in film, including Kay Hammond in "Abraham Lincoln" (1930) directed by D.W. Griffith; Ruth Gordon in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" (1940); Julie Harris in "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln", a 1976 television adaptation of the stage play; Mary Tyler Moore in the 1988 television mini-series "Lincoln"; Donna Murphy in the 1998 movie "The Day Lincoln Was Shot"; Sally Field in Steven Spielberg's 2012 film "Lincoln"; Penelope Ann Miller in "Saving Lincoln" (2012); and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in "" (2012), set during the Civil War. Mezzo-soprano Elaine Bonazzi portrayed Mary in Thomas Pasatieri's Emmy Award winning opera "The Trial of Mary Lincoln" in 1972.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: In 1955, Vivi Janiss played the historical Mary Todd Lincoln in "How Chance Made Lincoln President" in the anthology television series, "TV Reader's Digest". Richard Gaines was cast as Abraham Lincoln, and Ken Hardison played their son, Robert Todd Lincoln.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: In 2005, Sufjan Stevens referenced Mary Todd Lincoln in the instrumental track "A Short Reprise for Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, but for Very Good Reasons" from his album "Illinois", which is themed around the state where she resided the majority of her life.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Her sister Elizabeth Todd married Ninian Edwards Jr., the son of the Illinois Governor Ninian Edwards. Their daughter Julia Edwards married Edward L. Baker, Jr., editor of the "Illinois State Journal" and son of Edward L. Baker, Sr. Their daughter, Mary Todd Lincoln's grandniece Mary Edwards Brown, served as custodian of the Lincoln Homestead, as did her own daughter. Mary's half-sister Emilie Todd married Benjamin Hardin Helm, CSA general and son of the Kentucky Governor John L. Helm. Another half-sister Elodie Todd married CSA Brig. General Nathaniel H. R. Dawson, later the third U.S. Commissioner of Education. One of Mary Todd's cousins was Dakota Territory Congressman/US General John Blair Smith Todd.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Historians have regarded Lincoln poorly as a first lady, seeing her as meddling and disruptive first lady. Lincoln's poor regard is due to the perception of Lincoln as having had psychological conditions that made the life of President Lincoln more difficult. Lincoln is seen as having suffered not just from likely mental illness during her husband's presidency, but also from the personal toll that having two of her children die, including one during her husband's presidency, took on her.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: Since 1982 Siena College Research Institute has periodically conducted surveys asking historians to assess American first ladies according to a cumulative score on the independent criteria of their background, value to the country, intelligence, courage, accomplishments, integrity, leadership, being their own women, public image, and value to the president. Consistently, Lincoln has ranked among the most poorly regarded first ladies in these surveys.


title: Mary Todd Lincoln

text: In the 2008 Siena Research Institute survey, Lincoln was ranked the lowest in four of the ten criteria: value to the country, accomplishments, leadership, and public image. In the 2014 survey, Lincoln and her husband were ranked the 7th-highest out of 39 first couples in terms of being a "power couple".


title: Mali Empire

text: The Mali Empire (Manding: "Mandé" or Manden; ) was an empire in West Africa from 1226 to 1670. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita (c. 1214 – c. 1255) and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa (Musa Keita). The Manding languages were spoken in the empire. At its peak, Mali was the largest empire in West Africa, widely influencing the culture of the region through the spread of its language, laws and customs. Much of the recorded information about the Mali Empire comes from 14th-century Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun, 14th-century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta and 16th-century Andalusian traveller Leo Africanus. The other major source of information is Mandinka oral tradition, as recorded by storytellers known as griots.


title: Mali Empire

text: The empire began as a small Mandinka kingdom at the upper reaches of the Niger River, centered around the Manding. During the 11th and 12th centuries, an empire began to develop following the decline of the Ghana Empire, or Wagadu, to the north. During this period, trade routes shifted southward to the savanna, stimulating the growth of states such as Bonoman. The early history of the Mali Empire (before the 13th century) is unclear, as there are conflicting and imprecise accounts by both Arab chroniclers and oral traditionalists. Sundiata Keita is the first ruler for which there is accurate written information (through Ibn Khaldun). Sundiata Keita was a warrior-prince of the Keita dynasty who was called upon to free the Mali people from the rule of the king of the Sosso Empire, Soumaoro Kanté. The conquest of Sosso in c. 1235 gave the Mali Empire access to the trans-Saharan trade routes.


title: Mali Empire

text: Following the death of Sundiata Keita in c. 1255, the kings of Mali were referred to by the title "mansa". In c. 1285 Sakoura, a former royal court slave, became emperor and was one of Mali's most powerful rulers, greatly expanding the empire's territory. He made a pilgrimage to Mecca during the reign of Mamluk Sultan An-Nasir Muhammad (r. 1298–1308), but died on his voyage home. After the reigns of two more emperors, Musa Keita became mansa in c. 1312. He made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca from 1324 to 1326. His generous gifts to Mamluk Egypt and his expenditure of gold caused significant inflation in Egypt. Maghan I succeeded his father as mansa in 1337, but was deposed by his uncle Suleyman in 1341. It was during Suleyman's 19-year reign that Ibn Battuta visited Mali. Suleyman's death marked the end of Mali's Golden Age and the beginning of a slow decline.


title: Mali Empire

text: It is known from the Tarikh al-Sudan that Mali was still a sizeable state in the 15th century. The Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto and Portuguese traders confirmed that the peoples of the Gambia were still subject to the "mansa" of Mali. Upon Leo Africanus's visit at the beginning of the 16th century, his descriptions of the territorial domains of Mali showed that it was still a kingdom of considerable area. However, from 1507 onwards neighboring states such as Diara, Great Fulo and the Songhay Empire chipped away at the outer borders of Mali. In 1542, the Songhay invaded the capital city but were unsuccessful in conquering the empire. During the 17th century, the Mali empire faced incursions from the Bamana Empire. After unsuccessful attempts by Mansa Mama Maghan to conquer Bamana, in 1670 the Bamana sacked and burned the capital, and the Mali Empire rapidly disintegrated and ceased to exist, being replaced by independent chiefdoms. The Keitas retreated to the town of Kangaba, where they became provincial chiefs.


title: Mali Empire

text: "Mali", "Mandé", "Manden", and "Manding" are all various pronunciations of the same word across different languages and dialects. The version recorded by medieval Arab geographers is Mali (). "Mali" is the Fula form of the word. In the Manding languages, the modern descendants of the language spoken at the core of the Mali Empire, "Manden" or "Manding" is the name of the region corresponding to the heartland of the Mali Empire.


title: Mali Empire

text: Medieval sources are divided over whether Mali is the name of a town or a region. Ibn Battuta, who visited the capital city from 1352 to 1353, called it Mali. The 1375 Catalan Atlas portrayed a "city of Melly" () in West Africa. Leo Africanus said that the capital city was called Melli. However, al-Umari gives "Mali" as the name of the capital province and Ibn Khaldun refers to "Mali" as a people, with each giving different names for the capital city itself. Whether "Mali" originated as the name of a town or region, the name was subsequently applied to the entire empire ruled from Mali.


title: Mali Empire

text: Another hypothesis suggests that the name Mali is derived from Mandé "mali" "hippopotamus", an animal that had special significance to the Keitas, and that Mandé means "little manatee". A legend claims that Sunjata transformed into a hippopotamus. However, these hypotheses have been rejected by locals and are inconsistent with the apparent cognate status of "Mali" and "Mandé".


title: Mali Empire

text: Imperial Mali is best known through three primary sources: the first is the account of Shihab al-'Umari, written in about 1340 by a geographer-administrator in Mamluk Egypt. His information about the empire came from visiting Malians taking the hajj, or pilgrim's voyage to Mecca. He had first-hand information from several sources, and from a second-hand source, he learned of the visit of Mansa Musa. The second account is that of the traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited Mali in 1352. This is the first account of a West African kingdom made directly by an eyewitness; the others are usually second-hand. The third great account is that of Ibn Khaldun, who wrote in the early 15th century. While the accounts are of limited length, they provide a fairly good picture of the empire at its height.


title: Mali Empire

text: After Ibn Khaldun's death in 1406, there are no further Arab primary sources except for Leo Africanus, who wrote over a century later. Arab interest in the Mali Empire declined after the Songhai conquered the northern regions of the empire which formed the primary contact between Mali and the Arab world. For the later period of the Mali Empire, the major written primary sources are Portuguese accounts of the coastal provinces of Mali and neighboring societies.


title: Mali Empire

text: The Mali Empire began in and was centered around the Manding region in what is now southern Mali and northeastern Guinea.


title: Mali Empire

text: The Mali Empire reached its largest area under the Laye Keita "mansas". Al-Umari, who wrote down a description of Mali based on information given to him by Abu Sa’id 'Otman ed Dukkali (who had lived 35 years in the capital), reported the realm as being square and an eight-month journey from its coast at Tura (at the mouth of the Senegal River) to Muli. Umari also describes the empire as being south of Marrakesh and almost entirely inhabited except for few places. Mali's domain also extended into the desert. He describes it as being north of Mali but under its domination implying some sort of vassalage for the Antasar, Yantar'ras, Medussa and Lemtuna Berber tribes. The empire's total area included nearly all the land between the Sahara Desert and coastal forests. It spanned the modern-day countries of Senegal, southern Mauritania, Mali, northern Burkina Faso, western Niger, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, the Ivory Coast and northern Ghana. By 1350, the empire covered approximately . The empire also reached its highest population during the Laye period ruling over 400 cities, towns and villages of various religions and elasticities. During this period only the Mongol Empire was larger.


title: Mali Empire

text: Al-ʿUmari reported that Mali had fourteen provinces. His list does not necessarily accurately reflect the actual organization of the Mali Empire, and the identification of the listed provinces is controversial. Several of the names are spelled in a variety of ways in different manuscripts. Al-ʿUmari's list, which is quoted with slight differences by al-Qalqashandi, is as follows:


title: Mali Empire

text: Gomez instead suggests that these tribes would have inhabited territory in the vicinity of Mema, Ghana, and Diafunu.


title: Mali Empire

text: The identity of the capital city of the Mali Empire is a matter of dispute among historians. Scholars have located the capital in Niani, or somewhere on the Niger, or proposed that it changed several times, that there was no true capital, or even that it lay as far afield as the upper Gambia River in modern-day Senegal. Seemingly contradictory reports written by Arab visitors, a lack of definitive archaeological evidence, and the diversity of oral traditions all contribute to this uncertainty. A particular challenge lies in interpreting early Arabic manuscripts, in which, without vowel markings and diacritics, foreign names can be read in numerous different ways (e.g. Biti, Buti, Yiti, Tati). Ibn Battuta and Leo Africanus both call the capital "Mali."


title: Mali Empire

text: Early European writers such as Maurice Delafosse believed that Niani, a city on what is now the border between Guinea and Mali, was the capital for most of the empire's history, and this notion has taken hold in the popular imagination. Djibril Tamsir Niane, a Guinean historian, has been a forceful advocate of this position in recent decades. The identification of Niani as imperial capital is rooted in an (possibly erroneous) interpretation of the Arab traveler al Umari's work, as well as some oral histories. Extensive archaeological digs have shown that the area was an important trade and manufacturing center in the 15th century, but no firm evidence of royal residence has come to light. Niani's reputation as an imperial capital may derive from its importance in the late imperial period, when the Songhay Empire to the northeast pushed Mali back to the Manding heartland. Several 21st century historians have firmly rejected Niani as a capital candidate based on a lack of archaeological evidence of significant trade activity, clearly described by Arab visitors, particularly during the 14th century, Mali's golden age. In fact, there is a conspicuous absence of archaeological samples of any kind from Niani dated to the late 13th through early 15th centuries, suggesting that Niani may have been uninhabited during the heyday of the Mali Empire.


title: Mali Empire

text: Various sources cite several other cities as capitals of the Mali Empire, some in competition with the Niani hypothesis and others addressing different time periods. A city called Dieriba or Dioliba is sometimes mentioned as the capital or main urban center of the province of Mande in the years before Sundiata, that was later abandoned.


title: Mali Empire

text: Many oral histories point to a town called Dakajalan as the original home of the Keita clan and Sundiata's childhood home and base of operations during the war against the Soso. It may have been located close to modern Kangaba. Mande bards in the region speak of the Dakajalan site, containing Sundiata's grave, as sacrosanct. Kangaba became the last refuge of the Keita royal family after the collapse of the Mali Empire, and so has for centuries been associated with Sundiata in the cultural imagination of Mande peoples. If Dakajalan was, in fact, situated near Kangaba, this may also have contributed to their conflation, beginning with Delafosse's speculation that the latter may have begun as a suburb of the former.


title: Mali Empire

text: According to Jules Vidal and Levtzion, citing oral histories from Kangaba and Keyla, another onetime capital was Manikoro or Mali-Kura, founded after the destruction of Niani.


title: Mali Empire

text: Parallel to this debate, many scholars have argued that the Mali Empire may not have had a permanent "capital" in the sense that the word is used today, and historically was used in the Mediterranean world. Rather, authority would rest with the mansa and his court, wherever he went. Therefore, Arabic visitors may have assigned the "capital" label merely to whatever major city the mansa was based out of at the time of their visit. It has been suggested that the name given in the Arabic sources for the capital of Mali is derived the Manding word "bambi", meaning "dais", and as such refers to the "seat of government" in general rather than being the name of a specific city. Such impermanent capitals are a historically widespread phenomenon, having occurred in other parts of Africa such as Ethiopia, as well as outside Africa, such as in the Holy Roman Empire.


title: Mali Empire

text: The Rock art in the Sahara suggests that northern Mali has been inhabited since 10,000 BC, when the Sahara was fertile and rich in wildlife. In the first millennium BC, early cities and towns were created by Mande peoples related to the Soninke people, along the middle Niger River in central Mali, including at Dia which began from around 900 BC, and reached its peak around 600 BC, and Djenne-Djenno, which lasted from around 250 BC to 900 AD. By the 6th century AD, the lucrative trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt and slaves had begun, facilitating the rise of West Africa's great empires.


title: Mali Empire

text: There are a few references to Mali in early Islamic literature. Among these are references to "Pene" and "Malal" in the work of al-Bakri in 1068, the story of the conversion of an early ruler, known to Ibn Khaldun (by 1397) as Barmandana, and a few geographical details in the work of al-Idrisi.


title: Mali Empire

text: In the 1960s, archaeological work at Niani village, reputed to be the capital of the Mali Empire, by Polish and Guinean archaeologists revealed the remains of a substantial town dating back as far as the 6th century.


title: Mali Empire

text: Modern oral traditions also related that the Mandinka kingdoms of Mali or Manden had already existed several centuries before Sundiata's unification as a small state just to the south of the Soninké empire of Wagadou, better known as the Ghana Empire. This area was composed of mountains, savannah and forest providing ideal protection and resources for the population of hunters. Those not living in the mountains formed small city-states such as Toron, Ka-Ba and Niani. Through the oral tradition of griots, the Keita dynasty, from which nearly every Mali emperor came, claims to trace its lineage back to Lawalo, one of the sons of Bilal, the faithful muezzin of Islam's prophet Muhammad, who was said to have migrated into Mali and his descendants established the ruling Keita dynasty through Maghan Kon Fatta, father of Sundiata Keita.