November 6 · This Day in America
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln wins the presidency with not quite forty percent of the vote, his name not even on the ballot in ten Southern states. He is the first Republican ever elected, a self-taught prairie lawyer who opposed the spread of slavery, and his victory is, to the South, a declaration. Within weeks South Carolina moves to leave the Union; six states follow before he is even sworn in. The bloodiest war in American history is now coming, and roughly 750,000 Americans will not survive it. Lincoln knows. He told a crowd that a house divided against itself cannot stand. On this night the house begins, formally, to fall — so that something truer can be built from it. He would not live to see the rebuilding.
Source: www.nps.gov
Also on this day · 1869
On November 6, 1869, twenty-five young men a side meet on a field in New Brunswick, New Jersey, for a contest closer to soccer than to anything we'd recognize. No pads, no forward pass, no helmets — just a round ball and a grudge from a baseball drubbing three years earlier. Rutgers wins, six goals to four. From this scrappy autumn afternoon grows one of the great American Saturday rituals.
Source: www.rutgers.edu