Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States
In office March 4, 1861 – April 15, 1865
Vice President	Hannibal Hamlin (1861 to 1865); Andrew Johnson (March  — April 1865)
Preceded by	James Buchanan
Succeeded by	Andrew Johnson
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 7th district
In office March 4, 1847 – March 4, 1849
Preceded by	John Henry
Succeeded by	Thomas Harris
Personal details
Born	February 12, 1809(1809-02-12) Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S.
Died	April 15, 1865 (aged 56) Washington, D.C.
Nationality	American
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Mary Todd Lincoln
Signature

Abraham Lincoln (February 12 1809  – April 15 1865) was the 16th President of the United States. He served as president from 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War. Just six days after most of the Confederate forces had surrendered and the war was ending, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln. Lincoln has been remembered as the "Great Emancipator" because he worked to end slavery in the United States.

Life

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S.. His parents were Thomas Lincoln, a farmer, and Nancy Hanks. His family was very poor. Abraham had one brother and one sister. His brother died in childhood. They grew up in a small log cabin house, with just one room inside. Although slavery was legal in Kentucky at that time, Lincoln's father, who was a religious Baptist, refused to own any slaves. When Lincoln was seven years old, his family moved to Indiana, and later to Illinois. In his childhood he helped his father on the farm, but when he was 22 years old he left home and moved to New Salem, Illinois, where he worked in a general store. Later, he said that he had gone to school for just one year, but that was enough to learn how to read, write, and do simple math. In 1842, he married Mary Todd Lincoln. They had four children, but three of them died when they were very young. Abraham Lincoln was sometimes called Abe Lincoln or "Honest Abe" after he ran miles to give a costumer the right amount of change. The nickname "Honest Abe" came from a time when he started a business that failed. Instead of running away like many people would have, he stayed and worked to pay off his debt. He has also been called the "Great Emancipator" because of his work to end slavery in the United States. In 1863, he declared that all slaves held in the rebellious Confederate States were free. He also sponsored the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Ratified in 1865, nine months after his assassination, that amendment completely outlawed slavery in the United States.

Early political career

Lincoln started his political career in 1832 when he ran for the IGA Illinois General Assembly, but he lost the election. He served as a captain in the army during the Black Hawk War, a war with Native American tribes. When he moved to Springfield in 1837, he began to work as a lawyer. Soon, he became one of the most highly respected lawyers in Illinois. In 1837, as a member of the Illinois General Assembly, Lincoln issued a written protest of its passage of a resolution stating that slavery could not be abolished in Washington, D.C. In 1841, he won a court case (Bailey v. Cromwell), representing a black woman who claimed she had already been freed and could not be sold as a slave. In 1847, he lost a case (Matson v. Rutherford) representing a slave owner (Robert Matson) claiming return of fugitive slaves.

A sketch of candidate Abraham Lincoln

In 1846, Lincoln joined the Whig Party and was elected to one term in the House of Representatives. After that, he ignored his political career and instead became a very good railroad lawyer. In 1854, in reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln became involved in politics again. He joined the Republican Party, which had recently been formed in opposition to the expansion of slavery. In 1858, he wanted to become senator; although this was unsuccessful, the debates drew national attention to him. The Republican Party nominated him for the Presidential election of 1860.

Presidency

Lincoln was chosen as a candidate for the elections in 1860 for different reasons. Among these reasons were that his views on slavery were less extreme than those of other people who wanted to be candidates. Lincoln was from what was then one of the Western states, and had a bigger chance of winning the election there. Other candidates that were older or more experienced than him had enemies inside the party. Lincoln's family was poor, which added to the Republican position of free labor, the opposite of slave labor. Lincoln won the election in 1860, and was made the 16th President of the United States. He won with almost no votes in the South. For the first time, a president had won the election because of the large support he got from the states in the North. During his presidency Lincoln became well-known because of his large stovepipe hat. He used his tall hat to store papers and documents when he was traveling.

Lincoln and the Civil War

After Lincoln's election, seven States (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana) formed the Confederate States of America. When the United States refused to surrender Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the Confederates attacked the fort, beginning the American Civil War. Later, four more states (Arkansas, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina) joined the Confederacy for a total of eleven. In his whole period as President, he had to rebuild the Union with military force and many bloody battles. He also had to stop the "border states", like Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, from leaving the Union and joining the Confederacy.

Lincoln was not a general, and had only been in the army for a short time during the Black Hawk War. However, he still took a major role in the war, often spending days and days in the War Department. His plan was to cut off the South by surrounding it with ships, control the Mississippi River, and take Richmond, the Confederate capital. He often clashed with generals in the field, especially George B. McClellan, and fired generals who lost battles or were not aggressive enough. Eventually, he made Ulysses S. Grant the top general in the army.

Emancipation Proclamation

With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 1863, Lincoln ordered the freedom of all slaves in those states still in rebellion during the American Civil War. It did not actually immediately free all those slaves however, since those areas were still controlled by the rebelling states of the Confederacy. Only a small number of slaves already behind Union lines were immediately freed. As the Union army advanced, nearly all four million slaves were effectively freed. Some former slaves joined the Union army. The Proclamation also did not free slaves in the slave states that had remained loyal to the Union (the federal government of the US). Neither did it apply to areas where Union forces had already regained control. Until the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, only the states had power to end slavery within their own borders, so Lincoln issued the proclamation as a war measure.

The Proclamation made freeing the slaves a Union goal for the war, and put an end to movements in European nations (especially in Great Britain and France) that would have recognized the Confederacy as an independent nation. Lincoln then sponsored a constitutional amendment to free all slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment, making slavery illegal everywhere in the United States, was passed late in 1865, eight months after Lincoln was assassinated.

Gettysburg Address

Main page: Gettysburg Address

Lincoln made a famous speech after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 called the Gettysburg Address. The battle was very important, and many soldiers from both sides died. The speech was given when they built the cemetery for the dead soldiers. It is one of the most famous speeches in American history.

Second term and assassination

Main page: Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was reelected president in 1864 and re-inaugurated March 4 1865. Soon afterwards, it appeared likely that the Union would win the Civil War. Lincoln proposed lenient terms for restoring self-government in the states that had rebelled. On April 9 1865, the leading Confederate general surrendered his armies.

April 14: Lincoln shot.

Five days later, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland, fired a pistol at point-blank range into the back of Lincoln's head. This happened while Lincoln was attending a play with his wife at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.. The mortally wounded Lincoln was carried across the street to Petersen House, where he was placed diagonally on the bed because his tall frame would not fit normally on the smaller bed, he lost consciousness upon being laid on the bed. He laid in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. Booth escaped, but died from shots fired during his capture on April 26.

Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated.

Other websites

• The Lincoln Institute
• Abraham Lincoln Research Site
• A One Page Summary of Abraham Lincoln's Life
• Abraham Lincoln at Find a Grave
• Lincoln's White House biography