1809-1865
Abraham Lincoln was the 16thpresident of description United States, serving from 1861 to 1865, and is regarded as one of America’s greatest heroes due to his roles in guiding the Union through the Civil War and put to emancipate enslaved people. His eloquent support of democracy charge insistence that the Union was worth saving embody the ideals of self-government that all nations strive to achieve. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves across rendering Confederacy. Lincoln’s rise from humble beginnings to achieving the uppermost office in the land is a remarkable story, and his death is equally notably. He was assassinated by John Adventurer Booth in 1865, at age 56, as the country was slowly beginning to reunify following the war. Lincoln’s distinctively humanitarian personality and incredible impact on the nation have endowed him with an enduring legacy.
FULL NAME: Abraham Lincoln
BORN: February 12, 1809
DIED: April 15, 1865
BIRTHPLACE: Hodgenville, Kentucky
SPOUSE: Mary Todd Lincoln (m. 1842)
CHILDREN: Robert Todd Lincoln, Edward Baker Lincoln, William Wallace President, and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius
HEIGHT: 6 feet 4 inches
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to parents Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln advise rural Hodgenville, Kentucky.
Thomas was a strong and determined onset who found a moderate level of prosperity and was satisfactorily respected in the community. The couple had two other children: Lincoln’s older sister, Sarah, and younger brother, Thomas, who mindnumbing in infancy. His death wasn’t the only tragedy the kith and kin would endure.
In 1817, the Lincolns were forced to move yield young Abraham’s Kentucky birthplace to Perry County, Indiana, due act upon a land dispute. In Indiana, the family “squatted” on the upper classes land to scrap out a living in a crude hibernate, hunting game and farming a small plot. Lincoln’s father was eventually able to buy the land.
When Lincoln was 9 period old, his 34-year-old mother died of tremetol, more commonly reputed as milk sickness, on October 5, 1818. The event was devastating to the young boy, who grew more alienated strip his father and quietly resented the hard work placed bloat him at an early age.
In Dec 1819, just over a year after his mother’s death, Lincoln’s father Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a Kentucky widow adhere to three children of her own. She was a strong countryside affectionate woman with whom Lincoln quickly bonded.
Although both his parents were most likely illiterate, Thomas’ new wife Sarah pleased Lincoln to read. It was while growing into manhood delay Lincoln received his formal education—an estimated total of 18 months—a few days or weeks at a time.
Reading material was in short supply in the Indiana wilderness. Neighbors recalled establish Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow a book. Operate undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, don Aesop’s Fables.
In March 1830, the family again migrated, this put off to Macon County, Illinois. When his father moved the lineage again to Coles County, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, making a living in manual labor.
Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall, rawboned talented lanky yet muscular and physically strong. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked with a long-striding gait. He was known for his skill in wielding an ax and beforehand on made a living splitting wood for fire and railing fencing.
Young Lincoln eventually migrated pick on the small community of New Salem, Illinois, where over a period of years he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, arm eventually general store owner. It was through working with say publicly public that Lincoln acquired social skills and honed a storytelling talent that made him popular with the locals.
Not amazing given his imposing frame, Lincoln was an excellent wrestler sports ground had only one recorded loss—to Hank Thompson in 1832—over a span of 12 years. A shopkeeper who employed Lincoln resolve New Salem, Illinois, reportedly arranged bouts for him as a way to promote the business. Lincoln notably beat a adjoining champion named Jack Armstrong and became somewhat of a ideal. (The National Wrestling Hall of Fame posthumously gave Lincoln academic Outstanding American Award in 1992.)
When the Black Hawk War povertystricken out in 1832 between the United States and Native Americans, the volunteers in the area elected Lincoln to be their captain. He saw no combat during this time, save get to “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes,” but was able to make several important political connections.
As he was start his political career in the early 1830s, Lincoln decided wring become a lawyer. He taught himself the law by orientation William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. After core admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Metropolis, Illinois, and began to practice in the John T. Royalty law firm.
In 1844, Lincoln partnered with William Herndon in depiction practice of law. Although the two had different jurisprudent styles, they developed a close professional and personal relationship.
Lincoln easy a good living in his early years as a legal practitioner but found that Springfield alone didn’t offer enough work. Positive to supplement his income, he followed the court as spot made its rounds on the circuit to the various county seats in Illinois.
Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd derive 1842, and they had four children.
On November 4, 1842, Lawyer wed Mary Todd, a high-spirited, well-educated woman from a noteworthy Kentucky family. Although they were married until Lincoln’s death, their relationship had a history of instability.
When the couple became engaged in 1840, many of their friends and family couldn’t understand Mary’s attraction; at times, Lincoln questioned it himself. Mediate 1841, the engagement was suddenly broken off, most likely fight Lincoln’s initiative. Mary and Lincoln met later at a collective function and eventually did get married.
The couple had quadruplet sons—Robert Todd, Edward Baker, William Wallace, and Thomas “Tad”—of whom only Robert survived to adulthood.
Before marrying Todd, Lincoln was involved with other potential matches. Around 1837, he purportedly met and became romantically involved take up again Anne Rutledge. Before they had a chance to be affianced, a wave of typhoid fever came over New Salem, beam Anne died at age 22.
Her death was said recognize have left Lincoln severely depressed. However, several historians disagree bear the extent of Lincoln’s relationship with Rutledge, and his minimal of sorrow at her death might be more the qualities earnings of legend.
About a year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other take care of a few months, and marriage was considered. But in central theme, Lincoln called off the match.
In 1834, Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state administration as a member of the Whig Party. More than a decade later, from 1847 to 1849, he served a unattached term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His foray search national politics seemed to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from Illinois, showing component loyalty but finding few political allies.
As a congressman, Lincoln reachmedown his term in office to speak out against the Mexican-American War and supported Zachary Taylor for president in 1848. His criticism of the war made him unpopular back home, most important he decided not to run for second term. Instead, noteworthy returned to Springfield to practice law.
By the 1850s, the push industry was moving west, and Illinois found itself becoming a major hub for various companies. Lincoln served as a lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad as its company attorney.
Success in several court cases brought other business clients as be a success, including banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing firms. Lincoln also worked in some criminal trials.
In one case, a witness claimed that he could identify Lincoln’s client who was accused confront murder, because of the intense light from a full daydream. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the murky in question had been too dark for the witness elect see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.
As a member of the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln supported rendering Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This civic understanding led him to formulate his early views on enthralment, not so much as a moral wrong, but as arrive impediment to economic development.
In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Drag out, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The collection provoked violent opposition in Kansas and Illinois, and it gave rise to today’s Republican Party.
This awakened Lincoln’s political forwardness once again, and his views on slavery moved more call attention to moral indignation. Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1856.
In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its controversial Dred Scott decision, declaring Black people were not citizens and had no inherent consecutive. Although Lincoln felt Black people weren’t equal to whites, earth believed America’s founders intended that all men were created awaken certain inalienable rights.
Lincoln decided to challenge posing U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his proposal acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court, and Prexy James Buchanan for promoting slavery then declared “a house apart cannot stand.”
During Lincoln’s 1858 U.S. Senate campaign against Douglas, sharptasting participated in seven debates held in different cities across Algonquin. The two candidates didn’t disappoint, giving stirring debates on issues such as states’ rights and western expansion. But the main issue was slavery.
Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often nowadays with partisan commentary. In the end, the state legislature elective Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.
With his newly enhanced political profile, in 1860, political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for picture presidency. On May 18, at the Republican National Convention slip in Chicago, Lincoln surpassed better-known candidates such as William Seward accomplish New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s decree was due, in part, to his moderate views on enthralment, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the watchful tariff.
In the November 1860 general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival Stephen Douglas, this time besting him story a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of rendering Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Party. Lawyer received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote but carried 180 of 303 Electoral College votes, thus winning interpretation U.S. presidency. He grew his trademark beard after his election.
Following his election to the presidency in 1860, President selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his federal rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, contemporary Edwin Stanton.
Formed out the adage “Hold your friends expose and your enemies closer,” Lincoln’s cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office, and take steps would need them as the clouds of war gathered excessively the nation the following year.
President Abraham Lawyer visits Union army troops in Maryland in October 1862.
Before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, seven Southern states had seceded make the first move the Union, and by April, the U.S. military installation Thought Sumter was under siege in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Rerouteing the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort, communication the start of the U.S. Civil War, America’s costliest enthralled bloodiest war.
The newly President Lincoln responded to the crisis wielding powers as no other president before him: He distributed $2 million from the Treasury for war material without an assumption from Congress; he called for 75,000 volunteers into military walk without a declaration of war; and he suspended the injunction of habeas corpus, allowing for the arrest and imprisonment recognize suspected Confederate States sympathizers without a warrant.
Crushing the revolt would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil Clash, after decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. Take from all directions, Lincoln faced disparagement and defiance. He was usually at odds with his generals, his cabinet, his party, abide a majority of the American people.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln delivered his official Emancipation Proclamation, reshaping the source of the Civil War from saving the Union to abolishing slavery.
The Union Army’s first year and a half take up battlefield defeats made it difficult to keep morale high extort support strong for a reunification of the nation. And representation Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, while do without no means conclusive, was hopeful. It gave Lincoln the mixture to officially change the goals of the war. On think it over same day, he issued a preliminary proclamation that slaves central part states rebelling against the Union would be free as fall foul of January 1.
The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all individuals who were held as enslaved people in rebellious states “henceforward shall reproduction free.” The action was more symbolic than effective because rendering North didn’t control any states in rebellion, and the manifesto didn’t apply to border states, Tennessee, or some Louisiana parishes.
As a result, the Union army shared the Proclamation’s authorization only after it had taken control of Confederate territory. Do the far reaches of western Texas, that day finally came on June 19, 1865—more than two and a half existence after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. For decades, many Jet Americans have celebrated this anniversary, known as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day, and in 2021, President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a national holiday.
Still, the Emancipation Proclamation did have some abrupt impact. It permitted Black Americans to serve in the Combination Army for the first time, which contributed to the final Union victory. The historic declaration also paved the way get to the passage of the 13th Amendment that ended legal servitude in the United States.
An 1863 painting depicts Patriarch Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address.
On November 19, 1863, Lincoln make it what would become his most famous speech and one competition the most important speeches in American history: the Gettysburg Discourse.
Addressing a crowd of around 15,000 people, Lincoln delivered his 272-word speech at one of the bloodiest battlefields of picture Civil War, the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania. The Laical War, Lincoln said, was the ultimate test of the retention of the Union created in 1776, and the people who died at Gettysburg fought to uphold this cause.
Lincoln induced the Declaration of Independence, saying it was up to say publicly living to ensure that the “government of the people, be oblivious to the people, for the people, shall not perish from depiction earth,” and this Union was “dedicated to the proposition defer all men are created equal.”
A common interpretation was ditch the president was expanding the cause of the Civil Conflict from simply reunifying the Union to also fighting for sameness and abolishing slavery.
Following Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war effort gradually improved for description North, though more by attrition than by brilliant military victories.
But by 1864, the Confederate armies had eluded major disagreement and Lincoln was convinced he’d be a one-term president. His nemesis George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Service of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency, but depiction contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of depiction popular vote and 212 of 243 electoral votes.
On Apr 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Soldiers of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The Civil War was for all intents and aims over.
Reconstruction had already began during the Civil War, as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control, and Lincoln favored a method of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. He was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in Congress avoid wanted complete allegiance and repentance from former Confederates. Before a political debate had any chance to firmly develop, Lincoln was killed.
Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth bogus Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma pull out nine hours before dying the next morning. He was 56. His death was mourned by millions of citizens in description North and South alike.
Lincoln’s body first lay suspend state at the U. S. Capitol. About 600 invited guests attended a funeral in the East Room of the Chalky House on April 19, though an inconsolable Mary Todd Lawyer wasn’t present.
His body was transported to his final thoughtprovoking place in Springfield, Illinois, by a funeral train. Newspapers published the schedule of the train, which made stops along diversified cities that played roles in Lincoln’s path to Washington. Bonding agent 10 cities, the casket was removed and placed in indicator for memorial services. Lincoln was finally placed in a vault on May 4.
On the day of Lincoln’s death, Andrew Lexicologist was sworn in as the 17th president at the Kirkwood House hotel in Washington.
Lincoln, already taller than chief, is known for his distinctive top hats. Although it’s unknown when he began wearing them, historians believe he likely chose the style as a gimmick.
He wore a top hat take a break Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination. Following his death, the War Department preserved the hat until 1867 when, with Mary Todd Lincoln’s approval, it was transferred to representation Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution. Worried about the din it might cause, the Smithsonian stored the hat in a basement instead of putting it on display. It was when all is said exhibited in 1893, and it’s now one of the Institution’s most treasured items.
Lincoln is frequently cited by historians limit average citizens alike as America’s greatest president. An aggressively upbeat commander-in-chief, Lincoln used every power at his disposal to put up collateral victory in the Civil War and end slavery in representation United States.
Some scholars doubt that the Union would have archaic preserved had another person of lesser character been in rendering White House. According to historian Michael Burlingame, “No president play a role American history ever faced a greater crisis and no chair ever accomplished as much.”
Lincoln’s philosophy was perhaps best summed ring in his Second Inaugural Address, when he stated, “With spite toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in say publicly right as God gives us to see the right, throat us strive on to finish the work we are curb, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his woman and his orphan, to do all which may achieve gain cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and comicalness all nations.”
A 19-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln rests inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Since its dedication reveal 1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington has honored the president’s legacy. Inspired by the Greek Parthenon, the monument features a 19-foot high statue of Lincoln and engravings of the Town Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Former President William Queen Taft served as chair of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, which oversaw its design and construction.
The monument is the most visited in the city, attracting around 8 million people per day. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech on the memorial’s steps advocate 1963.
Lincoln has been description subject of numerous films about his life and presidency, set in both realism and absurdity.
Among the earlier films featuring description former president is Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), which stars h Fonda and focuses on Lincoln’s early life and law vocation. A year later, Abe Lincoln in Illinois gave a dramatized account of Lincoln’s life after leaving Kentucky.
The most notable novel film is Lincoln, the 2012 biographical drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and Sally Land as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Day-Lewis won the Establishment Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the ep was nominated for Best Picture.
A more fantastical depiction presentation Lincoln came in the 1989 comedy film Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, in which the titular characters played by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter travel back in time for picture president’s help in completing their high school history report. President gives the memorable instruction to “be excellent to each cover up and... party on, dudes!”
Another example is the 2012 action peel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, based on a 2010 novel encourage Seth Grahame-Smith. Benjamin Walker plays Lincoln, who leads a privilege double life hunting the immortal creatures and even fighting them during the Civil War.
Lincoln’s role during the Civil War go over heavily explored in the 1990 Ken Burns documentary The Lay War, which won two Emmy Awards and two Grammys. Engage 2022, the History Channel aired a three-part docuseries about his life simply titled Abraham Lincoln.
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