Abraham Lincoln1

Abraham Lincoln  pronunciation (help·info) (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination. As president, he led the country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis—the American Civil War—preserving the Union while ending slavery and promoting economic and financial modernization. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives but failed in two attempts at a seat in the United States Senate. He was an affectionate, though often absent, husband and father of four children.

After deftly opposing the expansion of slavery in the United States in his campaign debates and speeches,^[1] Lincoln secured the Republican nomination and was elected president in 1860. Following declarations of secession by southern slave states, war began in April 1861, and he concentrated on both the military and political dimensions of the war effort, seeking to reunify the nation. He vigorously exercised unprecedented war powers, including the arrest and detention without trial of thousands of suspected secessionists. He prevented British recognition of the Confederacy by skillfully handling the Trent affair late in 1861. He issued hisEmancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery.

Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including the commanding general Ulysses S. Grant. He brought leaders of various factions of his party into his cabinet and pressured them to cooperate. Under his leadership, the Union took control of the border slave states at the start of the war and tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond. Each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another until finally Grant succeeded in 1865. An exceptionally astute politician deeply involved with power issues in each state, he reached out to War Democrats and managed his own re-election in the 1864 presidential election.

As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln came under attack from all sides. Radical Republicans wanted harsher treatment of the South, War Democrats desired more compromise, and Copperheads despised him--not to mention irreconcilable secessionists in reconquered areas.^[2] Politically Lincoln fought back with patronage, by pitting his opponents against each other, and by appealing to the American people with his powers of oratory.^[3] HisGettysburg Address of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history.^[4] It was an iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of nationalism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to speedily reunite the nation through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. However, just six days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was shot and killed by Confederate sympathizerJohn Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. His death marked the first assassination of a U.S. president. Lincoln has been consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.

Early life

Main article: Early life and career of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln (née Hanks), in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in southeast Hardin County, Kentucky^[5] (now LaRue County).

Little is known about Lincoln's ancestors. Historical investigations have traced his family back to Samuel Lincoln, an apprentice weaver who arrived in Hingham, Massachusetts, from Norfolk, England, in 1637.^[6][7] However, Lincoln himself was only able to trace his heritage back as far as his paternal grandfather and namesake, Abraham Lincoln, a local militia captain and substantial landholder with an inherited 200-acre (81 ha) estate in Rockingham County, Virginia.^[6][8] The elder Abraham later moved his family from Virginia, to Jefferson County, Kentucky,^[6][9] where he was ambushed and killed in an Indian raid in 1786 with his children Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas looking on.^[9]Mordecai's marksmanship with a rifle saved Thomas from the same fate. As the eldest son, by law Mordecai inherited his father's entire estate.^[10]

Thomas became a respected citizen of rural Kentucky. He bought and sold several farms, including the Sinking Spring Farm. The family attended a Separate Baptists church, which had high moral standards and opposed alcohol, dancing, and slavery,^[11] though Thomas, as an adult, never formally joined a church. Thomas enjoyed considerable status in Kentucky—where he sat on juries, appraised estates, served on country patrols, and guarded prisoners. By the time his son Abraham was born, Thomas owned two 600-acre (240 ha) farms, several town lots, livestock, and horses. He was among the richest men in the county.^[6][12] In 1816, the Lincoln family lost everything—they were stripped of all their lands in court cases because of a faulty title. They moved north across the Ohio River to free territory and made made a new start in Perry County, Indiana (now in Spencer County). Lincoln later noted that this move was "partly on account of slavery" but mainly due to land title difficulties.^[13]

The young Lincoln in sculpture at Senn Park, Chicago

When Lincoln was nine, his 34-year-old mother died of milk sickness.^[14] His older sister, Sarah (Grigsby), died while giving birth at a young age.^[7] Soon after, his father married Sarah Bush Johnston, with whom Lincoln became very close and whom he called "Mother".^[15] However, he became increasingly distant from his father. Lincoln regretted his father's lack of education and did not like the hard labor associated with frontier life. Still, he willingly took responsibility for all chores expected of him as a male in the household and became an adept axeman in his work building rail fences. Lincoln also agreed with the customary obligation of a son to give his father all earnings from work done outside the home until age 21.^[14] In later years, he occasionally loaned his father money.^[16]

In 1830, fearing a milk sickness outbreak, the family settled on public land in Macon County, Illinois.^[17] In 1831, when his father relocated the family to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, an ambitious 22-year-old Lincoln, seeking a better life, struck out on his own, canoeing down the Sangamon River to the village of New Salem in Sangamon County.^[18] In the spring of 1831, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods by flatboat from New Salem to New Orleans via the Sangamon, Illinois, and Mississippirivers. After arriving in New Orleans—and witnessing slavery firsthand—he walked back home.^[19]

Lincoln's formal education consisted of approximately 18 months of classes from several itinerant teachers; he was mostly self-educated and was an avid reader.^[20] He attained a reputation for brawn and audacity after a very competitive wrestling match to which he was challenged by the renowned leader of a group of ruffians, "the Clary's Grove boys".^[21] Some in his family, and in the neighborhood, considered him to be lazy.^[22][23] Lincoln avoided hunting and fishing out of an aversion to killing animals.^[24]