Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky; his family moved
to southern Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal schooling was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he
had to work constantly to support his family.

In 1830, his family moved to Macon County in southern Illinois, and Lincoln got a job working on a river flatboat
hauling freight down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. After settling in the town of New Salem, Illinois,
where he worked as a shopkeeper and a postmaster, Lincoln became involved in local politics as a supporter of
the Whig Party, winning election to the Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery to the territories,
and had a grand vision of the expanding United States, with a focus on commerce and cities rather than
agriculture. Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar examination in 1836. The following year, he moved to
the newly named state capital of Springfield. For the next few years, he worked there as a lawyer, earning a
reputation as “Honest Abe” and serving clients ranging from individual residents of small towns to national
railroad lines.He met Mary Todd, a well-to-do Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future
political rival, Stephen Douglas), and they married in 1842.

Lincoln’s Election to the White House

Lincoln won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following year.
As a congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with many Illinois voters for his strong stance against the U.S. war
with Mexico. Promising not to seek reelection, he returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back into national politics, however: Douglas, a leading Democrat in Congress, had
pushed through the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory,
rather than the federal government, had the right to decide whether the territory should be slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large crowd in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act with Douglas, denouncing slavery and its extension and calling the institution a violation of the most basic
tenets of the Declaration of Independence.

With the Whig Party in ruins, Lincoln joined the new Republican Party–formed largely in opposition to slavery’s
extension into the territories–in 1858 and ran for the Senate again that year (he had campaigned unsuccessfully
for the seat in 1855 as well). In June, Lincoln delivered his now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he
quoted from the Gospels to illustrate his belief that “this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave
and half free.”

Lincoln then squared off against Douglas in a series of famous debates; though he lost the Senate election,
Lincoln’s performance made his reputation nationally. His profile rose even higher in early 1860, after he
delivered another rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their
candidate for president, passing over Senator William H. Seward of New York and other powerful contenders in
favor of the rangy Illinois lawyer with only one undistinguished congressional term under his belt.

In the general election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the northern Democrats; southern
Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new
Constitutional Union Party. With Breckenridge and Bell splitting the vote in the South, Lincoln won most of the
North and carried the Electoral College to win the White House.

Lincoln and the Civil War

After years of sectional tensions, the election of an antislavery northerner as the 16th president of the United
States drove many southerners over the brink. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated as 16th U.S. president in
March 1861, seven southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.
After Lincoln ordered a fleet of Union ships to supply South Carolina’s Fort Sumter in April, the Confederates
fired on both the fort and the Union fleet, beginning the Civil War. Hopes for a quick Union victory were dashed
by defeat in the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), and Lincoln called for 500,000 more troops as both sides prepared
for a long conflict.

While the Confederate leader Jefferson Davis was a West Point graduate, Mexican War hero and former
secretary of war, Lincoln had only a brief and undistinguished period of service in the Black Hawk War (1832) to
his credit. He surprised many when he proved to be a capable wartime leader, learning quickly about strategy
and tactics in the early years of the Civil War, and about choosing the ablest commanders.

General George McClellan, though beloved by his troops, continually frustrated Lincoln with his reluctance to
advance, and when McClellan failed to pursue Robert E. Lee’s retreating Confederate Army in the aftermath of
the Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln removed him from command.

During the war, Lincoln drew criticism for suspending some civil liberties, including the right of habeas corpus,
but he considered such measures necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address

Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which
took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the slaves in the rebellious states but left those in the border
states (loyal to the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln once maintained that his “paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either
to save or destroy slavery,” he nonetheless came to regard emancipation as one of his greatest achievements,
and would argue for the passage of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the
13th Amendment after his death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863–at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania–finally
turned the tide of the war. General George Meade missed the opportunity to deliver a final blow against Lee’s
army at Gettysburg, and Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant, as supreme
commander of the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication ceremony for the new
national cemetery at Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Address eloquently expressed the war’s
purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the pursuit of human
equality. It became the most famous speech of Lincoln’s presidency, and one of the most widely quoted
speeches in history.

Victory and Death

In 1864, Lincoln faced a tough reelection battle against the Democratic nominee, the former Union General
George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William T. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in
September) swung many votes the president’s way. In his second inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1865,
Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the South and rebuild the Union: “With malice toward none; with
charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through the Carolinas, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox
Court House, Virginia, on April 9. Union victory was near, and Lincoln gave a speech on the White House lawn
on April 11, urging his audience to welcome the southern states back into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not
live to help carry out his vision of Reconstruction.

On the night of April 14, the actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth slipped into the president’s
box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in the back of the head. Lincoln was carried
to a boardinghouse across the street from the theater, but he never regained consciousness, and died in the
early morning hours of April 15, 1865.