Abraham Lincoln’s Biography

and Legacy in Political System

 Abraham Lincoln
• byname Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter, or the Great
Emancipator
• (born February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S.—
died April 15, 1865, Washington, D.C.), 16th president of the 
United States (1861–65)
• Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky and
was raised on the frontier, primarily in Indiana. Lincoln was a
lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S.
Congressman.
• In 1854 he was angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act that
opened the territories to slavery. He reached a national
audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against
Stephen Douglas. Lincoln ran for President in 1860,
sweeping the North to gain victory. Southern states began
seceding from the Union, and Lincoln mobilized forces to
suppress the rebellion an restore the union.
Legacy in Political System
Lincoln's legacy is based on his momentous achievements: he
successfully waged a political struggle and civil war that preserved
the Union, ended slavery, and created the possibility of civil and
social freedom for African-Americans.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national

organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to
the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation
Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the
Confederacy.

The Emancipation Proclamation is arguably one of the most

important documents in the history of the United States. Abraham
Lincoln himself stated that he considered it to be his greatest legacy.
Abraham Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party and later a
Republican. He believed that the government’s job was to do
what a community of people could not do for themselves.
One of his greatest preoccupations as a political thinker was the
issue of self-governance and the promise and problems that
could arise from it. The choice by some to allow the expansion of
slavery was one such problem and was central to the American
Civil War. Although opposed to slavery from the outset of his
political career, Lincoln would not make its abolition a mainstay
of his policy until several years into the war.
Abraham Lincoln has gone down in history
as something of a martyr for his country.
That’s in part because of his assassination
by John Wilkes Booth, which happened to
occur on Good Friday—a connection that
has been drawn time and again. But
Lincoln had already begun to be
mythicized during his lifetime, some of his
contemporaries drawing parallels between
him and figures like George Washington.
Lincoln had his critics as well, particularly
in the South: there were those who
regarded him as an opponent to the values
of personal freedom and states’ rights.
Thank you!