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006- BIOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM LICOLN

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Abraham Lincoln
Born
February 12, 1809, Hodgenville, Kentucky
Died
April 15, 1865, Petersen House, Washington, D.C.
Presidential Term
March 4, 1861 – April 15, 1865
Spouse
Mary Todd Lincoln
Major Accomplishments
Served Four Terms in Illinois Legislature
Member of U.S. House of Representatives
16th President of the United States
Commander in Chief During Civil War
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States of America, who
successfully prosecuted the Civil War to preserve the nation. He played in key
role in passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially ended slavery in
America. Murdered by John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln became the first U.S.
president to be assassinated. Prior to his election as president in 1860, he had
successful careers as a lawyer and politician in Illinois, serving several terms in
the state legislature and one in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also holds
the distinction of being the only U.S. president to receive a patent; in 1849, he
designed a system for lifting riverboats off sandbars.
Abraham Lincoln’s Life: Youth
Abraham Lincoln was born on Sinking Springs Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky,
on February 12, 1809, to Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln.
When Abraham was two, the family moved to nearby Knob Creek Farm. Five
years later, the family moved again, to the wilderness on Little Pigeon Creek in
Indiana. On October 5, 1818, his mother died, reportedly of “milk sickness,”
caused by drinking milk from cows that have eaten a poisonous, blossoming
plant called snakeroot. Thomas Lincoln remarried a year later, to Sarah Bush
Johnston, a woman of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, whom he had known for many
years. She had three children by a previous marriage, Elizabeth, Matilda, and
John. Although Abraham and his father were never close, Sarah and
nine-year-old Abraham formed a loving relationship that continued throughout
their lives. She encouraged him in his attempts to educate himself, which he did
by borrowing and studying books.
Lincoln Moves To Illinois
In 1830, when Abraham was 21, the family moved to Illinois. He performed odd
jobs and took a flatboat of goods to New Orleans. At New Salem, he was a
partner in a store at that failed and would be many years paying off the last of
the store’s creditors, an obligation he referred to as “the National Debt.”
Elected captain of a militia unit during the 1832 Black Hawk War—an election he
later would say pleased him more than any other—he saw no combat, but he
met the man who would change his life in many ways: John Todd Stuart.
Lincoln Becomes A Lawyer
Stuart and Lincoln both ran for the Illinois General Assembly that year; Stuart
won, Lincoln didn’t. Two years later, however, both men won election. The
more experienced Stuart, known as “Jerry Sly” for his skills at management and
intrigue, showed Lincoln the ropes and loaned him law books, that he might
study to become an attorney. In 1836, Lincoln received a license to practice law.
He would go on to establish a respectable record as an attorney and was often
hired by the Illinois Central Railroad.
Lincoln won reelection to the General Assembly in 1836, 1838, and 1840; among
his accomplishments was a major role in getting the state capital moved to
Springfield. He did not actively seek the post again after 1840, but won the
popular vote in 1854; however, he resigned so he would be eligible for election
to the U.S. Senate.
Lincoln Goes To Congress
In 1846, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he gave the
infamous “Spot” speech about the war that had begun with Mexico. He
demanded President James K. Polk reveal the exact spot on which American
blood had been shed, starting the war, and whether that spot was on American
or Mexican soil.
The speech may have been a reflection of words his “beau ideal” statesman,
Speaker of the House Henry Clay, had uttered in a speech Lincoln heard while
visiting Lexington, Kentucky, on the way to Washington. Or it may have been a
partisan maneuver—Lincoln was a Whig, Polk a Democrat—to ingratiate himself
with the older Whigs in Washington. Popular opinion in most of the country
supported the war, and newspapers around the country ridiculed him as
“Spotty Lincoln.” He did not run for reelection to Congress in 1848, but for the
first time in its history, his home district elected a Democrat instead of a Whig.
He spent the next several years focusing on his law practice to support his
growing family.
Family Life With Mary Todd Lincoln
Abraham and Mary Lincoln would produce four children: Robert Todd, named for Mary’s father; Edward
(Eddie) Baker, named for a close friend; William (Willie) Wallace, named for Dr. William Wallace, who
had married Francis, another Todd sister, and had become close friends with Lincoln; and Thomas (Tad),
named for Lincoln’s father who had died two years earlier. Eddie died in 1850, Willie in 1862, and Tad in
1871. Only Robert lived to adulthood; the last of his descendants would die in 1985, ending the
Abraham Lincoln family line. (Learn more about Mary Todd Lincoln)
Although Lincoln did not seek office himself during these years, he remained active in the Whig Party,
counseling candidates who sought his advice and occasionally responding to speaking requests. In 1854,
he essentially was campaign manager for Richard Yates, who was running for the General Assembly.
Lincoln did not want to be elected to that body again himself because he knew the legislature would be
electing a new U.S. Senator during its coming term, to fill the position of James Shields, who had moved
to the Minnesota Territory. (At that time, nearly 60 years before the Seventeenth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution provided for direct election of senators by the voters, they were chosen by each state’s
legislature.) By Illinois law, sitting state legislators could not be elected to the U.S. Congress—and
Lincoln desperately wanted to become the new senator, a position he said he would prefer over being
president. Regardless, eventually he reluctantly agreed to run . He won more votes than any other
candidate but resigned in order to keep his senatorial chances open.
.
A Nation Dividing
In 1854, a passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed residents of any new
states admitted to the Union to decide for themselves whether or not the state
would be free or slaveholding. In the 1857 Dred Scott decision the Supreme
Court ruled that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the rights
guaranteed by the Constitution applied to Negroes and never had. As a result of
these events, many who had disassociated themselves with abolitionists’
agitation began drifting into their camp, and the abolitionists movement
intensified.
Like his father, Lincoln opposed slavery; however, he also deplored abolitionists’ activities because they
threatened to cause a schism in the nation. In regard to “slavery agitation” he said, “In my opinion, it will
not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. ‘A house divided against itself cannot
stand'”
Notes for a speech he delivered in Ohio clearly articulate his opinions on the slavery issue in the 1850s:
The Lincoln Douglas Debates
In 1858, he engaged in a legendary series of debates across Illinois with the author of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, Sen. Stephen Douglas. The five-foot, four-inch Douglas—”the Little Giant”—and
the lanky, six-foot-four Lincoln faced off over the issue of expanding slavery beyond the states where it
currently existed. Lincoln carefully made a distinction between slavery where it existed and its
expansion into new territories and states. The debates grew national attention, and Lincoln was invited
to speak in other states. (Read more about the Lincoln Douglas Debates)
The national attention he received resulted in the Republican Party making him its presidential
candidate in the 1860 election. On the divisive matter of slavery, the Republican platform supported
prohibiting slavery in the territories but opposed interfering with it in the states where it already
existed.
President Abraham Lincoln
On December 20, nearly three months before Lincoln would take office (presidential inaugurations
occurred in March at that time), South Carolina officially seceded from the Union. It was soon joined by
all states of the Deep South. They feared the rise of this new, sectional party that opposed expansion of
slavery. If the peculiar institution was not allowed to spread, slaveholding states would be
outnumbered, and they feared losing the political power that protected slavery.
For weeks, president-elect Lincoln said nothing as state after state renounced its compact with the
United States, though it is questionable whether anything he said would have halted the secession
movement. Previous presidents under whom secession was threatened—Andrew Jackson and Zachary
Taylor—had both said they would send troops to force states to remain in the Union but never had to
take that action. Lincoln, faced with the reality of losing a section of the country, felt he did have to after
Confederate guns fired during the Battle of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.
The Civil War Begins
He called for 75,000 troops to suppress the Southern rebellion. Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee then
seceded, refusing to fight their fellow Southerners and claiming Lincoln had overreached his authority
because Congress was not in session and therefore could not authorize a war.
The new president knew little of military affairs, but just as he had educated himself as a youth, he
began a self-education in the art of war, checking books of military history out of the Library of
Congress. From this reading, and perhaps from an innate sense of what needed to be done, he at times
seemed to understand better than some of his generals that destroying the enemy’s armies was more
important than capturing the Confederate capital.
The Emancipation Proclamation
In the autumn of 1862, following the Battle of Antietam, he announced his Emancipation Proclamation.
It granted freedom to slaves—but only to those in the areas still in rebellion, which didn’t recognize his
authority. It was a war measure, meant to prevent European recognition of the slaveholding
Confederacy, and it shifted the war from one to preserve the Union to one that would both preserve the
Union and end slavery.
Lincoln Reelected In 1864
In presidential elections of 1864, Lincoln believed he would not be reelected. The war had dragged on
for over three years, draining the treasury. Major battles, like the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of
Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle Gettysburg, and the
Battle of Chickamauga, had each produced over 10,000 casualties, far beyond anything the nation had
experienced in previous wars. Grant’s current campaign in Virginia had already suffered nearly 50,000
losses. Radical abolitionists in the North were upset with him for not pressing harder on the slavery
issue.
The End Of The Civil War
On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the largest Confederate army to Grant following the
Appomattox Campaign and the Appomattox Courthouse, virtually ending the war. Lincoln, asked what
should be done with the citizens of the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, responded, “I’d let
’em up easy, let ’em up easy.”
Abraham Lincoln Assassinated
With the light of victory clearly breaking over the horizon, Lincoln and Mary went to Ford’s Theater on
the night of April 14 to see the comedy, “Our American Cousin.” During the performance, an actor and
staunch Confederate sympathizer named John Wilkes Booth slipped into the presidential box and shot
Lincoln in the head. The president died the following morning. Within 24 hours, not a shred of black
crepe was to be had in the nation’s capitol as homes, stores and government buildings were draped in
mourning. Even some Southern newspapers condemned the assassination.
Lincoln was laid to rest in Springfield, Illinois. In 1876, a counterfeiting gang attempted to steal his body,
to exchange it for their master engraver, who had been imprisoned. The plan was thwarted, and when
the president’s body was placed in a new tomb in 1901, some 4,000 pounds of cement were poured on
top of his coffin to prevent any future attempts.
The popular image of Lincoln has changed many times. He is beloved as the Great Emancipator and the
Savior of the Union, but many people, particularly in the South, regard him as a tyrant and a dictator. He
has been accused of being racist, though his views were in keeping with those of most Americans of his
times. During his presidency, association with black leaders such as Frederick Douglass seem to have
made his racial views more enlightened than those of most mid-19th-century Americans.
His primary focus as president always was on restoring the United States as a single nation under the
Constitution; ending slavery was secondary to that goal. However, the Thirteenth Amendment, banning
slavery throughout the United States, was passed only after Lincoln pulled political strings and granted
favors in return for “Aye” votes. It had already failed once in the House, prior to Lincoln’s backroom
negotiations. In the words of Thaddeus Stevens, “The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was
passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”
Lincoln’s service as president is also notable for the day of thanksgiving he proclaimed on the last
Thursday of November 1864. America’s modern Thanksgiving holiday dates from that first national
observation.
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