Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 вЂ" April 15, 1865) was the sixteenth President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1861 until his assassination. As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States,[1][2] Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president later that year. During his term, he helped preserve the United States by leading the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.

Lincoln closely supervised the victorious war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including Ulysses S. Grant. Historians have concluded that he handled the factions of the Republican Party well, bringing leaders of each faction into his cabinet and forcing them to cooperate. Lincoln successfully defused a war scare with the United Kingdom in 1861. Under his leadership, the Union took control of the border slave states at the start of the war. Additionally, he managed his own reelection in the 1864 presidential election.

Opponents of the war (also known as "Copperheads") criticized him for refusing to compromise on the slavery issue. Conversely, the Radical Republicans, an abolitionist faction of the Republican Party, criticized him for moving too slowly in abolishing slavery. Even with these road blocks, Lincoln successfully rallied public opinion through his rhetoric and speeches; his Gettysburg Address is but one example of this. 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. His assassination in 1865 was the first presidential assassination in U.S. history and made him a martyr for the ideal of national unity.

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, two uneducated farmers, in a one-room log cabin on the 348-acre (1.4 kmÐ'І) Sinking Spring Farm, in southeast Hardin County, Kentucky (now part of LaRue County).

Symbolic log cabin at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site.

Symbolic log cabin at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site.

For some time, Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, was a respected and relatively affluent citizen of the Kentucky backcountry. He had purchased the Sinking Spring Farm in December of 1808 for $200 cash and assumption of a debt.[3] The family belonged to a Hardshell Baptist church, although Abraham himself never joined their church, or any other church for that matter.

In 1816, the Lincoln family was forced to make a new start in Perry County (now in Spencer County), Indiana. He later noted that this move was "partly on account of slavery," and partly because of difficulties with land deeds in Kentucky: Unlike land in the Northwest Territory, Kentucky never had a proper U.S. survey, and farmers often had difficulties proving title to their property.

When Lincoln was nine, his mother, then thirty-four years old, died of milk sickness. Soon afterwards, his father remarried to Sarah Bush Johnston. Lincoln was affectionate toward his stepmother, whom he would call "Mother" for the rest of his life, but he was distant from his father.[4]

In 1830, after more economic and land-title difficulties in Indiana, the family settled on public land[5] in Macon County, Illinois. The following winter was desolate and especially brutal, and the family considered moving back to Indiana. The following year, when his father relocated the family to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, twenty-two-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, canoeing down the Sangamon River to the village of New Salem in Sangamon County.[citation needed] Later that year, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods from New Salem to New Orleans via flatboat on the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers.

Lincoln began his political career in 1832, at age 23, with an unsuccessful campaign for the Illinois General Assembly, as a member of the Whig Party. The centerpiece of his platform was the undertaking of navigational improvements on the Sangamon River. He believed that this would attract steamboat traffic, which would allow the sparsely populated, poorer areas along the river to flourish.

He was elected captain of an Illinois militia company drawn from New Salem during the Black Hawk War, and later wrote that he had not had "any such success in life which gave him so much satisfaction.

In 1834, he won election to the state legislature, and, after coming across the Commentaries on the Laws of England, began to teach himself law. Admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, that same year and began to practice law with John T. Stuart. With a reputation as a formidable adversary during cross-examinations and in his closing arguments, Lincoln became one of the most respected and successful lawyers in Illinois and grew steadily more prosperous.[citation needed]

He served four