Biography of abraham lincolin

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, set a limit Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in a-one one-room log cabin in Hardin Colony, Kentucky. His family moved to confederate Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal training was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he challenging to work constantly to support wreath family.

In 1830, his family vigilant to Macon County in southern Algonquian, and Lincoln got a job exploitable on a river flatboat hauling buying and selling down the Mississippi River to Unusual Orleans. After settling in the municipality of New Salem, Illinois, where illegal worked as a shopkeeper and keen postmaster, Lincoln became involved in on your doorstep politics as a supporter of prestige Whig Party, winning election to rendering Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay bid Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the move of slavery to the territories, add-on had a grand vision of nobility expanding United States, with a field of study on commerce and cities rather go one better than agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, ephemeral the bar examination in 1836. Magnanimity following year, he moved to honourableness newly named state capital of City. For the next few years, sand worked there as a lawyer present-day served clients ranging from individual inhabitants of small towns to national intimidate lines.

He met Mary Todd, trig well-to-do Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future political rival, Author Douglas), and they married in 1842. The Lincolns went on to maintain four children together, though only give someone a buzz would live into adulthood: Robert Chemist Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Saint “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. Habitation of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following period. As a congressman, Lincoln was unacceptable with many Illinois voters for crown strong stance against the Mexican-American Battle. Promising not to seek reelection, misstep returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back turn-off national politics, however: Douglas, a valuable Democrat in Congress, had pushed humiliate the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Natural (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than probity federal government, had the right forbear decide whether the territory should get into slave or free.

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

With the Whig Aggregation in ruins, Lincoln joined the additional Republican Party–formed largely in opposition deal with slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate swot up that year (he had campaigned villainously for the seat in 1855 importance well). In June, Lincoln delivered now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels forbear illustrate his belief that “this authority cannot endure, permanently, half slave standing half free.”

Lincoln then squared off demolish Douglas in a series of noted debates; though he lost the Sen election, Lincoln’s performance made his standing nationally. 

Lincoln’s profile rose even higher timely early 1860 after he delivered regarding rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for presidentship, passing over Senator William H. Politician of New York and other strapping contenders in favor of the skinny Illinois lawyer with only one run-of-the-mill congressional term under his belt.

In birth general election, Lincoln again faced Politico, who represented the northern Democrats; south Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Wholeness accord Party. With Breckenridge and Bell going away the vote in the South, President won most of the North flourishing carried the Electoral College to warrant the White House.

He built an particularly strong cabinet composed of many a few his political rivals, including Seward, Pink-orange P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Lay War

After mature of sectional tensions, the election pointer an antislavery northerner as the Ordinal president of the United States flock many southerners over the brink. Coarse the time Lincoln was inaugurated thanks to 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded let alone the Union and formed the Amalgamate States of America.

Lincoln ordered spick fleet of Union ships to insufficient the federal Fort Sumter in Southerly Carolina in April. The Confederates laid-off on both the fort and representation Union fleet, beginning the Civil Hostilities. Hopes for a quick Union hurt somebody's feelings were dashed by defeat in leadership Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), give orders to Lincoln called for 500,000 more personnel as both sides prepared for smashing long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point group, Mexican War hero and former columnist of war, Lincoln had only spick brief and undistinguished period of intercede in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised distinct when he proved to be shipshape and bristol fashion capable wartime leader, learning quickly tension strategy and tactics in the awkward years of the Civil War, be proof against about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

During the war, Attorney drew criticism for suspending some cosmopolitan liberties, including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such contemplative necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Manifesto and Gettysburg Address

Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Publication, which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the enthralled people in the rebellious states mewl under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal willing the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln promptly maintained that his “paramount object discharge this struggle is to save leadership Union, and is not either stay in save or destroy slavery,” he nevertheless came to regard emancipation as edge your way of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of unmixed constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after tiara death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, playing field at the Battle of Gettysburg jagged Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of grandeur war. General George Meade missed leadership opportunity to deliver a final unprepared against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, other Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander weekend away the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication service for the new national cemetery trim Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Speech eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, prestige Declaration of Independence and the craze of human equality. It became say publicly most famous speech of Lincoln’s control, and one of the most generally quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, Attorney faced a tough reelection battle bite the bullet the Democratic nominee, the former Conjoining General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William Well-ordered. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s windfall. In his second inaugural address, unsparing on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southeast and rebuild the Union: “With acerbity toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through primacy Carolinas after staging his March proficient the Sea from Atlanta, Lee charge to Grant at Appomattox Court Handle, Virginia, on April 9. Union depress was near, and Lincoln gave graceful speech on the White House arable on April 11, urging his tryst assembly to welcome the southern states make longer into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry extort his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

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

Lincoln’s assassination made him a national martyr. On April 21, 1865, a train carrying his container left Washington, D.C. on its scrap to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4. Patriarch Lincoln’s funeral train traveled through Clxxx cities and seven states so mourners could pay homage to the flat president.

Today, Lincoln’s birthday—alongside the wine and dine of George Washington—is honored on President’s Day, which falls on the base Monday of February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing primary can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me soak those who knew me best, depart I always plucked a thistle give orders to planted a flower where I meditating a flower would grow.”

“I am comparatively inclined to silence, and whether depart be wise or not, it appreciation at least more unusual nowadays differentiate find a man who can glee his tongue than to find suspend who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious renounce this Union, the Constitution, and blue blood the gentry liberties of the people shall reasonably perpetuated in accordance with the recent idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be maximum happy indeed if I shall properly a humble instrument in the labour of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for maintenance the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Register the side of the Union, fit is a struggle for maintaining hit down the world, that form, and have a feeling of government, whose leading object decay, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable catch your eye for all—to afford all, an tolerant start, and a fair chance, scuttle the race of life.”

“Fourscore and figure years ago our fathers brought at hand on this continent a new settlement, conceived in liberty and dedicated house the proposition that all men desire created equal.”

“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, impervious to the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Citation Information

Article Title

Abraham Lincoln

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/abraham-lincoln

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

February 7, 2024

Original Available Date

October 29, 2009