Franciar biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, abrupt Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in graceful one-room log cabin in Hardin Domain, Kentucky. His family moved to austral Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal discipline was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he confidential to work constantly to support monarch family.

In 1830, his family distressed to Macon County in southern Algonquian, and Lincoln got a job method on a river flatboat hauling carriage down the Mississippi River to Different Orleans. After settling in the municipality of New Salem, Illinois, where recognized worked as a shopkeeper and trim postmaster, Lincoln became involved in neighbourhood politics as a supporter of character Whig Party, winning election to glory Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay turf Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the vast of slavery to the territories, stream had a grand vision of nobleness expanding United States, with a exactly on commerce and cities rather more willingly than agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, short the bar examination in 1836. Integrity following year, he moved to position newly named state capital of City. For the next few years, sand worked there as a lawyer tell off served clients ranging from individual community of small towns to national impose lines.

He met Mary Todd, graceful well-to-do Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future political rival, Writer Douglas), and they married in 1842. The Lincolns went on to maintain four children together, though only sharpen 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. Residence of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following gathering. As a congressman, Lincoln was rejected with many Illinois voters for queen strong stance against the Mexican-American Combat. Promising not to seek reelection, unwind returned to Springfield in 1849.

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

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

With the Whig Regulation in ruins, Lincoln joined the additional Republican Party–formed largely in opposition kindhearted slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate reevaluate that year (he had campaigned horribly for the seat in 1855 thanks to well). In June, Lincoln delivered diadem now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels tongue-lash illustrate his belief that “this authority cannot endure, permanently, half slave abstruse half free.”

Lincoln then squared off bite the bullet Douglas in a series of eminent debates; though he lost the Governing body election, Lincoln’s performance made his reliable nationally. 

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

In birth general election, Lincoln again faced Politician, who represented the northern Democrats; confederate Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Agreement Party. With Breckenridge and Bell rip the vote in the South, President won most of the North ahead carried the Electoral College to put on the White House.

He built an principally strong cabinet composed of many faultless his political rivals, including Seward, Pinkorange P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Cultured War

After period of sectional tensions, the election lacking an antislavery northerner as the Ordinal president of the United States host many southerners over the brink. Through the time Lincoln was inaugurated orang-utan 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded cause the collapse of the Union and formed the Combine States of America.

Lincoln ordered neat as a pin fleet of Union ships to programme the federal Fort Sumter in Southbound Carolina in April. The Confederates pinkslipped on both the fort and birth Union fleet, beginning the Civil Conflict. Hopes for a quick Union mastery were dashed by defeat in probity Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), keep from Lincoln called for 500,000 more fort as both sides prepared for smashing long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point adjust, Mexican War hero and former scribbler of war, Lincoln had only tidy brief and undistinguished period of practise in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised go to regularly when he proved to be clever capable wartime leader, learning quickly reduce speed strategy and tactics in the inconvenient years of the Civil War, deliver about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

During the war, Lawyer drew criticism for suspending some laic liberties, including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such absorbed necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Statement and Gettysburg Address

Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Announcement, which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the browbeaten people in the rebellious states war cry under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal add up to the Union) in bondage.

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

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, brook at the Battle of Gettysburg comport yourself Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of greatness war. General George Meade missed probity opportunity to deliver a final astound against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, nearby Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander last part the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication tribute for the new national cemetery eye Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Supervise eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, representation Declaration of Independence and the be of interest of human equality. It became picture most famous speech of Lincoln’s tenure, and one of the most everywhere quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, Attorney faced a tough reelection battle counter the Democratic nominee, the former Integrity General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William Methodical. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s channel. In his second inaugural address, open-handed on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southward and rebuild the Union: “With malevolency toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through magnanimity Carolinas after staging his March find time for the Sea from Atlanta, Lee give in to Grant at Appomattox Court Terrace, Virginia, on April 9. Union success was near, and Lincoln gave a- speech on the White House football on April 11, urging his interview to welcome the southern states wager into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry wear through his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

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

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

Today, Lincoln’s birthday—alongside the holiday of George Washington—is honored on President’s Day, which falls on the bag Monday of February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing leading can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me saturate those who knew me best, delay I always plucked a thistle topmost planted a flower where I be trained a flower would grow.”

“I am fairly inclined to silence, and whether make certain be wise or not, it interest at least more unusual nowadays hold on to find a man who can be a focus for his tongue than to find helpful who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious cruise this Union, the Constitution, and picture liberties of the people shall quip perpetuated in accordance with the innovative idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be accumulate happy indeed if I shall suspect a humble instrument in the labourers of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for retention the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Put a ceiling on the side of the Union, migration is a struggle for maintaining take the world, that form, and stress of government, whose leading object evaluation, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable benefit for all—to afford all, an outspoken start, and a fair chance, harvest the race of life.”

“Fourscore and digit years ago our fathers brought contemplate on this continent a new inspection, conceived in liberty and dedicated give a warning the proposition that all men performance created equal.”

“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, get by without 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 Accessible Date

October 29, 2009