Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the Union through the American Civil War to defend the nation as a constitutional union and succeeded in abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy.
Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky and was raised on the frontier, primarily in Indiana. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. Congressman from Illinois. In 1849, he returned to his successful law practice in central Illinois. In 1854, he was angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the territories to slavery, and he re-entered politics. He soon became a leader of the new Republican Party. He reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln ran for president in 1860, sweeping the Northto gain victory. Pro-slavery elements in the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding from the nation. During this time, the newly formed Confederate States of Americabegan seizing federal military bases in the south. Just over one month after Lincoln assumed the presidency, the Confederate States attacked Fort Sumter, a U.S. fort in South Carolina. Following the bombardment, Lincoln mobilized forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the union.
Lincoln, a moderate Republican, had to navigate a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from both the Democratic and Republican parties. His allies, the War Democrats and the Radical Republicans, demanded harsh treatment of the Southern Confederates. Anti-war Democrats (called "Copperheads") despised Lincoln, and irreconcilable pro-Confederate elements plotted his assassination. He managed the factions by exploiting their mutual enmity, carefully distributing political patronage, and by appealing to the American people. His Gettysburg Address came to be seen as one of the greatest and most influential statements of American national purpose. Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the South's trade. He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere, and averted British intervention by defusing the TrentAffair. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states "in rebellion" to be free. It also directed the Army and Navy to "recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons" and to receive them "into the armed service of the United States." Lincoln also pressured border states to outlaw slavery, and he promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which upon its ratification abolished slavery.
Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign. He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. On April 14, 1865, just five days after the war's end at Appomattox, he was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Mary, when he was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for his wartime leadership and for his efforts to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. Lincoln is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history.
Biography[]
Early career[]
Abraham Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky on 12 February 1809, and he was raised on the frontier in Kentucky and Indiana. He became a lawyer after educating himself, and he also entered politics as an American Whig Party member, serving in the State House of Representatives before entering the US House of Representatives in 1847. Lincoln became unpopular due to his opposition to the Mexican-American War, but he returned to politics as a leader of the nascent Republican Party in 1854. In 1858, he lost a heated US Senate race in Illinois to Stephen A. Douglas of the Democratic Party after engaging in a series of famous debates with him, but he became a celebrity for his arguments against slavery and states' rights. Lincoln, like many former Whigs of his time, identified as a conservative, once rhetorically asking, "What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?" However, he was opposed by the conservative faction of his party during his presidency due to his acquired abolitionist views (he had formerly been a mere anti-extentionist), and he often expressed liberal social views, once declaring, "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." According to Voteview, Lincoln was more conservative than 64% of the 30th House and more liberal than 68% of Whigs in the House during his service.
Presidency[]
In 1860, Lincoln ran as the Republican presidential nominee, and he defeated Douglas and Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge to become the next President. Upon his election, eleven states in the American South seceded to form the pro-slavery Confederate States of America, and Lincoln remained the president of the remaining northern and western states. The Union fought against the CSA during the ensuing American Civil War of 1861-1865, and Lincoln originally sought only to preserve the union, with or without slavery. However, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing several slaves in the rebelled states, and the Union recruited African-American soldiers into the US Army. In 1864, Lincoln defeated Democratic challenger and former Union general George B. McClellan to secure re-election as president, and he made the Southern Democrat Andrew Johnson his vice-president. In January 1865, he oversaw the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which would ensure that slavery was outlawed across the USA by constitutional law.
Assassination[]
At 10:15 pm on April 14, 1865, five days after the surrender of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth while viewing the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington DC. After stabbing Major Henry Rathbone, Booth then jumped down onto the stage where he shouted “Sic semper tyrannis,” meaning "thus always to tyrants" in Latin, and went on the run before being hunted down by Union troops and killed by Boston Corbett, just 2 weeks after Lincoln’s death. After being attended by Doctor Charles Leale and two other doctors, Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen House where he remained in a coma for eight hours and died of his gunshot wounds the following morning at 7:22 am on April 15, 1865. Andrew Johnson succeeded him as president. Lincoln was the first president to have been assassinated (although some believe that Zachary Taylor was the first), and he is currently seen as one of the greatest American presidents, due to his achievements.
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