Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a
one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky; his
family moved to southern Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s
formal schooling was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he had
to work constantly to support his family. In 1830, his family moved to Macon
County in southern Illinois,
and Lincoln got a job working on a river flatboat hauling freight down the Mississippi
River to New Orleans.
After settling in the town of New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a
shopkeeper and a postmaster, Lincoln became involved in local politics as a
supporter of the Whig Party,
winning election to the Illinois state legislature in 1834. Like his Whig
heroes, Henry Clay
and Daniel
Webster, Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery to the territories,
and had a grand vision of the expanding United States, with a focus on commerce
and cities rather than agriculture.
The war years were difficult for Abraham Lincoln
and his family. After his young son Willie died of typhoid fever in 1862, the
emotionally fragile Mary Lincoln, widely unpopular for her frivolity and
spendthrift ways, held seances in the White House in the hopes of communicating
with him, earning her even more derision.
Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar
examination in 1836. The following year, he moved to the newly named state
capital of Springfield. For the next few years, he worked there as a lawyer,
earning a reputation as “Honest Abe” and serving clients ranging from
individual residents of small towns to national railroad lines. He met Mary
Todd, a well-to-do Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future
political rival, Stephen Douglas), and they married in 1842.
Lincoln won election to the U.S. House of
Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following year. As a
congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with Illinois voters for his strong stance
against the U.S. war with Mexico.
Promising not to seek reelection, he returned to Springfield in 1849. Events
conspired to push him back into national politics, however: Douglas, a leading
Democrat in Congress, had pushed through the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act
(1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than the
federal government, had the right to decide whether the territory should be
slave or free. On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large crowd in Peoria
to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Douglas, denouncing
slavery and its extension and calling the institution a violation of the most
basic tenets of the Declaration
of Independence.
With the Whig Party in ruins, Lincoln joined the
new Republican Party–formed largely in opposition to slavery’s extension into
the territories–in 1858 and ran for the Senate again that year (he had
campaigned unsuccessfully for the seat in 1855 as well). In June, Lincoln
delivered his now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the
Gospels to illustrate his belief that “this government cannot endure,
permanently, half slave and half free.” Lincoln then squared off against
Douglas in a series of famous debates; though he lost the election, Lincoln’s
performance made his reputation nationally. His profile rose even higher in
early 1860, after he delivered another rousing speech at New York City’s
Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for
president, passing over Senator William H. Seward of New York and other
powerful contenders in favor of the rangy Illinois lawyer with only one
undistinguished congressional term under his belt.
In the general election, Lincoln again faced
Douglas, who represented the northern Democrats; southern Democrats had
nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand
new Constitutional Union Party. With Breckenridge and Bell splitting the vote
in the South, Lincoln won most of the North and carried the Electoral College. After
years of sectional tensions, the election of an antislavery northerner as the
16th president of the United States drove many southerners over the brink, and
by the time Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861 seven southern states had
seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate
States of America. After Lincoln ordered a fleet of Union ships to
supply South Carolina’s Fort Sumter
in April, the Confederates fired on both the fort and the Union fleet,
beginning the Civil War. Hopes for a quick Union victory were dashed by defeat
in the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), and Lincoln called for 500,000 more
troops as both sides settled in for a long conflict.
While the Confederate leader Jefferson
Davis was a West Point graduate, Mexican War hero and former secretary
of war, Lincoln had only a brief and undistinguished period of service in the
Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised many by proving to be a more
than capable wartime leader, learning quickly about strategy and tactics in the
early years of the Civil War, and about choosing the ablest commanders. General
George
McClellan, though beloved by his troops, continually frustrated
Lincoln with his reluctance to advance, and when McClellan failed to pursue
Robert E. Lee’s retreating Confederate Army in the aftermath of the Union
victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln removed him from command. During
the war, Lincoln drew criticism for suspending some civil liberties, including
the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such measures necessary to win
the war.
Shortly after the Battle of
Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of
the slaves in the rebellious states but left those in the border states (loyal
to the Union) in bondage. Though Lincoln once maintained that his “paramount
object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or
destroy slavery,” he nonetheless came to regard emancipation as one of his
greatest achievements, and would argue for the passage of a constitutional
amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after his
death in 1865).
Two important Union victories in July 1863–at
Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania–finally turned the tide of
the war. General George Meade missed the opportunity to deliver a final blow
against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, and Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the
victor at Vicksburg, Ulysses S.
Grant, as supreme commander of the Union forces. In November 1863,
Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication ceremony
for the new national cemetery at Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg
Address eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding
Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the pursuit of human equality. It
became the most famous speech of Lincoln’s presidency, and one of the most
widely quoted speeches in history.
In 1864, Lincoln faced a tough reelection battle
against the Democratic nominee, the former Union General George McClellan, but
Union victories in battle (especially William T. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta
in September) swung many votes the president’s way. In his second inaugural
address, delivered on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct
the South and rebuild the Union: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”
As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through
the Carolinas, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox
Court House on April 9. Union victory was near, and Lincoln gave a
speech on the White House lawn on April 11, urging his audience to welcome the
southern states back into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help
carry out his vision of Reconstruction.
On the night of April 14, the actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes
Booth slipped into the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington
and shot him point-blank in the back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a
boardinghouse across the street from the theater, but he never regained
consciousness, and died in the early morning hours of April 15.
#Walking in
the footsteps of Giants with Gbenga Asaolu~Eagleolu# Abraham Lincoln_ May 28
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