Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1965)

16th President of the United States

• Famous Quotes
• Gettysburg Address
• House Divided
• 1st Inaugural
• 2nd Inaugural
• Final Speech

Abraham Lincoln was born on Feb. 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Hardin (now Larue) County, Ky. Indians had killed his grandfather, Lincoln wrote, "when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest" in 1786; this tragedy left his father, Thomas Lincoln, "a wandering laboring boy" who "grew up, literally without education."

In 1816 the Lincolns moved to Indiana, "partly on account of slavery," Abraham recalled, "but chiefly on account of difficulty in land titles in Kentucky." Lincoln's mother died in 1818, and the following year his father married a Kentucky widow, Sarah Bush Johnston.

Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois legislature in 1832. Two years later he was elected to the lower house for the first of four successive terms (serving there until 1841) as a member of the Whig Party.

Inspired by John Todd Stuart, a by Whig legislator, Lincoln became a lawyer in 1836, and in 1837 moved to Springfield, where he became Stuart's law partner. Lincoln began courting Mary Todd, of Kentucky and they were married on Nov. 4, 1842.

Lincoln went on to win the presidential election. By the time of Lincoln's inauguration in March 1861, seven states had seceded from the Union. Politics vied with war as Lincoln's major preoccupation in the presidency. The war required the deployment of huge numbers of men and quantities of materiel; for administrative assistance, therefore, Lincoln turned to the only large organization available for his use, the Republican party. The Constitution protected slavery in peace, but in war, Lincoln came to believe, the commander in chief could abolish slavery as a military necessity. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of Sept. 22, 1862, bore this military justification, as did all of Lincoln's racial measures, including especially his decision in the final proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, to accept blacks in the army.

Lincoln's victory in that election thus changed the racial future of the United States. It also agitated Southern-sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, who began to conspire first to abduct Lincoln and later to kill him. On Apr. 14, 1865, five days after Robert E. Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Lincoln attended a performance at Ford's Theatre in Washington. There Booth entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln. Lincoln died the next morning.

Lincoln's achievements will always be remembered, as well as his eloquent speeches, including the Gettysburg Address (Nov. 19, 1863), and in his second inaugural address (Mar. 4, 1865), in which he urged "malice toward none" and "charity for all" in the peace to come.