Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States from 1861 to 1865. He led the nation through the American Civil War, the country’s greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. He succeeded in preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy. Lincoln is remembered as the martyr hero of the U States.

About Abraham Lincoln in brief

Summary Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States from 1861 to 1865. He led the nation through the American Civil War, the country’s greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. He succeeded in preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy. Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on April 15, 1865. Lincoln is remembered as the martyr hero of the U States and he is consistently ranked as one of the greatest presidents in American history. He was born on February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky. His paternal grandparents, his namesake Captain Abraham Lincoln and wife Bathsheba, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky in the early 1800s. The heritage of Lincoln’s mother remains unclear, but it is widely assumed that she was the daughter of Lucy Hanks and Nancy Nancy Lincoln. They had three children: Sarah, Abraham, and Thomas, who died an infant. In 1860, Thomas Lincoln noted that the family’s move to Indiana was mainly on account of slavery, but mainly due to title disputes. In 1816, the family moved to the Indiana where they settled in an unbroken forest in Hurricane Township, Perry County, Indiana. They settled in Hardin County, and they had an infant: Abraham, Thomas, and Sarah, who bought or leased farms before losing all 200 acres of his land in court over title disputes in court in 1860.

In an account of the title disputes, Thomasincoln wrote: “Unbroken forest, unbroken land.’’ Abraham Lincoln was a self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U. S. Congressman from Illinois. He reentered politics in 1854, becoming a leader in the new Republican Party, and he reached a national audience in the 1858 debates against Stephen Douglas. Lincoln ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North in victory. He engineered the end to slavery with his Emancipation Proclamation and his order that the Army protect and recruit former slaves. He also encouraged border states to outlaw slavery, and promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which outlawed slavery across the country. Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign. He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. His marriage had produced four sons, two of whom preceded him in death, with severe emotional impact upon him and Mary. He died on April 14, 1865, just days after the war’s end at Appomattox, when he was attending a play at Ford’s Theatre with his wife Mary. His children, including eight-year-old Thomas, Abraham’s father, witnessed the attack. The family then moved to Kentucky and worked at odd jobs in Kentucky and Tennessee.