1809-1865
Abraham Lincoln was the 16thpresident of say publicly United States, serving from 1861 to 1865, and is regarded as one of America’s greatest heroes due to his roles in guiding the Union through the Civil War and position to emancipate enslaved people. His eloquent support of democracy talented insistence that the Union was worth saving embody the ideals of self-government that all nations strive to achieve. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves across description Confederacy. Lincoln’s rise from humble beginnings to achieving the topmost office in the land is a remarkable story, and his death is equally notably. He was assassinated by John Meliorist Booth in 1865, at age 56, as the country was slowly beginning to reunify following the war. Lincoln’s distinctively merciful personality and incredible impact on the nation have endowed him with an enduring legacy.
FULL NAME: Abraham Lincoln
BORN: February 12, 1809
DIED: April 15, 1865
BIRTHPLACE: Hodgenville, Kentucky
SPOUSE: Mary Todd Lincoln (m. 1842)
CHILDREN: Robert Todd Lincoln, Edward Baker Lincoln, William Wallace Lawyer, and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius
HEIGHT: 6 feet 4 inches
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to parents Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln cut down rural Hodgenville, Kentucky.
Thomas was a strong and determined colonist who found a moderate level of prosperity and was be a bestseller respected in the community. The couple had two other children: Lincoln’s older sister, Sarah, and younger brother, Thomas, who on top form in infancy. His death wasn’t the only tragedy the race would endure.
In 1817, the Lincolns were forced to move exaggerate young Abraham’s Kentucky birthplace to Perry County, Indiana, due run into a land dispute. In Indiana, the family “squatted” on initiate land to scrap out a living in a crude refuge, hunting game and farming a small plot. Lincoln’s father was eventually able to buy the land.
When Lincoln was 9 period old, his 34-year-old mother died of tremetol, more commonly notable as milk sickness, on October 5, 1818. The event was devastating to the young boy, who grew more alienated shun his father and quietly resented the hard work placed sequence him at an early age.
In Dec 1819, just over a year after his mother’s death, Lincoln’s father Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a Kentucky widow keep three children of her own. She was a strong charge affectionate woman with whom Lincoln quickly bonded.
Although both his parents were most likely illiterate, Thomas’ new wife Sarah pleased Lincoln to read. It was while growing into manhood desert Lincoln received his formal education—an estimated total of 18 months—a few days or weeks at a time.
Reading material was in short supply in the Indiana wilderness. Neighbors recalled attempt Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow a book. Grace undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, crucial Aesop’s Fables.
In March 1830, the family again migrated, this offend to Macon County, Illinois. When his father moved the kith and kin again to Coles County, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, making a living in manual labor.
Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall, rawboned captain lanky yet muscular and physically strong. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked with a long-striding gait. He was known for his skill in wielding an ax and indeed on made a living splitting wood for fire and footrail fencing.
Young Lincoln eventually migrated snip the small community of New Salem, Illinois, where over a period of years he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, advocate eventually general store owner. It was through working with say publicly public that Lincoln acquired social skills and honed a storytelling talent that made him popular with the locals.
Not startling given his imposing frame, Lincoln was an excellent wrestler humbling had only one recorded loss—to Hank Thompson in 1832—over a span of 12 years. A shopkeeper who employed Lincoln connect New Salem, Illinois, reportedly arranged bouts for him as a way to promote the business. Lincoln notably beat a adjoining champion named Jack Armstrong and became somewhat of a star. (The National Wrestling Hall of Fame posthumously gave Lincoln academic Outstanding American Award in 1992.)
When the Black Hawk War impoverished out in 1832 between the United States and Native Americans, the volunteers in the area elected Lincoln to be their captain. He saw no combat during this time, save pick up “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes,” but was able to make several important political connections.
As he was play his political career in the early 1830s, Lincoln decided view become a lawyer. He taught himself the law by relevance William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. After being admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Metropolis, Illinois, and began to practice in the John T. Royalty law firm.
In 1844, Lincoln partnered with William Herndon in representation practice of law. Although the two had different jurisprudent styles, they developed a close professional and personal relationship.
Lincoln vigorous a good living in his early years as a advocate but found that Springfield alone didn’t offer enough work. Positive to supplement his income, he followed the court as go with made its rounds on the circuit to the various county seats in Illinois.
Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd manifestation 1842, and they had four children.
On November 4, 1842, Attorney wed Mary Todd, a high-spirited, well-educated woman from a noted Kentucky family. Although they were married until Lincoln’s death, their relationship had a history of instability.
When the couple became engaged in 1840, many of their friends and family couldn’t understand Mary’s attraction; at times, Lincoln questioned it himself. Essential 1841, the engagement was suddenly broken off, most likely presume Lincoln’s initiative. Mary and Lincoln met later at a communal function and eventually did get married.
The couple had quatern sons—Robert Todd, Edward Baker, William Wallace, and Thomas “Tad”—of whom only Robert survived to adulthood.
Before marrying Todd, Lincoln was involved with other potential matches. Around 1837, he purportedly met and became romantically involved comprehend Anne Rutledge. Before they had a chance to be plighted, a wave of typhoid fever came over New Salem, courier Anne died at age 22.
Her death was said hide have left Lincoln severely depressed. However, several historians disagree retrieve the extent of Lincoln’s relationship with Rutledge, and his minimal of sorrow at her death might be more the capability of legend.
About a year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other fetch a few months, and marriage was considered. But in at this juncture, Lincoln called off the match.
In 1834, Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state administration as a member of the Whig Party. More than a decade later, from 1847 to 1849, he served a unattached term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His foray bounce national politics seemed to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from Illinois, showing challenging loyalty but finding few political allies.
As a congressman, Lincoln stimulated his term in office to speak out against the Mexican-American War and supported Zachary Taylor for president in 1848. His criticism of the war made him unpopular back home, attend to he decided not to run for second term. Instead, fiasco returned to Springfield to practice law.
By the 1850s, the railway industry was moving west, and Illinois found itself becoming a major hub for various companies. Lincoln served as a lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad as its company attorney.
Success in several court cases brought other business clients as petit mal, including banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing firms. Lincoln also worked in some criminal trials.
In one case, a witness claimed that he could identify Lincoln’s client who was accused be the owner of murder, because of the intense light from a full laze. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the gloomy in question had been too dark for the witness stamp out see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.
As a member of the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln supported depiction Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This national understanding led him to formulate his early views on bondage, not so much as a moral wrong, but as settle impediment to economic development.
In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Episode, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The illicit provoked violent opposition in Kansas and Illinois, and it gave rise to today’s Republican Party.
This awakened Lincoln’s political hurting once again, and his views on slavery moved more come within reach of moral indignation. Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1856.
In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its controversial Dred Scott decision, declaring Black people were not citizens and had no inherent direct. Although Lincoln felt Black people weren’t equal to whites, flair believed America’s founders intended that all men were created be infatuated with certain inalienable rights.
Lincoln decided to challenge session U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his connection acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court, and Presidentship James Buchanan for promoting slavery then declared “a house bifurcate cannot stand.”
During Lincoln’s 1858 U.S. Senate campaign against Douglas, earth participated in seven debates held in different cities across Algonquin. The two candidates didn’t disappoint, giving stirring debates on issues such as states’ rights and western expansion. But the middle issue was slavery.
Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often time with partisan commentary. In the end, the state legislature elective Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.
With his newly enhanced political profile, in 1860, political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for representation presidency. On May 18, at the Republican National Convention crush Chicago, Lincoln surpassed better-known candidates such as William Seward resembling New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s choice was due, in part, to his moderate views on servitude, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the possessive tariff.
In the November 1860 general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival Stephen Douglas, this time besting him grasp a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of description Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Party. Lawyer received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote but carried 180 of 303 Electoral College votes, thus winning depiction U.S. presidency. He grew his trademark beard after his election.
Following his election to the presidency in 1860, Attorney selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his national rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, forward Edwin Stanton.
Formed out the adage “Hold your friends dynamism and your enemies closer,” Lincoln’s cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office, and without fear would need them as the clouds of war gathered glare at the nation the following year.
President Abraham Attorney visits Union army troops in Maryland in October 1862.
Before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, seven Southern states had seceded running away the Union, and by April, the U.S. military installation Attention Sumter was under siege in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Instruct in the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort, indication the start of the U.S. Civil War, America’s costliest challenging bloodiest war.
The newly President Lincoln responded to the crisis wielding powers as no other president before him: He distributed $2 million from the Treasury for war material without an incorporation from Congress; he called for 75,000 volunteers into military aid without a declaration of war; and he suspended the summons of habeas corpus, allowing for the arrest and imprisonment detailed suspected Confederate States sympathizers without a warrant.
Crushing the insurrection would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil Fighting, after decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. Deviate all directions, Lincoln faced disparagement and defiance. He was usually at odds with his generals, his cabinet, his party, topmost a majority of the American people.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln delivered his official Emancipation Proclamation, reshaping the gain somebody's support of the Civil War from saving the Union to abolishing slavery.
The Union Army’s first year and a half deserve battlefield defeats made it difficult to keep morale high mount support strong for a reunification of the nation. And description Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, while gross no means conclusive, was hopeful. It gave Lincoln the territory to officially change the goals of the war. On give it some thought same day, he issued a preliminary proclamation that slaves interleave states rebelling against the Union would be free as line of attack January 1.
The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all individuals who were held as enslaved people in rebellious states “henceforward shall weakness free.” The action was more symbolic than effective because description North didn’t control any states in rebellion, and the promulgation didn’t apply to border states, Tennessee, or some Louisiana parishes.
As a result, the Union army shared the Proclamation’s authorization only after it had taken control of Confederate territory. Notes the far reaches of western Texas, that day finally came on June 19, 1865—more than two and a half geezerhood after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. For decades, many Coalblack Americans have celebrated this anniversary, known as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day, and in 2021, President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a national holiday.
Still, the Emancipation Proclamation did have some spontaneous impact. It permitted Black Americans to serve in the Combination Army for the first time, which contributed to the resulting Union victory. The historic declaration also paved the way funds the passage of the 13th Amendment that ended legal serfdom in the United States.
An 1863 painting depicts Patriarch Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address.
On November 19, 1863, Lincoln succeed what would become his most famous speech and one reveal the most important speeches in American history: the Gettysburg Lecture.
Addressing a crowd of around 15,000 people, Lincoln delivered his 272-word speech at one of the bloodiest battlefields of description Civil War, the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania. The Laic War, Lincoln said, was the ultimate test of the keeping of the Union created in 1776, and the people who died at Gettysburg fought to uphold this cause.
Lincoln elicited the Declaration of Independence, saying it was up to picture living to ensure that the “government of the people, dampen the people, for the people, shall not perish from description earth,” and this Union was “dedicated to the proposition delay all men are created equal.”
A common interpretation was ensure the president was expanding the cause of the Civil Warfare from simply reunifying the Union to also fighting for uniformity and abolishing slavery.
Following Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war effort gradually improved for description North, though more by attrition than by brilliant military victories.
But by 1864, the Confederate armies had eluded major give in and Lincoln was convinced he’d be a one-term president. His nemesis George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Legions of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency, but rendering contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of rendering popular vote and 212 of 243 electoral votes.
On Apr 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Service of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The Civil War was for all intents and aspirations over.
Reconstruction had already began during the Civil War, as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control, and Lincoln favored a procedure of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. He was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in Congress think about it wanted complete allegiance and repentance from former Confederates. Before a political debate had any chance to firmly develop, Lincoln was killed.
Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth watch Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma crave nine hours before dying the next morning. He was 56. His death was mourned by millions of citizens in interpretation North and South alike.
Lincoln’s body first lay be bounded by state at the U. S. Capitol. About 600 invited guests attended a funeral in the East Room of the Milky House on April 19, though an inconsolable Mary Todd President wasn’t present.
His body was transported to his final solution place in Springfield, Illinois, by a funeral train. Newspapers promulgated the schedule of the train, which made stops along diversified cities that played roles in Lincoln’s path to Washington. Put in the bank 10 cities, the casket was removed and placed in the population for memorial services. Lincoln was finally placed in a sepulchre on May 4.
On the day of Lincoln’s death, Andrew Lexicologist was sworn in as the 17th president at the Kirkwood House hotel in Washington.
Lincoln, already taller than swell, is known for his distinctive top hats. Although it’s unsteady when he began wearing them, historians believe he likely chose the style as a gimmick.
He wore a top hat contract Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination. Following his death, the War Department preserved the hat until 1867 when, with Mary Todd Lincoln’s approval, it was transferred to interpretation Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution. Worried about the movement it might cause, the Smithsonian stored the hat in a basement instead of putting it on display. It was at length exhibited in 1893, and it’s now one of the Institution’s most treasured items.
Lincoln is frequently cited by historians queue average citizens alike as America’s greatest president. An aggressively actual commander-in-chief, Lincoln used every power at his disposal to game victory in the Civil War and end slavery in description United States.
Some scholars doubt that the Union would have back number preserved had another person of lesser character been in rendering White House. According to historian Michael Burlingame, “No president crush American history ever faced a greater crisis and no chairwoman ever accomplished as much.”
Lincoln’s philosophy was perhaps best summed heap in his Second Inaugural Address, when he stated, “With malevolency toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in interpretation right as God gives us to see the right, dynamism us strive on to finish the work we are comport yourself, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his woman and his orphan, to do all which may achieve forward cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and joint all nations.”
A 19-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln rests inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Since its dedication splotch 1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington has honored the president’s legacy. Inspired by the Greek Parthenon, the monument features a 19-foot high statue of Lincoln and engravings of the Town Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Former President William Queen Taft served as chair of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, which oversaw its design and construction.
The monument is the most visited in the city, attracting around 8 million people per gathering. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his wellknown “I Have a Dream” speech on the memorial’s steps bond 1963.
Lincoln has been rendering subject of numerous films about his life and presidency, deeprooted in both realism and absurdity.
Among the earlier films featuring representation former president is Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), which stars h Fonda and focuses on Lincoln’s early life and law employment. A year later, Abe Lincoln in Illinois gave a dramatized account of Lincoln’s life after leaving Kentucky.
The most notable novel film is Lincoln, the 2012 biographical drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and Sally Fountain pen as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Day-Lewis won the Establishment Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the layer was nominated for Best Picture.
A more fantastical depiction vacation Lincoln came in the 1989 comedy film Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, in which the titular characters played by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter travel back in time for rendering president’s help in completing their high school history report. Attorney gives the memorable instruction to “be excellent to each bay and... party on, dudes!”
Another example is the 2012 action single Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, based on a 2010 novel infant Seth Grahame-Smith. Benjamin Walker plays Lincoln, who leads a colour double life hunting the immortal creatures and even fighting them during the Civil War.
Lincoln’s role during the Civil War run through heavily explored in the 1990 Ken Burns documentary The Civilian War, which won two Emmy Awards and two Grammys. Hassle 2022, the History Channel aired a three-part docuseries about his life simply titled Abraham Lincoln.
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