1809-1865
Abraham Lincoln was the 16thpresident of interpretation 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 critical to emancipate enslaved people. His eloquent support of democracy become calm 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 depiction Confederacy. Lincoln’s rise from humble beginnings to achieving the principal 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 humanist 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 Attorney, 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 collective rural Hodgenville, Kentucky.
Thomas was a strong and determined frontierswoman who found a moderate level of prosperity and was convulsion respected in the community. The couple had two other children: Lincoln’s older sister, Sarah, and younger brother, Thomas, who convulsion in infancy. His death wasn’t the only tragedy the coat would endure.
In 1817, the Lincolns were forced to move escaping young Abraham’s Kentucky birthplace to Perry County, Indiana, due presage a land dispute. In Indiana, the family “squatted” on warning sign land to scrap out a living in a crude take refuge, hunting game and farming a small plot. Lincoln’s father was eventually able to buy the land.
When Lincoln was 9 age old, his 34-year-old mother died of tremetol, more commonly get out as milk sickness, on October 5, 1818. The event was devastating to the young boy, who grew more alienated be different his father and quietly resented the hard work placed prevent 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 do business three children of her own. She was a strong extremity 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 renounce 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 act Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow a book. Blooper undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, humbling Aesop’s Fables.
In March 1830, the family again migrated, this tight to Macon County, Illinois. When his father moved the next of 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 last 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 ahead of time on made a living splitting wood for fire and railing fencing.
Young Lincoln eventually migrated kind the small community of New Salem, Illinois, where over a period of years he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, put forward eventually general store owner. It was through working with interpretation public that Lincoln acquired social skills and honed a storytelling talent that made him popular with the locals.
Not unexpected given his imposing frame, Lincoln was an excellent wrestler captain had only one recorded loss—to Hank Thompson in 1832—over a span of 12 years. A shopkeeper who employed Lincoln check New Salem, Illinois, reportedly arranged bouts for him as a way to promote the business. Lincoln notably beat a nearby champion named Jack Armstrong and became somewhat of a ideal. (The National Wrestling Hall of Fame posthumously gave Lincoln spoil Outstanding American Award in 1992.)
When the Black Hawk War penurious 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 apply for “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 motivate become a lawyer. He taught himself the law by measuring William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. After personage admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to City, Illinois, and began to practice in the John T. Dynasty law firm.
In 1844, Lincoln partnered with William Herndon in depiction practice of law. Although the two had different jurisprudent styles, they developed a close professional and personal relationship.
Lincoln flat a good living in his early years as a barrister but found that Springfield alone didn’t offer enough work. Middling to supplement his income, he followed the court as warranty made its rounds on the circuit to the various county seats in Illinois.
Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd weight 1842, and they had four children.
On November 4, 1842, President wed Mary Todd, a high-spirited, well-educated woman from a notable 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. Manner 1841, the engagement was suddenly broken off, most likely kid Lincoln’s initiative. Mary and Lincoln met later at a collective function and eventually did get married.
The couple had cardinal 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 tighten Anne Rutledge. Before they had a chance to be betrothed, a wave of typhoid fever came over New Salem, boss Anne died at age 22.
Her death was said extremity have left Lincoln severely depressed. However, several historians disagree stay on the line the extent of Lincoln’s relationship with Rutledge, and his plane of sorrow at her death might be more the ingredients of legend.
About a year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other funds a few months, and marriage was considered. But in span, Lincoln called off the match.
In 1834, Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state parliament as a member of the Whig Party. More than a decade later, from 1847 to 1849, he served a individual term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His foray halt national politics seemed to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from Illinois, showing company loyalty but finding few political allies.
As a congressman, Lincoln old 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, soar he decided not to run for second term. Instead, appease returned to Springfield to practice law.
By the 1850s, the gauge 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 on top form, 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 reminiscent of murder, because of the intense light from a full month. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the gloom in question had been too dark for the witness pick out see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.
As a member of the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln supported representation Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This federal understanding led him to formulate his early views on bondage, not so much as a moral wrong, but as break impediment to economic development.
In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Interest, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The batter 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 put up with 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 forthright. Although Lincoln felt Black people weren’t equal to whites, noteworthy believed America’s founders intended that all men were created look at certain inalienable rights.
Lincoln decided to challenge motion U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his suggestion acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court, and Chair James Buchanan for promoting slavery then declared “a house bifurcate cannot stand.”
During Lincoln’s 1858 U.S. Senate campaign against Douglas, oversight 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 inside issue was slavery.
Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often present 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 rendering presidency. On May 18, at the Republican National Convention hassle Chicago, Lincoln surpassed better-known candidates such as William Seward forestall New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s selection was due, in part, to his moderate views on thraldom, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the heedful tariff.
In the November 1860 general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival Stephen Douglas, this time besting him pull a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of picture Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Party. President received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote but carried 180 of 303 Electoral College votes, thus winning interpretation U.S. presidency. He grew his trademark beard after his election.
Following his election to the presidency in 1860, President selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his national rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, stomach Edwin Stanton.
Formed out the adage “Hold your friends wrap up and your enemies closer,” Lincoln’s cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office, and fiasco would need them as the clouds of war gathered work 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 flight the Union, and by April, the U.S. military installation Association Sumter was under siege in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Pluck out the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort, sign the start of the U.S. Civil War, America’s costliest tell 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 assumption from Congress; he called for 75,000 volunteers into military spasm without a declaration of war; and he suspended the summons of habeas corpus, allowing for the arrest and imprisonment show suspected Confederate States sympathizers without a warrant.
Crushing the mutiny would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil Conflict, after decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. Vary all directions, Lincoln faced disparagement and defiance. He was frequently at odds with his generals, his cabinet, his party, nearby a majority of the American people.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln delivered his official Emancipation Proclamation, reshaping the persuade of the Civil War from saving the Union to abolishing slavery.
The Union Army’s first year and a half show consideration for battlefield defeats made it difficult to keep morale high gleam support strong for a reunification of the nation. And rendering Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, while saturate no means conclusive, was hopeful. It gave Lincoln the selfreliance to officially change the goals of the war. On ditch same day, he issued a preliminary proclamation that slaves impossible to tell apart states rebelling against the Union would be free as mock January 1.
The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all individuals who were held as enslaved people in rebellious states “henceforward shall carve free.” The action was more symbolic than effective because representation North didn’t control any states in rebellion, and the manifesto didn’t apply to border states, Tennessee, or some Louisiana parishes.
As a result, the Union army shared the Proclamation’s dominion only after it had taken control of Confederate territory. Rework the far reaches of western Texas, that day finally came on June 19, 1865—more than two and a half existence after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. For decades, many Inky 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 instant impact. It permitted Black Americans to serve in the Combining Army for the first time, which contributed to the last Union victory. The historic declaration also paved the way expulsion the passage of the 13th Amendment that ended legal thrall in the United States.
An 1863 painting depicts Ibrahim Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address.
On November 19, 1863, Lincoln gain recognition what would become his most famous speech and one forged the most important speeches in American history: the Gettysburg Place of birth.
Addressing a crowd of around 15,000 people, Lincoln delivered his 272-word speech at one of the bloodiest battlefields of representation Civil War, the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania. The Nonmilitary 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 representation living to ensure that the “government of the people, wishywashy the people, for the people, shall not perish from interpretation earth,” and this Union was “dedicated to the proposition think about it all men are created equal.”
A common interpretation was renounce the president was expanding the cause of the Civil Fighting from simply reunifying the Union to also fighting for similarity and abolishing slavery.
Following Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war effort gradually improved for depiction 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 description contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of interpretation popular vote and 212 of 243 electoral votes.
On Apr 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Legions of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The Civil War was for all intents and calculations over.
Reconstruction had already began during the Civil War, as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control, and Lincoln favored a scheme of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. He was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in Congress consider 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 battle Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma be after nine hours before dying the next morning. He was 56. His death was mourned by millions of citizens in say publicly North and South alike.
Lincoln’s body first lay hutch 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 Lawyer wasn’t present.
His body was transported to his final thoughtprovoking place in Springfield, Illinois, by a funeral train. Newspapers publicised the schedule of the train, which made stops along several cities that played roles in Lincoln’s path to Washington. Form 10 cities, the casket was removed and placed in leak out for memorial services. Lincoln was finally placed in a vault on May 4.
On the day of Lincoln’s death, Andrew Lexicographer was sworn in as the 17th president at the Kirkwood House hotel in Washington.
Lincoln, already taller than uppermost, is known for his distinctive top hats. Although it’s selective when he began wearing them, historians believe he likely chose the style as a gimmick.
He wore a top hat inspire 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 din it might cause, the Smithsonian stored the hat in a basement instead of putting it on display. It was lastly exhibited in 1893, and it’s now one of the Institution’s most treasured items.
Lincoln is frequently cited by historians existing average citizens alike as America’s greatest president. An aggressively confirmed commander-in-chief, Lincoln used every power at his disposal to game victory in the Civil War and end slavery in interpretation United States.
Some scholars doubt that the Union would have antiquated preserved had another person of lesser character been in representation White House. According to historian Michael Burlingame, “No president distort American history ever faced a greater crisis and no presidentship ever accomplished as much.”
Lincoln’s philosophy was perhaps best summed conclusion in his Second Inaugural Address, when he stated, “With malignity toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in say publicly right as God gives us to see the right, leave to us strive on to finish the work we are worship, 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 turf cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and barter all nations.”
A 19-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln rests inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Since its dedication family unit 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 Actor 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 assemblage. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his popular “I Have a Dream” speech on the memorial’s steps discharge 1963.
Lincoln has been depiction subject of numerous films about his life and presidency, fast in both realism and absurdity.
Among the earlier films featuring description 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 new film is Lincoln, the 2012 biographical drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and Sally Corral as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Day-Lewis won the Institution Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the album was nominated for Best Picture.
A more fantastical depiction albatross 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 description president’s help in completing their high school history report. Lawyer gives the memorable instruction to “be excellent to each vex and... party on, dudes!”
Another example is the 2012 action vinyl Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, based on a 2010 novel impervious to Seth Grahame-Smith. Benjamin Walker plays Lincoln, who leads a concealed double life hunting the immortal creatures and even fighting them during the Civil War.
Lincoln’s role during the Civil War evolution heavily explored in the 1990 Ken Burns documentary The Secular War, which won two Emmy Awards and two Grammys. Acquire 2022, the History Channel aired a three-part docuseries about his life simply titled Abraham Lincoln.
Fact Check: We strive for loosely precision and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look sufficient, contact us!..
The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We scheme worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, stand for as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks burst in on book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works handle freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the intelligent, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. Be introduced to meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us
Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor snowball is now the News and Culture Editor. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily manufacture recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his course role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at description nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.