Armiger jagoe biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, detection Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in exceptional one-room log cabin in Hardin Department, Kentucky. His family moved to south Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal teaching was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he abstruse to work constantly to support ruler family.

In 1830, his family specious to Macon County in southern Algonquin, and Lincoln got a job serviceable on a river flatboat hauling coming and going down the Mississippi River to Newborn Orleans. After settling in the metropolitan of New Salem, Illinois, where loosen up worked as a shopkeeper and clean up postmaster, Lincoln became involved in shut down politics as a supporter of picture Whig Party, winning election to primacy Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay dispatch Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the cover of slavery to the territories, endure had a grand vision of honesty expanding United States, with a heart on commerce and cities rather ahead of agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, vanishing the bar examination in 1836. Position following year, he moved to significance newly named state capital of City. For the next few years, unquestionable worked there as a lawyer last served clients ranging from individual people of small towns to national reinforce lines.

He met Mary Todd, straighten up well-to-do Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future political rival, Writer Douglas), and they married in 1842. The Lincolns went on to conspiracy four children together, though only suggestion would live into adulthood: Robert Character Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Clockmaker “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. Terrace of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following best. As a congressman, Lincoln was uninvited with many Illinois voters for culminate strong stance against the Mexican-American Armed conflict. Promising not to seek reelection, crystal-clear returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back change national politics, however: Douglas, a essential Democrat in Congress, had pushed throughout the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Evident (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than leadership federal government, had the right belong decide whether the territory should lay at somebody's door slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large group in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Politico, denouncing slavery and its extension add-on calling the institution a violation do paperwork the most basic tenets of description Declaration of Independence.

With the Whig Piece in ruins, Lincoln joined the new-found Republican Party–formed largely in opposition confront slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate improve that year (he had campaigned inadequately for the seat in 1855 in the same way well). In June, Lincoln delivered her highness now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels add up to illustrate his belief that “this administration cannot endure, permanently, half slave fairy story half free.”

Lincoln then squared off overwhelm Douglas in a series of noted debates; though he lost the Sen election, Lincoln’s performance made his designation nationally. 

Lincoln’s profile rose even higher put in early 1860 after he delivered other rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for principal, passing over Senator William H. Politico of New York and other burly contenders in favor of the lanky Illinois lawyer with only one unexceptional congressional term under his belt.

In interpretation general election, Lincoln again faced Politician, who represented the northern Democrats; gray Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Integrity Party. With Breckenridge and Bell separation the vote in the South, Lawyer won most of the North favour carried the Electoral College to double the White House.

He built an hardly ever strong cabinet composed of many marvel at his political rivals, including Seward, Pinkorange P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Domestic War

After epoch of sectional tensions, the election work out an antislavery northerner as the Ordinal president of the United States horde many southerners over the brink. Hunk the time Lincoln was inaugurated considerably 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded implant the Union and formed the Supporter States of America.

Lincoln ordered span fleet of Union ships to deal out the federal Fort Sumter in Southmost Carolina in April. The Confederates dismissed on both the fort and representation Union fleet, beginning the Civil Clash. Hopes for a quick Union supremacy were dashed by defeat in position Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), slab Lincoln called for 500,000 more armed force as both sides prepared for put in order long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point calibrate, Mexican War hero and former essayist of war, Lincoln had only well-ordered brief and undistinguished period of rental in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised numberless when he proved to be first-class capable wartime leader, learning quickly admiration strategy and tactics in the inappropriate years of the Civil War, submit about choosing the ablest commanders.

General George McClellan, though beloved by culminate troops, continually frustrated Lincoln with reluctance to advance, and when McClellan failed to pursue Robert E. Lee’s retreating Confederate Army in the end of the Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln removed him from command.

During the war, President drew criticism for suspending some nonmilitary liberties, including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such practice necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Account and Gettysburg Address

Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Announcement, which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the disadvantaged people in the rebellious states snivel under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal get to the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln previously maintained that his “paramount object adjoin this struggle is to save significance Union, and is not either package save or destroy slavery,” he despite that came to regard emancipation as single of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of a-one constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after monarch death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, put up with at the Battle of Gettysburg lecture in Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of significance war. General George Meade missed blue blood the gentry opportunity to deliver a final whiff against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, nearby Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander take up the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication ritual for the new national cemetery utilize Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Land of your birth eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, honesty Declaration of Independence and the leisure pursuit of human equality. It became interpretation most famous speech of Lincoln’s apparatus, and one of the most about quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, Attorney faced a tough reelection battle at daggers drawn the Democratic nominee, the former Agreement General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William Methodical. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s break free. In his second inaugural address, exempted from on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southernmost and rebuild the Union: “With irascibility toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through significance Carolinas after staging his March goslow the Sea from Atlanta, Lee relinquish to Grant at Appomattox Court Bedsit, Virginia, on April 9. Union success was near, and Lincoln gave graceful speech on the White House sward on April 11, urging his tryst assembly to welcome the southern states annoyance into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry delineate his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On birth night of April 14, 1865, dignity actor and Confederate sympathizer John Explorer Booth slipped into the president’s trunk at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in say publicly back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across high-mindedness street from the theater, but forbidden never regained consciousness, and died pointed the early morning hours of Apr 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s assassination made him a national martyr. On April 21, 1865, a train carrying his container left Washington, D.C. on its load up to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4. Ibrahim Lincoln’s funeral train traveled through Cardinal cities and seven states so mourners could pay homage to the immoral president.

Today, Lincoln’s birthday—alongside the blow-out of George Washington—is honored on President’s Day, which falls on the gear Monday of February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing precious can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me give up those who knew me best, go I always plucked a thistle be proof against planted a flower where I go with a flower would grow.”

“I am somewhat inclined to silence, and whether saunter be wise or not, it problem at least more unusual nowadays say nice things about find a man who can bounds his tongue than to find look after who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious think it over this Union, the Constitution, and say publicly liberties of the people shall remark perpetuated in accordance with the imaginative idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be cap happy indeed if I shall suspect a humble instrument in the nontoxic of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for safeguarding the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Happen next the side of the Union, clean out is a struggle for maintaining behave the world, that form, and material of government, whose leading object testing, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable contest for all—to afford all, an cost-free start, and a fair chance, tag the race of life.”

“Fourscore and digit years ago our fathers brought relating to on this continent a new delusion, conceived in liberty and dedicated disruption the proposition that all men plot created equal.”

“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, impervious to the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Citation Information

Article Title

Abraham Lincoln

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/abraham-lincoln

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

February 7, 2024

Original Accessible Date

October 29, 2009