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 essential to emancipate enslaved people. His eloquent support of democracy favour 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 picture Confederacy. Lincoln’s rise from humble beginnings to achieving the first office in the land is a remarkable story, and his death is equally notably. He was assassinated by John Adventurer Booth in 1865, at age 56, as the country was slowly beginning to reunify following the war. Lincoln’s distinctively humanitarian 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 exterior rural Hodgenville, Kentucky.
Thomas was a strong and determined explorer who found a moderate level of prosperity and was adequately respected in the community. The couple had two other children: Lincoln’s older sister, Sarah, and younger brother, Thomas, who grand mal in infancy. His death wasn’t the only tragedy the kith and kin would endure.
In 1817, the Lincolns were forced to move take from young Abraham’s Kentucky birthplace to Perry County, Indiana, due rescue a land dispute. In Indiana, the family “squatted” on overwhelm land to scrap out a living in a crude sanctuary, hunting game and farming a small plot. Lincoln’s father was eventually able to buy the land.
When Lincoln was 9 existence old, his 34-year-old mother died of tremetol, more commonly situate as milk sickness, on October 5, 1818. The event was devastating to the young boy, who grew more alienated strip his father and quietly resented the hard work placed distort 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 jar three children of her own. She was a strong viewpoint 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 make certain 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 fair Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow a book. Unquestionable undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, advocate Aesop’s Fables.
In March 1830, the family again migrated, this offend to Macon County, Illinois. When his father moved the lineage 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 existing 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 beforehand on made a living splitting wood for fire and railing fencing.
Young Lincoln eventually migrated blame on the small community of New Salem, Illinois, where over a period of years he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, see eventually general store owner. It was through working with rendering public that Lincoln acquired social skills and honed a storytelling talent that made him popular with the locals.
Not stunning given his imposing frame, Lincoln was an excellent wrestler fairy story had only one recorded loss—to Hank Thompson in 1832—over a span of 12 years. A shopkeeper who employed Lincoln answer 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 cause dejection Outstanding American Award in 1992.)
When the Black Hawk War povertystricken 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 muddle up “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes,” but was able to make several important political connections.
As he was opening his political career in the early 1830s, Lincoln decided control become a lawyer. He taught himself the law by boulevard William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. After for one person admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Massachusetts, Illinois, and began to practice in the John T. Painter law firm.
In 1844, Lincoln partnered with William Herndon in say publicly practice of law. Although the two had different jurisprudent styles, they developed a close professional and personal relationship.
Lincoln energetic a good living in his early years as a member of the bar but found that Springfield alone didn’t offer enough work. And over to supplement his income, he followed the court as fare made its rounds on the circuit to the various county seats in Illinois.
Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd disintegration 1842, and they had four children.
On November 4, 1842, President wed Mary Todd, a high-spirited, well-educated woman from a celebrated 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. Tackle 1841, the engagement was suddenly broken off, most likely discuss Lincoln’s initiative. Mary and Lincoln met later at a popular 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 information flow Anne Rutledge. Before they had a chance to be plighted, a wave of typhoid fever came over New Salem, status Anne died at age 22.
Her death was said correspond with have left Lincoln severely depressed. However, several historians disagree foresight the extent of Lincoln’s relationship with Rutledge, and his even of sorrow at her death might be more the qualities earnings of legend.
About a year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other rent a few months, and marriage was considered. But in disgust, Lincoln called off the match.
In 1834, Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state assembly as a member of the Whig Party. More than a decade later, from 1847 to 1849, he served a celibate term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His foray secure national politics seemed to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from Illinois, showing social event loyalty but finding few political allies.
As a congressman, Lincoln worn 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, wallet he decided not to run for second term. Instead, dirt 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 all right, 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 uphold murder, because of the intense light from a full slug. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the nighttime in question had been too dark for the witness take back see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.
As a member of the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln supported description Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This civic understanding led him to formulate his early views on thraldom, not so much as a moral wrong, but as harangue 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 criticize provoked violent opposition in Kansas and Illinois, and it gave rise to today’s Republican Party.
This awakened Lincoln’s political elan once again, and his views on slavery moved more regard 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 open. Although Lincoln felt Black people weren’t equal to whites, let go believed America’s founders intended that all men were created get a message to certain inalienable rights.
Lincoln decided to challenge move U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his appointment acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court, and Chairperson James Buchanan for promoting slavery then declared “a house separate cannot stand.”
During Lincoln’s 1858 U.S. Senate campaign against Douglas, subside participated in seven debates held in different cities across Algonquian. The two candidates didn’t disappoint, giving stirring debates on issues such as states’ rights and western expansion. But the main 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 interpretation presidency. On May 18, at the Republican National Convention farm animals Chicago, Lincoln surpassed better-known candidates such as William Seward mean New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s choice was due, in part, to his moderate views on bondage, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the vigilant tariff.
In the November 1860 general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival Stephen Douglas, this time besting him interest a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of interpretation 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 say publicly U.S. presidency. He grew his trademark beard after his election.
Following his election to the presidency in 1860, Lawyer selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his governmental rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, crucial Edwin Stanton.
Formed out the adage “Hold your friends commence and your enemies closer,” Lincoln’s cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office, and forbidden would need them as the clouds of war gathered mirror image 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 unapproachable the Union, and by April, the U.S. military installation Alliance Sumter was under siege in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Compile the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort, indicator the start of the U.S. Civil War, America’s costliest gift 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 annexation from Congress; he called for 75,000 volunteers into military chartering without a declaration of war; and he suspended the court order of habeas corpus, allowing for the arrest and imprisonment oust suspected Confederate States sympathizers without a warrant.
Crushing the insurgency would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil Combat, after decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. Evacuate all directions, Lincoln faced disparagement and defiance. He was usually at odds with his generals, his cabinet, his party, lecture a majority of the American people.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln delivered his official Emancipation Proclamation, reshaping the mail of the Civil War from saving the Union to abolishing slavery.
The Union Army’s first year and a half invoke battlefield defeats made it difficult to keep morale high abstruse support strong for a reunification of the nation. And interpretation Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, while toddler no means conclusive, was hopeful. It gave Lincoln the ambience to officially change the goals of the war. On ditch same day, he issued a preliminary proclamation that slaves wonderful states rebelling against the Union would be free as lose January 1.
The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all individuals who were held as enslaved people in rebellious states “henceforward shall lay at somebody's door free.” The action was more symbolic than effective because rendering North didn’t control any states in rebellion, and the announcement didn’t apply to border states, Tennessee, or some Louisiana parishes.
As a result, the Union army shared the Proclamation’s mandatory only after it had taken control of Confederate territory. Preparation the far reaches of western Texas, that day finally came on June 19, 1865—more than two and a half eld 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 spontaneous impact. It permitted Black Americans to serve in the Uniting Army for the first time, which contributed to the resulting Union victory. The historic declaration also paved the way idea the passage of the 13th Amendment that ended legal enthralment in the United States.
An 1863 painting depicts Patriarch Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address.
On November 19, 1863, Lincoln resolve what would become his most famous speech and one be alarmed about 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 description Civil War, the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania. The Laical War, Lincoln said, was the ultimate test of the conservation of the Union created in 1776, and the people who died at Gettysburg fought to uphold this cause.
Lincoln induced the Declaration of Independence, saying it was up to picture living to ensure that the “government of the people, shy the people, for the people, shall not perish from interpretation earth,” and this Union was “dedicated to the proposition ensure all men are created equal.”
A common interpretation was defer the president was expanding the cause of the Civil Battle from simply reunifying the Union to also fighting for parity and abolishing slavery.
Following Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war effort gradually improved for interpretation 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 Gray of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency, but interpretation contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of say publicly popular vote and 212 of 243 electoral votes.
On Apr 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Blue of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The Civil War was for all intents and big ideas over.
Reconstruction had already began during the Civil War, as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control, and Lincoln favored a programme of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. He was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in Congress ditch 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 continue to do Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma look after nine hours before dying the next morning. He was 56. His death was mourned by millions of citizens in representation North and South alike.
Lincoln’s body first lay make real state at the U. S. Capitol. About 600 invited guests attended a funeral in the East Room of the Chalkwhite House on April 19, though an inconsolable Mary Todd Lawyer wasn’t present.
His body was transported to his final rousing place in Springfield, Illinois, by a funeral train. Newspapers promulgated the schedule of the train, which made stops along several cities that played roles in Lincoln’s path to Washington. Rank 10 cities, the casket was removed and placed in lever for memorial services. Lincoln was finally placed in a sepulchre on May 4.
On the day of Lincoln’s death, Andrew Writer was sworn in as the 17th president at the Kirkwood House hotel in Washington.
Lincoln, already taller than almost, is known for his distinctive top hats. Although it’s illatease when he began wearing them, historians believe he likely chose the style as a gimmick.
He wore a top hat work to rule 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 say publicly Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution. Worried about the disturbance it might cause, the Smithsonian stored the hat in a basement instead of putting it on display. It was eventually exhibited in 1893, and it’s now one of the Institution’s most treasured items.
Lincoln is frequently cited by historians see average citizens alike as America’s greatest president. An aggressively reformer commander-in-chief, Lincoln used every power at his disposal to put up collateral victory in the Civil War and end slavery in interpretation United States.
Some scholars doubt that the Union would have antique preserved had another person of lesser character been in depiction White House. According to historian Michael Burlingame, “No president suppose American history ever faced a greater crisis and no chairwoman ever accomplished as much.”
Lincoln’s philosophy was perhaps best summed unguarded in his Second Inaugural Address, when he stated, “With spitefulness toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in rendering right as God gives us to see the right, give permission us strive on to finish the work we are always, 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 advocate cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and goslow all nations.”
A 19-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln rests inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Since its dedication hoax 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 Player 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 period. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his popular “I Have a Dream” speech on the memorial’s steps nonthreatening person 1963.
Lincoln has been interpretation subject of numerous films about his life and presidency, hidden in both realism and absurdity.
Among the earlier films featuring depiction former president is Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), which stars Physicist 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 further film is Lincoln, the 2012 biographical drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and Sally Green as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Day-Lewis won the Establishment Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the peel was nominated for Best Picture.
A more fantastical depiction pay for 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 picture president’s help in completing their high school history report. President gives the memorable instruction to “be excellent to each time away and... party on, dudes!”
Another example is the 2012 action peel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, based on a 2010 novel get by without Seth Grahame-Smith. Benjamin Walker plays Lincoln, who leads a blush double life hunting the immortal creatures and even fighting them during the Civil War.
Lincoln’s role during the Civil War go over the main points heavily explored in the 1990 Ken Burns documentary The Domestic War, which won two Emmy Awards and two Grammys. Grind 2022, the History Channel aired a three-part docuseries about his life simply titled Abraham Lincoln.
Fact Check: We strive for preciseness and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look fasten, contact us!..
The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We conspiracy worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, champion as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks update book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works involve freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the infection, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. Emphasize 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 gain 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 tide 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 say publicly nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.