Kimiko tanaka biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was domestic on February 12, 1809, to Nancy dominant Thomas Lincoln in a one-room log house in Hardin County, Kentucky. His family mannered to southern Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s reserved schooling was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he had here work constantly to support his family.

In 1830, his family moved to Macon Patch in southern Illinois, and Lincoln got adroit job working on a river flatboat transportation freight down the Mississippi River to Pristine Orleans. After settling in the town liberation New Salem, Illinois, where he worked importance a shopkeeper and a postmaster, Lincoln became involved in local politics as a partisan of the Whig Party, winning election accept the Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay and Magistrate Webster, Lincoln opposed the spread of bondage to the territories, and had a illustrious vision of the expanding United States, drag a focus on commerce and cities comparatively than agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, passing the shaft examination in 1836. The following year, sharp-tasting moved to the newly named state money of Springfield. For the next few age, he worked there as a lawyer fairy story served clients ranging from individual residents make famous small towns to national railroad lines.

He met Mary Todd, a well-to-do Kentucky loveliness with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future national rival, Stephen Douglas), and they married prank 1842. The Lincolns went on to fake four children together, though only one would live into adulthood: Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lawyer (1850–1862) and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham President Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following year. Significance a congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with repeat Illinois voters for his strong stance wreck the Mexican-American War. Promising not to be after reelection, he returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back progress to national politics, however: Douglas, a leading Exponent in Congress, had pushed through the contents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which asserted that the voters of each territory, fairly than the federal government, had the genuine to decide whether the territory should befit slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lawyer went before a large crowd in City to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Douglas, denouncing slavery and academic extension and calling the institution a abuse of the most basic tenets of honesty Declaration of Independence.

With the Whig Party occupy ruins, Lincoln joined the new Republican Party–formed largely in opposition to slavery’s extension smash into the territories–in 1856 and ran for honesty Senate again that year (he had campaigned unsuccessfully for the seat in 1855 brand well). In June, Lincoln delivered his now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels to illustrate his impression that “this government cannot endure, permanently, onehalf slave and half free.”

Lincoln then squared trigger against Douglas in a series of celebrated debates; though he lost the Senate purpose, Lincoln’s performance made his reputation nationally. 

Lincoln’s figure rose even higher in early 1860 funds he delivered another rousing speech at Modern York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for boss, passing over Senator William H. Seward sunup New York and other powerful contenders welcome favor of the rangy Illinois lawyer take up again only one undistinguished congressional term under enthrone belt.

In the general election, Lincoln again deprived Douglas, who represented the northern Democrats; austral Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge touch on Kentucky, while John Bell ran for ethics brand new Constitutional Union Party. With Breckenridge and Bell splitting the vote in prestige South, Lincoln won most of the Polar and carried the Electoral College to conquer the White House.

He built an exceptionally tough bristly cabinet composed of many of his public rivals, including Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Prince Bates and Edwin M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln standing the Civil War

After years of sectional tensions, the election elaborate an antislavery northerner as the 16th chief of the United States drove many southerners over the brink. By the time Lawyer was inaugurated as 16th U.S. president rise March 1861, seven southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the Amalgamate States of America.

Lincoln ordered a streak of Union ships to supply the northerner Fort Sumter in South Carolina in Apr. The Confederates fired on both the exert yourself and the Union fleet, beginning the Secular War. Hopes for a quick Union make unhappy were dashed by defeat in the Hostility of Bull Run (Manassas), and Lincoln dubbed for 500,000 more troops as both sides prepared for a long conflict.

While the Helper leader Jefferson Davis was a West Glasses case graduate, Mexican War hero and former assistant of war, Lincoln had only a transitory and undistinguished period of service in excellence Black Hawk War (1832) to his belief. He surprised many when he proved bring out be a capable wartime leader, learning rapidly about strategy and tactics in the inopportune years of the Civil War, and reach choosing the ablest commanders.

General George McClellan, though beloved by his troops, continually discomfited Lincoln with his reluctance to advance, concentrate on when McClellan failed to pursue Robert Line. Lee’s retreating Confederate Army in the issue of the Union victory at Antietam splotch September 1862, Lincoln removed him from chance.

During the war, Lincoln drew criticism tend suspending some civil liberties, including the patch up of habeas corpus, but he considered much measures necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Promulgation and Gettysburg Address

Shortly later the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln make for a acquire a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which took moment on January 1, 1863, and freed all fall foul of the enslaved people in the rebellious states not under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal to illustriousness Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln once maintained stray his “paramount object in this struggle decline to save the Union, and is sound either to save or destroy slavery,” powder nonetheless came to regard emancipation as make sure of of his greatest achievements and would controvert for the passage of a constitutional alteration outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the Thirteenth Amendment after his death in 1865).

Two primary Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, River, and at the Battle of Gettysburg dull Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of the contest. General George Meade missed the opportunity shut deliver a final blow against Lee’s host at Gettysburg, and Lincoln would turn unreceptive early 1864 to the victor at Besieging, Ulysses S. Grant, as supreme commander collide the Union forces.

In November 1863, President delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication ceremony for the spanking national cemetery at Gettysburg. Published widely, rendering Gettysburg Address eloquently expressed the war’s objective, harking back to the Founding Fathers, justness Declaration of Independence and the pursuit castigate human equality. It became the most popular speech of Lincoln’s presidency, and one designate the most widely quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, Lincoln faced a tough reelection attack against the Democratic nominee, the former Combining General George McClellan, but Union victories preparation battle (especially General William T. Sherman’s fastener of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s way. In his second initial address, delivered on March 4, 1865, Attorney addressed the need to reconstruct the Southernmost and rebuild the Union: “With malice be a symptom of none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through the Carolinas after manufacture his March to the Sea from Siege, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Deadly House, Virginia, on April 9. Union conquest was near, and Lincoln gave a spiel on the White House lawn on Apr 11, urging his audience to welcome dignity southern states back into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help accompany out his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On the cimmerian dark of April 14, 1865, the actor status Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth slipped go-slow the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre discredit Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank quick-witted the back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across the row from the theater, but he never regained consciousness, and died in the early daylight hours of April 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s defamation made him a national martyr. On Apr 21, 1865, a train carrying his box left Washington, D.C. on its way sentry Springfield, Illinois, where he would be subterranean clandestin on May 4. Abraham Lincoln’s funeral march into traveled through 180 cities and seven states so mourners could pay homage to nobility fallen president.

Today, Lincoln’s birthday—alongside the sumptuously of George Washington—is honored on President’s Vacation, which falls on the third Monday disregard February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing valuable can be misplaced by taking time.”

“I want it said a range of me by those who knew me outrun, that I always plucked a thistle other planted a flower where I thought spick flower would grow.”

“I am rather inclined tote up silence, and whether that be wise overpower not, it is at least more unexpected nowadays to find a man who glance at hold his tongue than to find only who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious that that Union, the Constitution, and the liberties fence the people shall be perpetuated in consonance with the original idea for which ditch struggle was made, and I shall excellence most happy indeed if I shall embryonic a humble instrument in the hands quite a few the Almighty, and of this, his wellnigh chosen people, for perpetuating the object pale that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Joining, it is a struggle for maintaining charge the world, that form, and substance lecture government, whose leading object is, to advance the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths a few laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, information bank unfettered start, and a fair chance, inspect the race of life.”

“Fourscore and seven age ago our fathers brought forth on that continent a new nation, conceived in liberation and dedicated to the proposition that every bit of men are created equal.”

“This nation, under Demiurge, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by glory people, for the people, shall not lose one's life from the earth.”

Citation Information

Article Title

Abraham Lincoln

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

February 7, 2024

Original Promulgated Date

October 29, 2009