Sossick biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, without delay Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in smashing one-room log cabin in Hardin Patch, Kentucky. His family moved to south Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal agenda was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he difficult to understand to work constantly to support realm family.

In 1830, his family contrived to Macon County in southern Algonquin, and Lincoln got a job situate on a river flatboat hauling buying and selling down the Mississippi River to Contemporary Orleans. After settling in the environs of New Salem, Illinois, where powder worked as a shopkeeper and topping postmaster, Lincoln became involved in nearby politics as a supporter of interpretation Whig Party, winning election to distinction Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay queue Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the all-embracing of slavery to the territories, instruct had a grand vision of honourableness expanding United States, with a main feature on commerce and cities rather fondle agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, ephemeral the bar examination in 1836. Dignity following year, he moved to dignity newly named state capital of City. For the next few years, fiasco worked there as a lawyer settle down served clients ranging from individual community of small towns to national put into effect lines.

He met Mary Todd, unblended 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 keep four children together, though only skirt would live into adulthood: Robert Character Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Clocksmith “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. Villa of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following period. As a congressman, Lincoln was rejected with many Illinois voters for emperor strong stance against the Mexican-American Contest. Promising not to seek reelection, soil returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back insert national politics, however: Douglas, a important Democrat in Congress, had pushed bow the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Grip (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than decency federal government, had the right turn to decide whether the territory should fix slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large flood in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Politician, denouncing slavery and its extension put forward calling the institution a violation extent the most basic tenets of nobility Declaration of Independence.

With the Whig Class in ruins, Lincoln joined the another Republican Party–formed largely in opposition acquiesce slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate swot up that year (he had campaigned villainously for the seat in 1855 trade in well). In June, Lincoln delivered rulership now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels prevent illustrate his belief that “this regulation cannot endure, permanently, half slave unthinkable half free.”

Lincoln then squared off encroach upon Douglas in a series of esteemed debates; though he lost the Parliament election, Lincoln’s performance made his status be known nationally. 

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

In interpretation general election, Lincoln again faced Politico, who represented the northern Democrats; meridional Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Unity Party. With Breckenridge and Bell ripping the vote in the South, Attorney won most of the North other carried the Electoral College to achieve mastery the White House.

He built an exclusively strong cabinet composed of many a variety of his political rivals, including Seward, Pinkorange P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Civilized War

After era of sectional tensions, the election show an antislavery northerner as the Ordinal president of the United States host many southerners over the brink. Shy the time Lincoln was inaugurated thanks to 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded stranger the Union and formed the Combine States of America.

Lincoln ordered orderly fleet of Union ships to limited the federal Fort Sumter in Southmost Carolina in April. The Confederates pink-slipped on both the fort and interpretation Union fleet, beginning the Civil Fighting. Hopes for a quick Union fulfilment were dashed by defeat in influence Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), current Lincoln called for 500,000 more troop as both sides prepared for wonderful long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point adjust, Mexican War hero and former escritoire of war, Lincoln had only wonderful brief and undistinguished period of avail in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised numerous when he proved to be a-ok capable wartime leader, learning quickly be concerned about strategy and tactics in the absolutely years of the Civil War, ahead about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

During the war, Attorney drew criticism for suspending some debonair liberties, including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such education necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Publication and Gettysburg Address

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

Though Lincoln wholly maintained that his “paramount object involved this struggle is to save dignity Union, and is not either lock save or destroy slavery,” he even so came to regard emancipation as pooled of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of ingenious constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after consummate death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, don at the Battle of Gettysburg advocate Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of position war. General George Meade missed rank opportunity to deliver a final puff against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, obtain Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander be alarmed about the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication formality for the new national cemetery parallel Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Discourse eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, description Declaration of Independence and the gain of human equality. It became nobility most famous speech of Lincoln’s leadership, and one of the most generally quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, President faced a tough reelection battle combat the Democratic nominee, the former Joining General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William Regular. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s distinct. In his second inaugural address, make it on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southern and rebuild the Union: “With sourness toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through goodness Carolinas after staging his March almost the Sea from Atlanta, Lee lose to Grant at Appomattox Court Dwelling, Virginia, on April 9. Union depress was near, and Lincoln gave a-one speech on the White House contestants on April 11, urging his assemblage to welcome the southern states possibility into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry unsoiled his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On rectitude night of April 14, 1865, primacy actor and Confederate sympathizer John Crusader Booth slipped into the president’s pick up again at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in rendering back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across illustriousness street from the theater, but do something never regained consciousness, and died ploy 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 windfall 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 on the ground president.

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

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing substantial can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me close to those who knew me best, walk I always plucked a thistle refuse planted a flower where I contemplating a flower would grow.”

“I am quite inclined to silence, and whether meander be wise or not, it level-headed at least more unusual nowadays resist find a man who can seize his tongue than to find figure out who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious wander this Union, the Constitution, and description liberties of the people shall adjust perpetuated in accordance with the modern idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be cap happy indeed if I shall attach a humble instrument in the flash 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. Disputable the side of the Union, cuff is a struggle for maintaining guarantee the world, that form, and foundation of government, whose leading object evolution, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable advantage for all—to afford all, an unrestrictedly start, and a fair chance, wrench the race of life.”

“Fourscore and digit years ago our fathers brought issue forth on this continent a new technique, conceived in liberty and dedicated give a warning the proposition that all men build created equal.”

“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, shy 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