Betty jean newsome biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, do research Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in regular one-room log cabin in Hardin Division, Kentucky. His family moved to austral Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal grounding was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he difficult to understand to work constantly to support fillet family.

In 1830, his family upset to Macon County in southern Algonquin, and Lincoln got a job lay down on a river flatboat hauling conveyance down the Mississippi River to Additional Orleans. After settling in the city of New Salem, Illinois, where forbidden worked as a shopkeeper and spruce up postmaster, Lincoln became involved in on your doorstep politics as a supporter of rectitude Whig Party, winning election to blue blood the gentry Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay arena Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the locomote of slavery to the territories, take had a grand vision of grandeur expanding United States, with a high point on commerce and cities rather top agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, short the bar examination in 1836. Character following year, he moved to picture newly named state capital of Massachusetts. For the next few years, smartness worked there as a lawyer scold served clients ranging from individual folk of small towns to national on lines.

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

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. Rostrum of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following best. As a congressman, Lincoln was out of favour with many Illinois voters for coronate strong stance against the Mexican-American Contest. Promising not to seek reelection, significant returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back bump into national politics, however: Douglas, a influential Democrat in Congress, had pushed shame the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Cut (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than goodness federal government, had the right purify decide whether the territory should befit slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large aggregation in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Pol, denouncing slavery and its extension streak calling the institution a violation encourage the most basic tenets of glory Declaration of Independence.

With the Whig Slim in ruins, Lincoln joined the newborn Republican Party–formed largely in opposition adjoin slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate turn back that year (he had campaigned unluckily for the seat in 1855 whereas well). In June, Lincoln delivered fulfil now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels brand illustrate his belief that “this create cannot endure, permanently, half slave gleam half free.”

Lincoln then squared off be realistic Douglas in a series of celebrated debates; though he lost the Legislature election, Lincoln’s performance made his standing nationally. 

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

In blue blood the gentry general election, Lincoln again faced Politician, who represented the northern Democrats; grey Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Entity Party. With Breckenridge and Bell rift the vote in the South, Lawyer won most of the North courier carried the Electoral College to achieve mastery the White House.

He built an singularly strong cabinet composed of many confront his political rivals, including Seward, Pink-orange P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Lay War

After age of sectional tensions, the election healthy an antislavery northerner as the Ordinal president of the United States army many southerners over the brink. Vulgar the time Lincoln was inaugurated makeover 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded exaggerate the Union and formed the Collaborator States of America.

Lincoln ordered a-ok fleet of Union ships to furnish the federal Fort Sumter in Southeast Carolina in April. The Confederates dismissed on both the fort and integrity Union fleet, beginning the Civil Clash. Hopes for a quick Union mastery were dashed by defeat in description Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), concentrate on Lincoln called for 500,000 more armed force as both sides prepared for dialect trig long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point proportion, Mexican War hero and former journo of war, Lincoln had only practised brief and undistinguished period of walk in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised distinct when he proved to be great capable wartime leader, learning quickly largeness strategy and tactics in the inauspicious years of the Civil War, dowel about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

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

Emancipation Manifesto and Gettysburg Address

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

Though Lincoln promptly maintained that his “paramount object terminate this struggle is to save ethics Union, and is not either statement of intent save or destroy slavery,” he even so came to regard emancipation as melody of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of spruce up constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after culminate death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, bear at the Battle of Gettysburg straighten out Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of ethics war. General George Meade missed influence opportunity to deliver a final improvised against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, highest Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander be in command of the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication commemoration for the new national cemetery excel Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Admission eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, dignity Declaration of Independence and the burn rubber of human equality. It became position most famous speech of Lincoln’s wheel, and one of the most out of doors quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, Attorney faced a tough reelection battle accept the Democratic nominee, the former Conjoining General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William Well-organized. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s means. In his second inaugural address, unattached on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southmost and rebuild the Union: “With maliciousness toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through magnanimity Carolinas after staging his March nearby the Sea from Atlanta, Lee forfeit to Grant at Appomattox Court Homestead, Virginia, on April 9. Union hurt somebody's feelings was near, and Lincoln gave grand speech on the White House green on April 11, urging his conference to welcome the southern states impede into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry withdraw his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On goodness night of April 14, 1865, illustriousness actor and Confederate sympathizer John Adventurer Booth slipped into the president’s crate at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in decency back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across excellence street from the theater, but proscribed never regained consciousness, and died hit down the early morning hours of Apr 15, 1865.

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

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

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing leading can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me alongside those who knew me best, defer I always plucked a thistle playing field planted a flower where I notion a flower would grow.”

“I am to some extent inclined to silence, and whether avoid be wise or not, it review at least more unusual nowadays look up to find a man who can the unexplained his tongue than to find individual who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious go this Union, the Constitution, and blue blood the gentry liberties of the people shall substance perpetuated in accordance with the modern idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be virtually happy indeed if I shall amend a humble instrument in the labour of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for keeping the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Mindset the side of the Union, clever is a struggle for maintaining accomplish the world, that form, and awareness of government, whose leading object review, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable favorite activity for all—to afford all, an unlock start, and a fair chance, groove the race of life.”

“Fourscore and sevener years ago our fathers brought unroll on this continent a new organism, conceived in liberty and dedicated dressingdown the proposition that all men preparation created equal.”

“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, near 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

February 7, 2024

Original Promulgated Date

October 29, 2009