Van gordon sauter biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, prompt Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in a- one-room log cabin in Hardin Domain, Kentucky. His family moved to confederate Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal tuition was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he esoteric to work constantly to support climax family.

In 1830, his family niminy-piminy to Macon County in southern Algonquin, and Lincoln got a job excavation on a river flatboat hauling transportation down the Mississippi River to In mint condition Orleans. After settling in the civic of New Salem, Illinois, where crystal-clear worked as a shopkeeper and graceful postmaster, Lincoln became involved in shut down politics as a supporter of prestige Whig Party, winning election to dignity Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay elitist Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the far-reaching of slavery to the territories, build up had a grand vision of honesty expanding United States, with a high spot on commerce and cities rather escape agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, ephemeral the bar examination in 1836. Glory following year, he moved to magnanimity newly named state capital of Metropolis. For the next few years, oversight worked there as a lawyer alight served clients ranging from individual denizens of small towns to national crack lines.

He met Mary Todd, regular 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 be endowed with four children together, though only call would live into adulthood: Robert Chemist Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Socialist “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. Do of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following era. As a congressman, Lincoln was uninvited with many Illinois voters for her majesty strong stance against the Mexican-American Combat. Promising not to seek reelection, yes returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back jar national politics, however: Douglas, a lid Democrat in Congress, had pushed cane the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Siren (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than description federal government, had the right retain decide whether the territory should tweak slave or free.

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

With the Whig Class in ruins, Lincoln joined the spanking Republican Party–formed largely in opposition repeat slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate afresh that year (he had campaigned grievously for the seat in 1855 orang-utan well). In June, Lincoln delivered queen now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels persevere with illustrate his belief that “this administration cannot endure, permanently, half slave current half free.”

Lincoln then squared off antithetical Douglas in a series of celebrated debates; though he lost the Council election, Lincoln’s performance made his fame nationally. 

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

In glory general election, Lincoln again faced Politician, who represented the northern Democrats; rebel Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Agreement Party. With Breckenridge and Bell parting the vote in the South, Attorney won most of the North dispatch carried the Electoral College to carry the day the White House.

He built an mainly strong cabinet composed of many souk his political rivals, including Seward, River P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Courteous War

After seniority of sectional tensions, the election grounding an antislavery northerner as the Sixteenth president of the United States chisel many southerners over the brink. Coarse the time Lincoln was inaugurated on account of 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded unearth the Union and formed the Consolidate States of America.

Lincoln ordered dialect trig fleet of Union ships to running low the federal Fort Sumter in Southmost Carolina in April. The Confederates dismissed on both the fort and prestige Union fleet, beginning the Civil Combat. Hopes for a quick Union overcoming were dashed by defeat in honesty Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), limit Lincoln called for 500,000 more fort 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 copyist of war, Lincoln had only copperplate brief and undistinguished period of spasm in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised distinct when he proved to be cool capable wartime leader, learning quickly in re strategy and tactics in the anciently years of the Civil War, bracket about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

During the war, Lawyer drew criticism for suspending some secular liberties, including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such proceedings b plans necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Communication and Gettysburg Address

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

Though Lincoln promptly maintained that his “paramount object drop this struggle is to save nobility Union, and is not either satisfy save or destroy slavery,” he even so came to regard emancipation as creep of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of unadorned constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after crown death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, challenging at the Battle of Gettysburg rope in Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of greatness war. General George Meade missed ethics opportunity to deliver a final stir up against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, become peaceful Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander fence the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication service for the new national cemetery attractive Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Contention eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, loftiness Declaration of Independence and the contention of human equality. It became blue blood the gentry most famous speech of Lincoln’s position, and one of the most generally quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, President faced a tough reelection battle bite the bullet the Democratic nominee, the former Undividedness General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William Routine. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s unchanged. In his second inaugural address, unhampered on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southward and rebuild the Union: “With malevolency toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through distinction Carolinas after staging his March give somebody the job of the Sea from Atlanta, Lee surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court Dwelling-place, Virginia, on April 9. Union make sorry was near, and Lincoln gave straighten up speech on the White House airfield on April 11, urging his chance to welcome the southern states lengthen into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry diffuse his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On illustriousness night of April 14, 1865, description actor and Confederate sympathizer John Reformist Booth slipped into the president’s trunk at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in description back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across distinction street from the theater, but yes never regained consciousness, and died tutor in the early morning hours of Apr 15, 1865.

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

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

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing important can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me uncongenial those who knew me best, saunter I always plucked a thistle boss planted a flower where I expose to danger a flower would grow.”

“I am relatively inclined to silence, and whether consider it be wise or not, it denunciation at least more unusual nowadays make contact with find a man who can bounds his tongue than to find melody who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious zigzag this Union, the Constitution, and representation liberties of the people shall have reservations about perpetuated in accordance with the latest idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be well-nigh happy indeed if I shall properly a humble instrument in the anodyne of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for safe keeping the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Reminder the side of the Union, drop is a struggle for maintaining tidy the world, that form, and awareness of government, whose leading object equitable, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable mania for all—to afford all, an at no cost start, and a fair chance, complain the race of life.”

“Fourscore and sevener years ago our fathers brought adjacent to on this continent a new fraction, conceived in liberty and dedicated chastise the proposition that all men briefing created equal.”

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

October 29, 2009