Abraham Lincoln Larger image Order: 16th President Term of Office: March 4, 1861 - April 15, 1865 Followed: James Buchanan Succeeded by: Andrew Johnson Date of Birth Sunday, February 12, 1809 Place of Birth: Larue County, Kentucky Date of Death: Saturday, April 15, 1865 Place of Death: Washington, D.C First Lady: Mary Ann Todd (1818-1882) Occupation: lawyer Political Party: Republican Vice President: Hannibal Hamlin (1861-1865) Andrew Johnson (1865)

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865) was the 16th (1861-1865) President of the United States, and the first President from the Republican Party. He has often been praised for successfully restoring the federal unity of the nation by defeating the secessionist Confederate States of America in the U.S. Civil War and along the way, playing in an important role in ending chattel slavery in the United States. However, a number of states' rights supporters view Lincoln as a tyrant who suspended civil liberties and secrecy of the ballot, had anti-war protesters, including women and children, executed, and suppressed the legitimate right to secede for which Lincoln himself had argued in 1848. Other critics emphasize Lincoln's white-supremacist beliefs (see Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858) and official support for slavery.

Table of contents

1 Early life 2 Early political career 3 Presidency 3.1 Lincoln on Slavery 3.2 Emancipation Proclamation 3.3 Gettysburg Address 3.4 The Civil War 3.5 Assassination 4 Lincoln family 5 Lincoln memorialized 6 Supreme Court appointments 7 Related articles 8 Further reading 9 External links

Early life

Born on February 12, 1809, in Kentucky, Lincoln moved at a young age to Indiana then later to New Salem, Illinois. He served as a captain in the U.S. Army during the Black Hawk War. He later tried his hand at several business and political ventures. He was highly regarded as a practicing lawyer. Lincoln served four terms in the Illinois State Legislature, was briefly elected to Congress (1846) and had a successful law practice in Illinois both before and after his single term in the House of Representatives. It is commonly held that Lincoln had bipolar disorder, which greatly moderated after his marriage to Mary Ann Todd in 1842.

Early political career

First elected to the House of Representatives, Lincoln spent most of his time in Washington, DC alone and made a less than spectacular impression on his fellow politicians. During his unsuccessful campaign for the United States Senate against Stephen A. Douglas, it was Lincoln's well-known gift of oratory that brought public support to an otherwise unimpressive candidate. Lincoln debated Douglas in a series of events which represented a national discussion on the issues that were about to split the nation in two. The Lincoln-Douglas debates presaged the Presidential election of 1860, in which Douglas and Lincoln were once again opponents. On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the United States, the first Republican to hold that office.

Presidency

Shortly after his election, the South made it clear that secession was inevitable which greatly increased tension across the nation. President-elect Lincoln survived an assassination attempt in Baltimore, Maryland and on February 23, 1861 arrived secretly in disguise to Washington, DC. The South ridiculed Lincoln for this seemingly cowardly act, but the efforts at security may have been prudent. At Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, the Turners formed Lincoln's bodyguard, and a sizable garrison of Union troops was always present, ready to protect the president and the capital from rebel invasion.

Lincoln on Slavery

Also revealing was his letter a year later to James Conkling of August 26, 1863, which included the following excerpt:
"There was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the rebellion before the proclamation issued, the last one hundred days of which passed under an explicit notice that it was coming, unless averted by those in revolt, returning to their allegiance. The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us, since the issue of proclamation as before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important successes believe the emancipation policy and the use of the colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the Rebellion, and that at least one of these important successes could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black soldiers. Among the commanders holding these views are some who have never had any affinity with what is called abolitionism or with the Republican party policies but who held them purely as military opinions. I submit these opinions as being entitled to some weight against the objections often urged that emancipation and arming the blacks are unwise as military measures and were not adopted as such in good faith.

You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistence to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time, then, for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.

I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistence to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive--even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept."

Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln is often credited with freeing enslaved African-Americans with the Emancipation Proclamation, though this only freed the slaves in areas of the Confederacy not yet controlled by the Union; in occupied and northern territories, slaves were not freed. However, as the proclamation made abolishing slavery in the rebel states an official war goal it did become the impetus for the enactment of the 13th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution which respectively abolished slavery and established the federal enforcement of civil rights.

Gettysburg Address

He showed tremendous leadership to the Union populace during the war as evidenced by the Gettysburg Address, a speech dedicating a cemetery of union soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. While most of the speakers—e.g. Edward Everett—at the event spoke at length, some for hours, Lincoln's few choice words resonated across the nation and across history, defying Lincoln's own prediction that "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." While there is little documentation of the other speeches of the day, Lincoln's address is regarded as one of the great speeches in history.

The Civil War

The war was a source of constant frustration for the president, and it occupied nearly all of his time. After repeated frustrations with General George McClellan and a string of other unsuccessful commanding generals, Lincoln made the fateful decision to appoint a radical and somewhat scandalous army commander: General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant would apply his military knowledge and leadership talents to bring about the close of the Civil War.

When Richmond, the Confederate capital, was at long last captured, Lincoln went there to make a public gesture of sitting behind Jefferson Davis's desk in Davis's own chair, symbolically saying to the nation that the President of the United States held authority over the entire land. He was greeted at the city as a conquering hero by freed slaves whose sentiments were epitomized by one admirer's quote, "I know I am free for I have seen the face of Father Abraham and have felt him."

The reconstruction of the Union weighed heavy on the President's mind. He was determined to take a course that would not permanently alienate the former Confederate states.

In 1864, Lincoln faced a presidential election, an unprecedented situation considering it was during a civil war. The long war and the issue of emancipation appeared to be severely hampering his prospects and an electoral defeat appeared likely against the Democratic nominee, George McClellan. However, a series of timely Union victories shortly before election day changed the situation dramatically and Lincoln was reelected.

During the Civil War Lincoln held powers no previous president had wielded; he suspended the writ of habeas corpus and frequently imprisoned Southern spies and sympathizers without trial. On the other hand, he often commuted executions.

Assassination

Lincoln met frequently with Grant as the war ended. The two men planned matters of reconstruction, and it was evident to all that the two men held one another in high regard. During their last meeting, on April 14, 1865, Lincoln invited General Grant to a social engagement for that evening. Grant declined (his wife was not eager to spend time with Mary Todd Lincoln).

Without the General and his wife, the Lincolns left to attend a play at Ford's Theater. The play was Our American Cousin, a musical comedy. As Lincoln sat in the balcony, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Southern sympathizer from Virginia, crept up behind Lincoln in his State Box and aimed a single-shot, round-slug .44 caliber derringer at the President's head and fired at point-blank range. He shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" (Latin: "Thus always to tyrants," and Virginia's state motto; some versions say he said "The south is avenged!") and jumped from the balcony to the stage below, breaking his leg in the process.

Booth managed to limp to his horse and escape, and the mortally wounded president was taken to a house across the street where he lay in a coma for some time before he quietly expired. Booth and several of his companions (some of whom were later shown to be innocent) were eventually captured and either hanged or imprisoned.

Lincoln's body was carried by train in a grand funeral procession through several states. The nation mourned a man who many viewed as the savior of the United States and protector and defender of what Lincoln himself called "the government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Critics say that it was in fact the Confederates that were defending the right of "government for the people" and Lincoln who was suppressing that right. They further insist that Lincoln only preserved the union in a geographical sense while destroying its voluntary nature.

Lincoln's funeral train
The train that carried Lincoln's remains from Washington, D.C. to Illinois was viewed by over seven million people, almost one-fifth the population of the U.S. at the time.

Lincoln family

President Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln had four sons. Only one survived into adulthood.

1. Robert Todd Lincoln : b. August 1, 1843 in Springfield, Illinois - d. July 26, 1926 in Manchester, Vermont.
2. Edward Baker Lincoln : b. March 10, 1846 in Springfield, Illinois - d. February 1, 1850 in Springfield, Illinois
3. William Wallace Lincoln : b. December 21, 1850 in Springfield, Illinois - d. February 20, 1862 in Washington, D.C.
4. Thomas Lincoln (Tad) : b. April 4, 1853 in Springfield, Illinois - d. July 16, 1871 in Chicago, Illinois.

Daniel Chester French sculpture of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial.

Lincoln has been memorialized in many city names, notably the capital of Nebraska, with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C, on the U.S. $5 bill and the 1 cent coin, and as part of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

On February 12, 1892 Abraham Lincoln's birthday was declared to be a federal holiday in the United States, though it was later combined with Washington's birthday in the form of President's Day.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was named in his honor.

Supreme Court appointments

• Noah Haynes Swayne - 1862
• Samuel Freeman Miller - 1862
• David Davis - 1862
• Stephen Johnson Field - 1863
• Salmon Portland Chase - Chief Justice - 1864

• U.S. presidential election, 1860
• U.S. presidential election, 1864
• Lincoln's second inaugural address

• Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College
• Wikiquote - Quotes by Abraham Lincoln
• First Inaugural Address
• First Address, available in multiple formats
• Second Inaugural Address
• Second Address, available in multiple formats
• Original 1860's Harper's Weekly Images and News on Abraham Lincoln
• The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln
• The Real Lincoln: An article by Walter E. Williams on Lincoln's suppression of the right to secede
• The Lincoln Museum
• Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream.