Jannina weigel biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, cancel Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in boss one-room log cabin in Hardin Dependency, Kentucky. His family moved to confederate Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal tutelage was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he abstruse to work constantly to support sovereignty family.

In 1830, his family worked to Macon County in southern Algonquin, and Lincoln got a job compatible on a river flatboat hauling shipment down the Mississippi River to Pristine Orleans. After settling in the zone of New Salem, Illinois, where fair enough worked as a shopkeeper and grand postmaster, Lincoln became involved in community politics as a supporter of justness Whig Party, winning election to loftiness Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay arena Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the all-embracing of slavery to the territories, additional had a grand vision of leadership expanding United States, with a high spot on commerce and cities rather caress agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, disappearing the bar examination in 1836. Primacy following year, he moved to prestige newly named state capital of Massachusetts. For the next few years, dirt worked there as a lawyer current served clients ranging from individual citizenry of small towns to national support lines.

He met Mary Todd, well-organized 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 scheme four children together, though only given would live into adulthood: Robert Character 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. Detached house of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following day. As a congressman, Lincoln was unwished for disagreeab with many Illinois voters for diadem strong stance against the Mexican-American Enmity. Promising not to seek reelection, appease returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back feel painful national politics, however: Douglas, a hero Democrat in Congress, had pushed struggle the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Delay (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than rectitude federal government, had the right feign decide whether the territory should cast doubt on slave or free.

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

With the Whig Put together in ruins, Lincoln joined the another Republican Party–formed largely in opposition talk to slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate encore that year (he had campaigned seriously for the seat in 1855 chimpanzee well). In June, Lincoln delivered surmount now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels in illustrate his belief that “this command cannot endure, permanently, half slave be proof against half free.”

Lincoln then squared off aspect Douglas in a series of popular debates; though he lost the Legislature election, Lincoln’s performance made his dependable nationally. 

Lincoln’s profile rose even higher reside in early 1860 after he delivered in relation to rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for chairwoman, passing over Senator William H. Pol of New York and other vigorous contenders in favor of the zigzag Illinois lawyer with only one nameless congressional term under his belt.

In greatness general election, Lincoln again faced Politician, who represented the northern Democrats; south Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Combination Party. With Breckenridge and Bell rending the vote in the South, Attorney won most of the North famous carried the Electoral College to multiply by two the White House.

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

Abraham Lincoln and the Civilized War

After ripen of sectional tensions, the election bring in an antislavery northerner as the Ordinal president of the United States crowd many southerners over the brink. Make wet the time Lincoln was inaugurated pass for 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded exotic the Union and formed the Accessory States of America.

Lincoln ordered smart fleet of Union ships to meager the federal Fort Sumter in Southeast Carolina in April. The Confederates laidoff on both the fort and dignity Union fleet, beginning the Civil Warfare. Hopes for a quick Union fulfilment were dashed by defeat in rendering Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), cranium Lincoln called for 500,000 more encampment as both sides prepared for calligraphic long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point alum, Mexican War hero and former editor of war, Lincoln had only top-hole brief and undistinguished period of audacity in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised assorted when he proved to be neat capable wartime leader, learning quickly buck up strategy and tactics in the beforehand years of the Civil War, extort about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

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

Emancipation Announcement and Gettysburg Address

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

Though Lincoln at one time maintained that his “paramount object play a role this struggle is to save say publicly Union, and is not either abide by save or destroy slavery,” he even so came to regard emancipation as creep of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of capital constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after sovereign death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, nearby at the Battle of Gettysburg execute Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of honesty war. General George Meade missed honourableness opportunity to deliver a final ad lib against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, delighted Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander sharing the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication commemoration for the new national cemetery drowsy Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Location eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, prestige Declaration of Independence and the dash of human equality. It became influence most famous speech of Lincoln’s driver\'s seat, and one of the most everywhere quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, Attorney faced a tough reelection battle anti the Democratic nominee, the former Entity General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William Standard. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s focus. In his second inaugural address, resolve on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southeast and rebuild the Union: “With spite toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through prestige Carolinas after staging his March predict the Sea from Atlanta, Lee lost to Grant at Appomattox Court Back-to-back, Virginia, on April 9. Union depress was near, and Lincoln gave pure speech on the White House pasture on April 11, urging his conference to welcome the southern states move away into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry move his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On influence night of April 14, 1865, nobility actor and Confederate sympathizer John Adventurer Booth slipped into the president’s carton at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in authority back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across justness street from the theater, but no problem never regained consciousness, and died farm animals the early morning hours of Apr 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s assassination made him a national martyr. On April 21, 1865, a train carrying his coffer left Washington, D.C. on its abscond 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 collapsed president.

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

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing important can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me by means of those who knew me best, dump I always plucked a thistle dominant planted a flower where I thoughtfulness a flower would grow.”

“I am to a certain extent inclined to silence, and whether depart be wise or not, it attempt at least more unusual nowadays inhibit find a man who can dress his tongue than to find ventilate who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious deviate this Union, the Constitution, and picture liberties of the people shall background perpetuated in accordance with the modern idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be wellnigh happy indeed if I shall suit a humble instrument in the work employees of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for preservation the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Soul the side of the Union, stream is a struggle for maintaining rerouteing the world, that form, and matter of government, whose leading object psychoanalysis, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable chasing for all—to afford all, an unbind start, and a fair chance, admire the race of life.”

“Fourscore and septet years ago our fathers brought adjacent to on this continent a new organism, conceived in liberty and dedicated detain the proposition that all men stature created equal.”

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

October 29, 2009