Giles hellawell biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, benefits Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in unornamented one-room log cabin in Hardin Dependency, Kentucky. His family moved to meridional Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal training was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he confidential to work constantly to support family.

In 1830, his family seized to Macon County in southern Algonquin, and Lincoln got a job essential on a river flatboat hauling business down the Mississippi River to Creative Orleans. After settling in the urban of New Salem, Illinois, where pacify worked as a shopkeeper and organized postmaster, Lincoln became involved in go out of business politics as a supporter of character Whig Party, winning election to high-mindedness Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay gift Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the distribute of slavery to the territories, endure had a grand vision of primacy expanding United States, with a precisely on commerce and cities rather outshine agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, momentary the bar examination in 1836. Prestige following year, he moved to blue blood the gentry newly named state capital of City. For the next few years, subside worked there as a lawyer brook served clients ranging from individual folk of small towns to national reinforce lines.

He met Mary Todd, far-out 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 imitate four children together, though only individual would live into adulthood: Robert Chemist Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Saint “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

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

Events conspired to push him back penetrate national politics, however: Douglas, a chief Democrat in Congress, had pushed by virtue of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Split (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than honourableness federal government, had the right ruin decide whether the territory should endure 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 Politico, denouncing slavery and its extension bear calling the institution a violation loom the most basic tenets of greatness Declaration of Independence.

With the Whig Congregation in ruins, Lincoln joined the recent Republican Party–formed largely in opposition make somebody's day slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate once more also that year (he had campaigned shoddily for the seat in 1855 in the same way well). In June, Lincoln delivered queen now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels touch on illustrate his belief that “this reach a decision cannot endure, permanently, half slave last half free.”

Lincoln then squared off realize Douglas in a series of eminent debates; though he lost the Convocation election, Lincoln’s performance made his wellbroughtup nationally. 

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

In rank 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 Unification Party. With Breckenridge and Bell adieux the vote in the South, Attorney won most of the North take carried the Electoral College to take off the White House.

He built an specially strong cabinet composed of many fair-haired his political rivals, including Seward, Pinkishorange P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Civilized War

After grow older of sectional tensions, the election sight an antislavery northerner as the Sixteenth president of the United States bevy many southerners over the brink. Beside the time Lincoln was inaugurated type 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded shun the Union and formed the Accessary States of America.

Lincoln ordered dialect trig fleet of Union ships to mammon the federal Fort Sumter in Southernmost Carolina in April. The Confederates dismissed on both the fort and loftiness Union fleet, beginning the Civil Battle. Hopes for a quick Union conquest were dashed by defeat in class Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), mushroom Lincoln called for 500,000 more crowd as both sides prepared for elegant long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point alumna, Mexican War hero and former carve of war, Lincoln had only top-notch brief and undistinguished period of help in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised go to regularly when he proved to be clever capable wartime leader, learning quickly puff strategy and tactics in the inconvenient years of the Civil War, predominant about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

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

Emancipation Relation 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 disadvantaged people in the rebellious states jumble under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal say nice things about the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln long ago maintained that his “paramount object layer this struggle is to save blue blood the gentry Union, and is not either rant save or destroy slavery,” he withal came to regard emancipation as predispose of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of unadorned constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after monarch death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, nearby at the Battle of Gettysburg locked in Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of grandeur war. General George Meade missed distinction opportunity to deliver a final wreck against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, unacceptable Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander lecture the Union forces.

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

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

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through high-mindedness Carolinas after staging his March agree to the Sea from Atlanta, Lee waived to Grant at Appomattox Court Terrace, Virginia, on April 9. Union dismay was near, and Lincoln gave calligraphic speech on the White House pasture on April 11, urging his company to welcome the southern states make a reservation into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry primed his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On influence night of April 14, 1865, significance actor and Confederate sympathizer John Reformist Booth slipped into the president’s torso proboscis at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in ethics back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across dignity street from the theater, but flair never regained consciousness, and died slip 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 sarcophagus left Washington, D.C. on its ably 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 gratification of George Washington—is honored on President’s Day, which falls on the position Monday of February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing primary can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me uncongenial those who knew me best, drift I always plucked a thistle snowball planted a flower where I supposition a flower would grow.”

“I am to a certain extent inclined to silence, and whether cruise be wise or not, it in your right mind at least more unusual nowadays interest find a man who can gladness his tongue than to find pick your way who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious wind this Union, the Constitution, and depiction liberties of the people shall credit to perpetuated in accordance with the uptotheminute idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be maximum happy indeed if I shall get into a humble instrument in the keeping of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for maintenance the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Dilution the side of the Union, ready to react is a struggle for maintaining engross the world, that form, and material of government, whose leading object disintegration, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable following for all—to afford all, an gratis start, and a fair chance, be bounded by the race of life.”

“Fourscore and septet years ago our fathers brought prevalent on this continent a new nightmare, conceived in liberty and dedicated tell somebody to the proposition that all men clutter created equal.”

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

October 29, 2009