Birth Location:
Hodgenville, KY
Birth Date:
2/12/1809
Death Location:
Washington, D.C.
Death Date:
4/15/1865
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the US, issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves in rebelling states. He was assassinated by Wilkes Booth at the close of the war. Lincoln , arguably the best president the US has seen, was born on 1809, in Hodgenville, Kentucky.
He later moved to Illinois together with his family and is most identified thereupon state. Both his parents, Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln (his mother died when Abraham was just 9 years old), were illiterate, but, as a toddler , Lincoln read the maximum amount as possible when not at work on the family farm. His choices of books were slim on the American frontier, but what he did read he learned through and thru .
In 1828 and again in 1831, Lincoln made two trips down the good Mississippi on flatboats, exposing the longer term President to the vastness of the American territory and therefore the importance of the Mississippi to both commerce and transportation for an outsized a part of the state .
He served within the Illinois militia during the brief Black Hawk War but never saw action. However, he was elected to the rank of Captain. an equivalent year, 1832, Lincoln ran for the Illinois Legislature but lost. He then targeting his career as a lawyer.
In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd, with whom he would have four children, only of whom would survive to adulthood. He continued to practice law, but, in 1847, politics again called. He ran for a seat within the U. S. House of Representatives, and in contrast to his first attempt at position , he won.
He served only the one term within the 30th Congress where he opposed and spoke out on the Mexican War , but otherwise had a boring and unimpressive term. He returned to Illinois and again targeting his legal career, a profession at which he excelled.
He ran for the U. S. Senate in 1855 and lost, but ran again in 1858 against Stephen A. Douglas. it had been the campaign against Douglas (which he lost) and therefore the debates between the 2 men that thrust Lincoln onto the national political stage.
In 1860, the still young Republic party nominated Lincoln for the presidency of the us . He was the second presidential contender within the history of the Republican Party (John C. Frémont ran on the Republican ticket in 1856.) The Democrats, who split along sectional lines, nominated two men: John C. Breckinridge for the Southern Democrats and Stephan A. Douglas for the Northern Democrats.
A fourth candidate, John Bell, ran under the banner of the Constitutional Union Party. Lincoln won all the northern states except New Jersey, plus California and Oregon, pulling in180 body votes and almost 40% of the favored vote.
It wasn’t bad for a candidate who didn’t even appear on the ballot in Southern states. John C. Breckinridge took the South apart from Maryland (which went for Bell) with 72 electoral votes and 18% of the favored vote. Stephen Douglas won Missouri and New Jersey, 12 electoral votes, and 29.5% of the favored vote. John Bell won Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, carrying 39 body votes and 12.6% of the favored vote.
The election of Lincoln caused great concern within the South, for it had been believed that Lincoln, quite any of the opposite candidates running in 1860, posed a threat to the institution of slavery. regardless of what Lincoln said to undertake and persuade Southerners that he didn’t want to abolish slavery, they didn’t listen.
On December 20, just six weeks after Lincoln was elected and three months before he even took office, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Soon thereafter, the opposite cotton states within the lower South followed suit and left the Union. Between Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and his inauguration in March 1861, things within the South deteriorated. Union troops were holed up in Forts Sumter and Pickens and state troops throughout the Lower South were seizing federal arsenals and their caches of weapons.
On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States. Appointed to his cabinet were many Radical Republicans, including Edwin M. Stanton, Salmon P. Chase, and Charles F. Adams as Minister to Great Britain. Six weeks after the inaugural, Confederate forces under the Command of P. G. T. Beauregard commenced a two-day bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harborthe American war had begun.
*Lincoln took immediate action thanks to the events at Fort Sumter, pressing for the recruitment of over five hundred-thousand soldiers, and designating two million U.S. dollars for military purposes. Lincoln also suspended the writ of habeas corpus, allowing the Union to imprison any sympathizer to the confederacy. This decision drew much ire from many civilian, political, and military sources.
While he had some military experience, it had been minimal in nature, resulting in Lincoln quickly learning military strategies out necessarily . He did however have a penchant for choosing supreme Union military commanders who, while able in their own rights, botched plans for various reasons.
The primary General appointed by Lincoln, General George McClellan, caused Lincoln much grief together with his non-aggressive nature, allowing Confederate General Lee’s forces to retreat without pursuit after the Union victory at the battle of Antietam within the Fall of 1862. Lincoln removed him from command following that battle, and appointed General George Meade in his place.
January 1 of 1863 saw Lincoln issue the primary incarnation of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing southern slaves, apart from those within the Union states on the border with the Confederacy.
Lincoln is noted as stating that his first objective was to save lots of the union, however, emancipation was also a subject that he held within the highest regard. Lincoln also pushed for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that prohibited slavery, and his goal was achieved within the sort of the 13th amendment a couple of years later.
After failing to deal a lethal blow to General Lee’s confederate forces at Gettysburg within the summer of 1863, General Meade was faraway from command by Lincoln, and leadership was given to a General who had recently achieved victory in Vicksburg, Mississippi: General Ulysses S. Grant. November of an equivalent year saw Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the national cemetery located there.
In 1864 Lincoln ran for, and won, presidential reelection against former Union General George McClellan. Lincoln stated his plans for reconstructing the South in his inaugural , saying that it must be accomplished “with malice toward none; with charity for all”.
The Confederacy surrendered on April 9, 1865, and on April 11 Lincoln gave a victory speech, giving beat attendance the charge of welcoming back the Confederacy with open arms. Three days later, April 14, 1865, saw the president attend Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. where a sympathizer of the Confederate cause, and documented actor, Wilkes Booth infiltrated the Presidents box, and assassinated him with a bullet to the rear of the top .
