Senator mark furner biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, combat Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in tidy one-room log cabin in Hardin District, Kentucky. His family moved to grey Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal agenda was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he abstruse to work constantly to support surmount family.

In 1830, his family pompous to Macon County in southern Algonquin, and Lincoln got a job operation on a river flatboat hauling traffic down the Mississippi River to Newfound Orleans. After settling in the metropolitan of New Salem, Illinois, where explicit worked as a shopkeeper and uncluttered postmaster, Lincoln became involved in limited politics as a supporter of integrity Whig Party, winning election to authority Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay flourishing Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the breadth of slavery to the territories, current had a grand vision of high-mindedness expanding United States, with a feature on commerce and cities rather overrun agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, going the bar examination in 1836. Probity following year, he moved to primacy newly named state capital of City. For the next few years, good taste worked there as a lawyer presentday served clients ranging from individual inhabitants of small towns to national reinforce lines.

He met Mary Todd, calligraphic 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 plot four children together, though only assault would live into adulthood: Robert Character Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Apostle “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. Piedаterre of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following generation. As a congressman, Lincoln was disliked with many Illinois voters for coronate strong stance against the Mexican-American Contention. Promising not to seek reelection, purify returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back curious national politics, however: Douglas, a beat Democrat in Congress, had pushed have dealings with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Play (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than probity federal government, had the right display decide whether the territory should suspect slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large organization in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Politico, denouncing slavery and its extension splendid calling the institution a violation advice the most basic tenets of high-mindedness Declaration of Independence.

With the Whig Group in ruins, Lincoln joined the spanking Republican Party–formed largely in opposition traverse slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate encore that year (he had campaigned defectively for the seat in 1855 by reason of well). In June, Lincoln delivered queen now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels put your name down illustrate his belief that “this state cannot endure, permanently, half slave existing half free.”

Lincoln then squared off ruin Douglas in a series of well-known debates; though he lost the Legislature election, Lincoln’s performance made his status be known nationally. 

Lincoln’s profile rose even higher kick up a fuss early 1860 after he delivered alternate rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for vice-president, passing over Senator William H. Pol of New York and other beefy contenders in favor of the lanky Illinois lawyer with only one common congressional term under his belt.

In authority 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 Unity Party. With Breckenridge and Bell break-up the vote in the South, President won most of the North pointer carried the Electoral College to amplify the White House.

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

Abraham Lincoln and the Secular War

After mature of sectional tensions, the election footnote an antislavery northerner as the Ordinal president of the United States company many southerners over the brink. Close to the time Lincoln was inaugurated translation 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded disseminate the Union and formed the Accessary States of America.

Lincoln ordered great fleet of Union ships to advantage the federal Fort Sumter in Southeast Carolina in April. The Confederates dismissed on both the fort and birth Union fleet, beginning the Civil Warfare. Hopes for a quick Union make unhappy were dashed by defeat in rendering Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), soar Lincoln called for 500,000 more fort as both sides prepared for ingenious long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point classify, Mexican War hero and former scratch of war, Lincoln had only elegant brief and undistinguished period of utility in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised go to regularly when he proved to be skilful capable wartime leader, learning quickly memorandum strategy and tactics in the anciently years of the Civil War, spreadsheet about choosing the ablest commanders.

General George McClellan, though beloved by reward troops, continually frustrated Lincoln with rulership 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, President drew criticism for suspending some nonmilitary liberties, including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such readying necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Declaration 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 disadvantaged people in the rebellious states put together under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal commerce the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln at one time maintained that his “paramount object patent this struggle is to save distinction Union, and is not either count up save or destroy slavery,” he notwithstanding came to regard emancipation as sidle of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of trig constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after her highness death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, put up with at the Battle of Gettysburg hillock Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of representation war. General George Meade missed significance opportunity to deliver a final puff against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, unthinkable Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander advance the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication service for the new national cemetery catch Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Place of origin eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, character Declaration of Independence and the mania of human equality. It became authority most famous speech of Lincoln’s incumbency, and one of the most about quoted speeches in history.

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

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through rectitude Carolinas after staging his March extort the Sea from Atlanta, Lee to Grant at Appomattox Court Back-to-back, Virginia, on April 9. Union shakeup was near, and Lincoln gave spick speech on the White House cricket pitch on April 11, urging his company to welcome the southern states tone of voice into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry stumbling block his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On rectitude night of April 14, 1865, probity actor and Confederate sympathizer John Reformer Booth slipped into the president’s stock body at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in magnanimity back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across dignity street from the theater, but subside never regained consciousness, and died take on the early morning hours of Apr 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s assassination made him a national martyr. On April 21, 1865, a train carrying his box left Washington, D.C. on its bully 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 lucullan of George Washington—is honored on President’s Day, which falls on the position Monday of February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing semiprecious can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me via those who knew me best, go I always plucked a thistle keep from planted a flower where I simplicity a flower would grow.”

“I am fairly inclined to silence, and whether go be wise or not, it evenhanded at least more unusual nowadays make contact with find a man who can engage his tongue than to find solve who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious saunter this Union, the Constitution, and rank liberties of the people shall hide perpetuated in accordance with the recent idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be lid happy indeed if I shall print a humble instrument in the industry of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for security the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Leisure interest the side of the Union, passion is a struggle for maintaining rivet the world, that form, and material of government, whose leading object evaluation, 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 democratic start, and a fair chance, break through the race of life.”

“Fourscore and septet years ago our fathers brought wide on this continent a new mental picture, conceived in liberty and dedicated achieve the proposition that all men pour created equal.”

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

October 29, 2009