Abraham Lincoln Early Life, Family, Age, Marriage, Children, Presidency, Personal Life, The Civil War, Lincoln Cabinet, Wiki, Biography

16th President of the United States

Born:- 

February 12, 1809

Sinking Spring Farm,

near Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S.

Died:- 

April 15, 1865 (aged 56)

Petersen House,

Washington, D.C., U.S.

Cause of death:- 

Assassination

Resting place:- 

Lincoln Tomb, Oak Ridge Cemetery,

Springfield, Illinois, U.S.

Political party:- 

Whig (1834–54)

Republican (1854–64)

Other political

National Union:- 

(1864–65)

Height:- 

6 ft 4 in (193 cm)[1]

Spouse(s) 

Mary Todd (m. 1842)

Children:- 

Robert Lincoln

Edward Lincoln

Willie Lincoln

Tad Lincoln

Parents:- 

Thomas Lincoln

Nancy Hanks

Profession:- 

Lawyer, politician 

Life

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Kentucky, United States. His parents were Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. His family was very poor. Abraham had one brother and one sister. His brother died in childhood. They grew up in a small log cabin, with just one room inside. Although slavery was legal in Kentucky at that time, Lincoln's father, who was a religious Baptist, refused to own any slaves.

When Lincoln was seven years old, his family moved to Indiana. Later they moved to Illinois. In his childhood he helped his father on the farm, but when he was 22 years old he left home and moved to New Salem, Illinois, where he worked in a general store. Later, he said that he had gone to school for just one year, but that was enough to learn how to read, write, and do simple math. In 1842, he married Mary Todd Lincoln. They had four children, but three of them died when they were very young. Abraham Lincoln was sometimes called Abe Lincoln or "Honest Abe" after he ran miles to give a customer the right amount of change. The nickname "Honest Abe" came from a time when he started a business that failed. Instead of running away like many people would have, he stayed and worked to pay his debt.

Early political career

Lincoln started his political career in 1832 when he ran for the IGA Illinois General Assembly, but he lost the election. He served as a captain in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War, a war with Native American tribes. When he moved to Springfield in 1837, he began to work as a lawyer. Soon, he became one of the most highly respected lawyers in Illinois. In 1837, as a member of the Illinois General Assembly, Lincoln issued a written protest of its passage of a resolution stating that slavery could not be abolished in Washington, D.C.

In 1841, he won a court case (Bailey v. Cromwell). He represented a black woman who claimed she had already been freed and could not be sold as a slave. In 1847, he lost a case (Matson v. Rutherford) representing a slave owner (Robert Matson) claiming return of fugitive slaves. After he moved to Illinois, he worked as a shopkeeper and postmaster. He rode the circuit of courts for many years. When he was 21, he worked on a flatboat that carried freight. He joined the Independent Spy Corp. At first, he was a member of the Whig Party. He later became a Republican. Lincoln ran for senate against Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas won.

In 1846, Lincoln joined the Whig Party and was elected to one term in the House of Representatives. After that, he ignored his political career and instead worked as a lawyer. In 1854, in reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln became involved in politics again. He joined the Republican Party, which had recently been formed in opposition to the expansion of slavery. In 1858, he wanted to become senator; although this was unsuccessful, the debates drew national attention to him. The Republican Party nominated him for the Presidential election of 1860.

Presidency

Lincoln was chosen as a candidate for the elections in 1860 for different reasons. Among these reasons were that his views on slavery were less extreme than those of other people who wanted to be candidates. Lincoln was from what was then one of the Western states, and had a bigger chance of winning the election there. Other candidates that were older or more experienced than him had enemies inside the party. Lincoln's family was poor, which added to the Republican position of free labor, the opposite of slave labor. Lincoln won the election in 1860, and was made the 16th President of the United States. He won with almost no votes in the South. For the first time, a president had won the election because of the large support he got from the states in the North. During his presidency Lincoln became well-known because of his large stovepipe hat. He used his tall hat to store papers and documents when he was traveling.

Lincoln and the Civil War

After Lincoln's election in 1860, seven States (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana) formed the Confederate States of America. When the United States refused to surrender Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, the Confederates attacked the fort, beginning the American Civil War. Later, four more states (Arkansas, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina) joined the Confederacy for a total of eleven. In his whole period as President, he had to rebuild the Union with military force and many bloody battles. He also had to stop the "border states", like Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, from leaving the Union and joining the Confederacy.

Lincoln was not a general, and had only been in the army for a short time during the Black Hawk War. However, he still took a major role in the war, often spending days and days in the War Department. His plan was to cut off the South by surrounding it with ships, control the Mississippi River, and take Richmond, the Confederate capital. He often clashed with generals in the field, especially George B. McClellan, and fired generals who lost battles or were not aggressive enough. Eventually, he made Ulysses S. Grant the top general in the army.

Emancipation Proclamation

With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, Lincoln ordered the freedom of all slaves in those states still in rebellion during the American Civil War. It did not actually immediately free all those slaves however, since those areas were still controlled by the rebelling states of the Confederacy. Only a small number of slaves already behind Union lines were immediately freed. As the Union army advanced, nearly all four million slaves were effectively freed. Some former slaves joined the Union army. The Proclamation also did not free slaves in the slave states that had remained loyal to the Union (the federal government of the US). Neither did it apply to areas where Union forces had already regained control. Until the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, only the states had power to end slavery within their own borders, so Lincoln issued the proclamation as a war measure.

The Proclamation made freeing the slaves a Union goal for the war, and put an end to movements in European nations (especially in Great Britain and France) that would have recognized the Confederacy as an independent nation. Lincoln then sponsored a constitutional amendment to free all slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment, making slavery illegal everywhere in the United States, was passed late in 1865, eight months after Lincoln was assassinated.

Gettysburg Address

Lincoln made a famous speech after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 called the Gettysburg Address. The battle was very important, and many soldiers from both sides died. The speech was given at the new cemetery for the dead soldiers. It is one of the most famous speeches in American history.

Second term and assassination

Lincoln was reelected president in 1864 and re-inaugurated March 4 1865. Soon afterwards, it appeared likely that the Union would win the Civil War. Lincoln proposed lenient terms for restoring self-government in the states that had rebelled. On April 9, 1865, the leading Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, surrendered his armies. On April 11, 1865, Lincoln gave a speech in which he promoted voting rights for black American citizens.

During the day on April 14th, Lincoln signed the legislation that created the secret service, the US President's security force. On the evening of April 14th, Lincoln went to attend a play with his wife Mary Todd at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.. He had invited Ulysses S. Grant to attend the play with him and his wife Mary Todd and Grant intended to attend. As a general, Grant would have brought his own military security force but he did not attend the play because his wife Julia and Mary Todd did not get along well.

During the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland, entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln at point-blank range, mortally wounding him. An unconscious Lincoln was carried across the street to Petersen House. He was placed diagonally on the bed because his tall frame would not fit normally on the smaller bed. He remained in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. According to some accounts, at his last drawn breath, on the morning after the assassination, he smiled broadly and then expired. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated.

Booth escaped, but died from shots fired during his capture on April 26.

Other judicial appointments

Lincoln appointed 32 federal judges, including four Associate Justices and one Chief Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States, and 27 judges to the United States district courts. Lincoln appointed no judges to the United States circuit courts during his time in office.

States admitted to the Union

West Virginia, admitted to the Union June 20, 1863, contained the former north-westernmost counties of Virginia that seceded from Virginia after that commonwealth declared its secession from the Union. As a condition for its admission, West Virginia's constitution was required to provide for the gradual abolition of slavery. Nevada, which became the third State in the far-west of the continent, was admitted as a free state on October 31, 1864.

Legacy

Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as one of the greatest U.S. presidents. He is often considered the greatest president for his leadership during the American Civil War and his eloquence in speeches such as the Gettysburg Address.

Supreme Court appointments

Noah Haynes Swayne – 1862
Samuel Freeman Miller – 1862
David Davis – 1862
Stephen Johnson Field – 1863
Salmon Portland Chase – 1864 (Chief Justice)

The Lincoln Cabinet

President
Abraham Lincoln 1861–1865


Vice President
Hannibal Hamlin 1861–1865Andrew Johnson1865


Secretary of State
William H. Seward 1861–1865


Secretary of Treasury
Salmon P. Chase1861–1864 William P. Fessenden1864–1865 Hugh McCulloch1865


Secretary of War
Simon Cameron1861–1862 Edwin M. Stanton1862–1865


Attorney General
Edward Bates1861–1864 James Speed1864–1865


Postmaster General


Montgomery Blair 1861–1864 William Dennison Jr.1864–1865


Secretary of the Navy


Gideon Welles 1861–1865


Secretary of the Interior


Caleb Blood Smith 1861–1862 John Palmer Usher1863–1865