Abraham Lincoln Biography

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, as the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Lincoln grew up on the frontier in a poor family. Self-educated, he became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, state legislator and Congressman.

He left government to resume his law practice, but angered by the success of Democrats in opening the prairie lands to slavery, reentered politics in 1854.

He then ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North and winning. Southern pro-slavery elements took his win as proof that the North was rejecting the Constitutional rights of Southern states to practice slavery.

Soon they began the process of seceding from the union. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, including the selection of generals and the naval blockade that shut down the South’s trade.

Later as the war progressed, he maneuvered to end slavery, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863; ordering the Army to protect escaped slaves, encouraging border states to outlaw slavery, and pushing through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery across the country.

Lincoln managed his own re-election campaign. He sought to reconcile his damaged nation by avoiding retribution against the secessionists.

John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot him on April 14, 1865. He died the following day. People remembered Abraham Lincoln as the United States’ martyr hero.

Abraham Lincoln Movie

Steven Spielberg directed -Lincoln is a 2012 American historical drama film, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln Images

Abraham Lincoln Death

He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre.

After attending an April 11, 1865, speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks, Booth decided to assassinate the President.

Learning of Lincoln’s intent to attend the play with Grant, Booth and his co-conspirators planned to assassinate Lincoln. Lincoln left to attend the play Our American Cousin on April 14.

At the last minute, Grant decided to go to New Jersey to visit his children instead of attending the play. Booth crept up from behind and at about 10:13 pm, fired at the back of Lincoln’s head, mortally wounding him.

Lincoln’s guest Major Henry Rathbone momentarily grappled with Booth, but Booth stabbed him and escaped. Lincoln was taken across the street to Petersen House.

After remaining in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15. After death his face relaxed into a smile. Stanton saluted and said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Abraham Lincoln Wife

In 1840, Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd, daughter of a wealthy slave-holding family in Lexington, Kentucky. They met in Springfield, Illinois in December 1839 and engaged a year later.

A wedding set for January 1, 1841, but Lincoln canceled it. They reconciled and married on November 4, 1842, in the Springfield mansion of Mary’s married sister.

Abraham Lincoln Birth

Lincoln was born in Hardin (now Larue) on February 12, 1809. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a migratory carpenter and farmer, nearly always poverty-stricken.

His mother, Nancy Hanks, is less known to the world, who died in 1818, after the family had settled in the Spencer County.

Abraham Lincoln Height

He was 193cm or 6’3” feet tall.

Abraham Lincoln Son

He was an affectionate, though often absent, husband and father of four children. Robert Todd Lincoln was born in 1843 and Edward Baker Lincoln (Eddie) in 1846.

Edward died on February 1, 1850, in Springfield, probably of tuberculosis. “Willie” Lincoln was born on December 21, 1850, and died of a fever on February 20, 1862.

The Lincolns’ fourth son, Thomas “Tad” Lincoln, was born on April 4, 1853. He died of heart failure at the age of 18 on July 16, 1871. Robert reached adulthood and produced children.

Abraham Lincoln Presidency

On November 6, 1860, people elected Lincoln as the 16th president of the United States. He was the first Republican president.

Abraham Lincoln often called Abe Lincoln, was an American politician who served as the 16th President of the United States (1861– 1865), and as the first President from the Republican Party.

Historian credit him with ending slavery and preserving the Union.

Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War

Ensuing civil war, following the November 1860 election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. presidency on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories.

Before Lincoln took office in March, southern state established a new Confederate government in February 1861, which government of the United States considered illegal.

States volunteered militia units and the new government hastened to form its own Confederate States Army from scratch practically overnight.

Later Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, including the selection of generals and the naval blockade that shut down the South’s trade.

As the war progressed, he maneuvered to end slavery, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863; ordering the Army to protect escaped slaves, encouraging border states to outlaw slavery, and pushing through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery across the country.

The war lacked a formal end. In 1865, Union forced nearly all Confederate forces into surrender or deliberately disbanded.

Abraham Lincoln Education

Lincoln was largely self-educated. His formal schooling (from itinerant teachers) was intermittent, totaling less than 12 months; however, he was an avid reader and retained a lifelong interest in learning.

Family, neighbors, and schoolmates recalled that he read and reread the King James Bible, Aesop’s Fables, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Mason Locke Weems’s The Life of Washington, and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, among others.

Abraham Lincoln Family

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, as the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky.

He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk, to its namesake Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638. In Kentucky and Indiana, Thomas worked as a farmer, cabinetmaker, and carpenter

Abraham Lincoln Famous Quotes

• “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
• “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
• “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
• “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
• “My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”

Abraham lincoln Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. It is one of the best-known speeches in American history

Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.