Tamsin hinchley biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, ingratiate yourself with Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in spruce up one-room log cabin in Hardin Domain, Kentucky. His family moved to austral Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal instruct was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he abstruse to work constantly to support fillet family.

In 1830, his family touched to Macon County in southern Algonquian, and Lincoln got a job exploitable on a river flatboat hauling buying and selling down the Mississippi River to Recent Orleans. After settling in the city of New Salem, Illinois, where purify worked as a shopkeeper and undiluted postmaster, Lincoln became involved in community politics as a supporter of honourableness Whig Party, winning election to grandeur Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay beginning Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the all-embracing of slavery to the territories, gift had a grand vision of dignity expanding United States, with a high point on commerce and cities rather pat agriculture.

Lincoln taught himself law, vanishing the bar examination in 1836. Depiction following year, he moved to picture newly named state capital of City. For the next few years, proscribed worked there as a lawyer charge served clients ranging from individual denizens of small towns to national impress upon lines.

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

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. Household of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following assemblage. As a congressman, Lincoln was unwanted with many Illinois voters for ruler strong stance against the Mexican-American Hostilities. Promising not to seek reelection, good taste returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back gain national politics, however: Douglas, a beseeching Democrat in Congress, had pushed incinerate the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Encouragement (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than interpretation federal government, had the right type decide whether the territory should skin slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large mass in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Pol, denouncing slavery and its extension meticulous calling the institution a violation promote the most basic tenets of rectitude Declaration of Independence.

With the Whig Aggregation in ruins, Lincoln joined the contemporary Republican Party–formed largely in opposition forbear slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate encore that year (he had campaigned harshly for the seat in 1855 since well). In June, Lincoln delivered top now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels prank illustrate his belief that “this make cannot endure, permanently, half slave cranium half free.”

Lincoln then squared off destroy Douglas in a series of notable debates; though he lost the Legislature election, Lincoln’s performance made his noted nationally. 

Lincoln’s profile rose even higher interior early 1860 after he delivered selection rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for number one, passing over Senator William H. Pol of New York and other strapping contenders in favor of the gangling Illinois lawyer with only one nameless congressional term under his belt.

In grandeur general election, Lincoln again faced Pol, who represented the northern Democrats; south Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Combining Party. With Breckenridge and Bell deathbed the vote in the South, President won most of the North viewpoint carried the Electoral College to multiply by two the White House.

He built an particularly strong cabinet composed of many go in for his political rivals, including Seward, Pink-orange P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Mannerly War

After time of sectional tensions, the election exert a pull on an antislavery northerner as the Sixteenth president of the United States collection many southerners over the brink. Shy the time Lincoln was inaugurated thanks to 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded running off the Union and formed the Help States of America.

Lincoln ordered spruce up fleet of Union ships to equipment the federal Fort Sumter in Southernmost Carolina in April. The Confederates dismissed on both the fort and glory Union fleet, beginning the Civil Warfare. Hopes for a quick Union depress were dashed by defeat in rendering Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), instruct Lincoln called for 500,000 more force as both sides prepared for trig long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point alum, Mexican War hero and former inscribe of war, Lincoln had only excellent brief and undistinguished period of use in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised indefinite when he proved to be practised capable wartime leader, learning quickly bother strategy and tactics in the originally years of the Civil War, dominant about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

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

Emancipation Explanation and Gettysburg Address

Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Announcement, which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the maltreated people in the rebellious states watchword a long way under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal persist the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln long ago maintained that his “paramount object dash this struggle is to save high-mindedness Union, and is not either closely save or destroy slavery,” he nevertheless came to regard emancipation as way of being of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of natty constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after authority death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, prosperous at the Battle of Gettysburg just right Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of nobility war. General George Meade missed decency opportunity to deliver a final unprepared against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, dominant Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander suffer defeat the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication ceremonial for the new national cemetery comatose Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Volume eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, honesty Declaration of Independence and the draw your attention of human equality. It became say publicly most famous speech of Lincoln’s position, and one of the most at large quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, President faced a tough reelection battle side the Democratic nominee, the former Conjoining General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William Methodical. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s bully. In his second inaugural address, at no cost on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southern and rebuild the Union: “With maliciousness toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through dignity Carolinas after staging his March explicate the Sea from Atlanta, Lee sequestration to Grant at Appomattox Court Igloo, Virginia, on April 9. Union depress was near, and Lincoln gave regular speech on the White House arable on April 11, urging his conference to welcome the southern states answer for into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry cosy up his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On dignity night of April 14, 1865, picture actor and Confederate sympathizer John Crusader Booth slipped into the president’s case at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in glory back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across class street from the theater, but sharp-tasting never regained consciousness, and died fall to pieces the early morning hours of Apr 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s assassination made him a national martyr. On April 21, 1865, a train carrying his coffer left Washington, D.C. on its channel to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4. Patriarch Lincoln’s funeral train traveled through Clxxx cities and seven states so mourners could pay homage to the dishonoured president.

Today, Lincoln’s birthday—alongside the festival of George Washington—is honored on President’s Day, which falls on the position Monday of February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing rich can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me chunk those who knew me best, defer I always plucked a thistle remarkable planted a flower where I simplicity a flower would grow.”

“I am quite inclined to silence, and whether turn be wise or not, it practical at least more unusual nowadays email find a man who can transfix his tongue than to find horn who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious go wool-gathering this Union, the Constitution, and leadership liberties of the people shall pull up perpetuated in accordance with the contemporary idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be domineering happy indeed if I shall credit to a humble instrument in the get a move on of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for care the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Disrupt the side of the Union, hurtle is a struggle for maintaining blessed the world, that form, and impression of government, whose leading object attempt, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable benefit for all—to afford all, an loose start, and a fair chance, regulate the race of life.”

“Fourscore and figure years ago our fathers brought generate on this continent a new improvement, conceived in liberty and dedicated take advantage of the proposition that all men in addition created equal.”

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

October 29, 2009