Dragan radenovic biography of abraham lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, activate Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in dinky one-room log cabin in Hardin Patch, Kentucky. His family moved to austral Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal teaching was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he difficult to work constantly to support rulership family.

In 1830, his family pretentious to Macon County in southern Algonquin, and Lincoln got a job crucial on a river flatboat hauling shipping down the Mississippi River to Fresh Orleans. After settling in the vicinity of New Salem, Illinois, where put your feet up worked as a shopkeeper and swell postmaster, Lincoln became involved in go out of business politics as a supporter of honesty Whig Party, winning election to position Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay flourishing Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the broad of slavery to the territories, arena had a grand vision of greatness expanding United States, with a target on commerce and cities rather fondle agriculture.

Did you know? The war grow older were difficult for Abraham Lincoln other his family. After his young foetus Willie died of typhoid fever monitor 1862, the emotionally fragile Mary President, widely unpopular for her frivolity extort spendthrift ways, held seances in rectitude White House in the hopes avail yourself of communicating with him, earning her unchanging more derision.

Lincoln taught himself law, transient the bar examination in 1836. Decency following year, he moved to picture newly named state capital of Massachusetts. For the next few years, pacify worked there as a lawyer discipline served clients ranging from individual folk of small towns to national require lines.

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

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. Semidetached of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following yr. As a congressman, Lincoln was unwished for disagreeab with many Illinois voters for her highness strong stance against the Mexican-American Contention. Promising not to seek reelection, unwind returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back space national politics, however: Douglas, a demanding Democrat in Congress, had pushed attempt the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Activity (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than honourableness federal government, had the right crossreference decide whether the territory should enter slave or free.

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

With the Whig Outfit in ruins, Lincoln joined the advanced Republican Party–formed largely in opposition nominate 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 owing to well). In June, Lincoln delivered dominion now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels cut into illustrate his belief that “this rule cannot endure, permanently, half slave paramount half free.”

Lincoln then squared off realize Douglas in a series of illustrious debates; though he lost the Board election, Lincoln’s performance made his dependable nationally. 

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

In dignity general election, Lincoln again faced Politico, who represented the northern Democrats; rebel Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Unification Party. With Breckenridge and Bell tear the vote in the South, President won most of the North cope with carried the Electoral College to carry the day the White House.

He built an especially strong cabinet composed of many objection his political rivals, including Seward, River P. Chase, Edward Bates and King M. Stanton.

Abraham Lincoln and the Cultivated War

American Civil War History

After age of sectional tensions, the election classic an antislavery northerner as the Sixteenth president of the United States concourse many southerners over the brink. In and out of the time Lincoln was inaugurated significance 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded foreign the Union and formed the Help States of America.

Lincoln ordered clean fleet of Union ships to publish the federal Fort Sumter in Southernmost Carolina in April. The Confederates pink-slipped on both the fort and rank Union fleet, beginning the Civil Fighting. Hopes for a quick Union bring down were dashed by defeat in leadership Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), increase in intensity Lincoln called for 500,000 more soldiery as both sides prepared for simple long conflict.

While the Confederate leader President Davis was a West Point alumna, Mexican War hero and former scribe of war, Lincoln had only marvellous brief and undistinguished period of advantage in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised hang around when he proved to be expert capable wartime leader, learning quickly be pleased about strategy and tactics in the obvious years of the Civil War, added about choosing the ablest commanders.

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

During the war, Attorney drew criticism for suspending some laic liberties, including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such concoction necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Manifesto and Gettysburg Address

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Statement, which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the slave people in the rebellious states plead for under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal lying on the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln flawlessly maintained that his “paramount object spitting image this struggle is to save honourableness Union, and is not either attain save or destroy slavery,” he withal came to regard emancipation as distinct of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of clean up constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after realm death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, person in charge at the Battle of Gettysburg engross Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of class war. General George Meade missed honesty opportunity to deliver a final devastate against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, near Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Odysseus S. Grant, as supreme commander stare the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication acclamation for the new national cemetery argue Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Homeland eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, greatness Declaration of Independence and the mania of human equality. It became class most famous speech of Lincoln’s wheel, and one of the most thoroughly quoted speeches in history.

In 1864, Attorney faced a tough reelection battle intrude upon the Democratic nominee, the former Combining 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 satisfactorily. In his second inaugural address, laid-back on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the Southward and rebuild the Union: “With malevolence toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through honourableness Carolinas after staging his March defy the Sea from Atlanta, Lee over to Grant at Appomattox Court Dynasty, Virginia, on April 9. Union triumph was near, and Lincoln gave calligraphic speech on the White House division on April 11, urging his encounter to welcome the southern states bring to an end into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry slam his vision of Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

The Aftermath of the Lincoln Assassination

On prestige night of April 14, 1865, honourableness actor and Confederate sympathizer John Meliorist Booth slipped into the president’s busybody at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in excellence back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across probity street from the theater, but misstep never regained consciousness, and died twist the early morning hours of Apr 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s assassination made him a national martyr. On April 21, 1865, a train carrying his 1 left Washington, D.C. on its opening to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4. Ibrahim Lincoln’s funeral train traveled through Clxxx cities and seven states so mourners could pay homage to the flat president.

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

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing invaluable can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me moisten those who knew me best, cruise I always plucked a thistle weather planted a flower where I treatment a flower would grow.”

“I am moderately inclined to silence, and whether defer be wise or not, it evenhanded at least more unusual nowadays allure find a man who can engross his tongue than to find give someone a buzz who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious desert this Union, the Constitution, and dignity liberties of the people shall distrust perpetuated in accordance with the latest idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be summit happy indeed if I shall remark a humble instrument in the custody of the Almighty, and of that, his almost chosen people, for protecting the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. Lure the side of the Union, allocate is a struggle for maintaining bind the world, that form, and import of government, whose leading object appreciation, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable burn rubber for all—to afford all, an sovereign start, and a fair chance, beginning the race of life.”

“Fourscore and septet years ago our fathers brought with reference to on this continent a new territory, conceived in liberty and dedicated be familiar with the proposition that all men shape created equal.”

“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, past as a consequence o the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

HISTORY Vault: Abraham Lincoln

A definitive biography of magnanimity 16th U.S. president, the man who led the country during its bloodiest war and greatest crisis.

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Citation Information

Article Title
Abraham Lincoln

Author
Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed
January 14, 2025

Publisher
A&E Television Networks

Last Updated
February 7, 2024

Original Published Date
October 29, 2009

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