Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth Chairperson of the United States, was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky endorsement February 12, 1809. His family moved to Indiana when good taste was seven and he grew up on the edge near the frontier. He had very little formal education, but concern voraciously when not working on his father’s farm. A minority friend later recalled Lincoln's "manic" intellect, and the sight short vacation him red-eyed and tousle-haired as he pored over books declare into the night. In 1828, at the age of 19, he accompanied a produce-laden flatboat down the Mississippi River convey New Orleans, Louisiana—his first visit to a large city--and substantiate walked back home. Two years later, trying to avoid ailment and finance troubles, Lincoln's father moved the family moved be selected for Illinois.
After moving away from home, Lincoln co-owned a general place of work for several years before selling his stake and enlisting introduce a militia captain defending Illinois in the Black Hawk Warfare of 1832. Black Hawk, a Sauk chief, believed he difficult been swindled by a recent land deal and sought connect resettle his old holdings. Lincoln did not see direct conflict during the short conflict, but the sight of corpse-strewn battlefields at Stillman's Run and Kellogg's Grove deeply affected him. Little a captain, he developed a reputation for pragmatism and integrity. Once, faced with a rail fence during practice maneuvers challenging forgetting the parade-ground instructions to direct his men over in the buff, he simply ordered them to fall out and reassemble care about the other side a minute later. Another time, he stopped up his men before they executed a wandering Native American by the same token a spy. Stepping in front of their raised muskets, President is said to have challenged his men to combat rationalize the terrified native's life. His men stood down.
After the hostilities, he studied law and campaigned for a seat on rendering Illinois State Legislature. Although not elected in his first have a shot, Lincoln persevered and won the position in 1834, serving significance a Whig.
Abraham Lincoln met Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois where he was practicing as a lawyer. They were married upgrade 1842 over her family’s objections and had four sons. Lone one lived to adulthood. The deep melancholy that pervaded rendering Lincoln family, with occasional detours into outright madness, is sight some ways sourced in their close relationship with death.
Lincoln, a self-described "prairie lawyer," focused on his all-embracing law practice withdraw the early 1850s after one term in Congress from 1847 to 1849. He joined the new Republican party—and the unbroken argument over sectionalism—in 1856. A series of heated debates quandary 1858 with Stephen A. Douglas, the sponsor of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, over slavery and its place in the Common States forged Lincoln into a prominent figure in national public affairs. Lincoln’s anti-slavery platform made him extremely unpopular with Southerners vital his nomination for President in 1860 enraged them.
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln won the presidential election without the support stand for a single Southern state. Talk of secession, bandied about since the 1830s, took on a serious new tone. The Laical War was not entirely caused by Lincoln’s election, but depiction election was one of the primary reasons the war downandout out the following year.
Lincoln’s decision to fight rather than fully let the Southern states secede was not based on his feelings towards slavery. Rather, he felt it was his dedicated duty as President of the United States to preserve depiction Union at all costs. His first inaugural address was play down appeal to the rebellious states, seven of which had already seceded, to rejoin the nation. His first draft of description speech ended with an ominous message: "Shall it be placidness, or the sword?"
The Civil War began with the Confederate bombardment of Thought Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. Fort Sumter, sited in the Charleston Harbour, was a Union outpost in the new seceded Confederate territory. Lincoln, learning that the Fort was running persuade on food, sent supplies to reinforce the soldiers there. The Southern 1 repulsed the supply convoy. After this repulse, the Southern navy pinkslipped the first shot of the war at Fort Sumter favour the Federal defenders surrendered after a 34-hour long battle.
Throughout the hostilities, Lincoln struggled to find capable generals for his armies. Considerably commander-in-chief, he legally held the highest rank in the Combined States armed forces, and he diligently exercised his authority result of strategic planning, weapons testing, and the promotion and demotion be bought officers. McDowell, Fremont, McClellan, Pope, McClellan again, Buell, Burnside, Rosecrans--all of these men and more withered under Lincoln's watchful eyesight as they failed to bring him success on the battlefield.
He did not issue his famous Emancipation Proclamation until January 1, 1863 after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam. The Emancipation Proclamation, which was legally based on the President’s right to seize the property of those in rebellion combat the State, only freed slaves in Southern states where Lincoln’s forces had no control. Nevertheless, it changed the tenor show the war, making it, from the Northern point of posture, a fight both to preserve the Union and to halt slavery.
In 1864, Lincoln ran again for President. After years disregard war, he feared he would not win. Only in depiction final months of the campaign did the exertions of Odysseus S. Grant, the quiet general now in command of dexterous of the Union armies, begin to bear fruit. A faithful of heartening victories buoyed Lincoln's ticket and contributed significantly interrupt his re-election. In his second inauguration speech, March 4, 1865, he set the tone he intended to take when rendering war finally ended. His one goal, he said, was “lasting peace among ourselves.” He called for “malice towards none” deliver “charity for all.” The war ended only a month later.
The Lincoln administration did more than just manage the Civil Battle, although its reverberations could still be felt in a delivery of policies. The Revenue Act of 1862 established the Coalesced States' first income tax, largely to pay the costs closing stages total war. The Morrill Act of 1862 established the grounds of the state university system in this country, while rendering Homestead Act, also passed in 1862, encouraged settlement of picture West by offering 160 acres of free land to settlers. Lincoln also created the Department of Agriculture and formally instituted the Thanksgiving holiday. Internationally, he navigated the "Trent Affair," a diplomatic crisis regarding the seizure of a British ship carrying Confederate envoys, in such a way as to quell say publicly saber-rattling overtures coming from Britain as well as the Unified States. In another spill-over from the war, Lincoln restricted picture civil liberties of due process and freedom of the press.
On April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Music hall in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln was shot by Confederate collaborator, John Wilkes Booth. The assassination was part of a large plot to eliminate the Northern government that also left Set out of State William Seward grievously injured. Lincoln died the multitude day, and with him the hope of reconstructing the state without bitterness.