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Abraham Lincoln was disappointed by most of his generals—but not Ulysses S. Photographs taken of Lincoln between and reveal how increasingly careworn he became. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across the street from the theater, but he never regained consciousness, and died in the early morning hours of April 15, On April 21, , a train carrying his coffin left Washington, D.
On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.
A definitive biography of the 16th U. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States. Your Profile. Email Updates. Read more. American Civil War History. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. His men stood down. After the war, he studied law and campaigned for a seat on the Illinois State Legislature.
Although not elected in his first attempt, Lincoln persevered and won the position in , serving as a Whig. Only one lived to adulthood. The deep melancholy that pervaded the Lincoln family, with occasional detours into outright madness, is in some ways sourced in their close relationship with death. Lincoln, a self-described "prairie lawyer," focused on his all-embracing law practice in the early s after one term in Congress from to He joined the new Republican party—and the ongoing argument over sectionalism—in A series of heated debates in with Stephen A.
Douglas , the sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act , over slavery and its place in the United States forged Lincoln into a prominent figure in national politics. On November 6, , Lincoln won the presidential election without the support of a single Southern state. Talk of secession, bandied about since the s, took on a serious new tone.
Rather, he felt it was his sacred duty as President of the United States to preserve the Union at all costs. His first inaugural address was an appeal to the rebellious states, seven of which had already seceded, to rejoin the nation. His first draft of the speech ended with an ominous message: "Shall it be peace, or the sword? Herndon had to rely on testimony from a cousin, Dennis Hanks, to get an adequate description of Sarah.
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Those who knew Lincoln as a teenager later recalled his being deeply distraught by his sister's death, and an active participant in a feud with the Grigsby family that erupted afterwards. Possibly looking for a diversion from the sorrow of his sister's death, year-old Lincoln made a flatboat trip to New Orleans in the spring of En route to Louisiana, Lincoln and Gentry were attacked by several African American men who attempted to take their cargo, but the two successfully defended their boat and repelled their attackers.
With its considerable slave presence and active slave market, it is probable that Lincoln witnessed a slave auction, and it may have left an indelible impression on him. Congress outlawed the importation of slaves in , but the slave trade continued to flourish within the United States. Whether he actually witnessed a slave auction at that time, or on a later trip to New Orleans, his first visit to the Deep South exposed him to new experiences, including the cultural diversity of New Orleans and a return trip to Indiana aboard a steamboat.
In , when responding to a questionnaire sent to former members of Congress, Lincoln described his education as "defective". Lincoln was self-educated. His formal schooling was intermittent, the aggregate of which may have amounted to less than twelve months. He never attended college, but Lincoln retained a lifelong interest in learning.
Lincoln continued reading as a means of self-improvement as an adult, studying English grammar in his early twenties and mastering Euclid after he became a member of Congress. Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Lincoln's mother, Nancy, claimed he gave Lincoln "his first lesson in spelling—reading and writing" and boasted, "I taught Abe to write with a buzzards quill which I killed with a rifle and having made a pen—put Abes hand in mind [sic] and moving his fingers by my hand to give him the idea of how to write.
Abraham, aged six, and his sister Sarah began their education in Kentucky, where they attended a subscription school about two miles north of their home on Knob Creek. Classes were held only a few months during the year. The parents of school-aged children paid for the community's schools and its instructors.
During Indiana's pioneer era, Lincoln's limited formal schooling was not unusual. Family, neighbors, and schoolmates of Lincoln's youth recalled that he was an avid reader. His stepmother also acknowledged he did not enjoy "physical labor", but loved to read. Lincoln also first began studying law during this time, his interest in the law having been piqued after being acquitted of a charge of operating a ferryboat without a license.
Lincoln had been using a flatboat he had built to ferry passengers to steamboats on the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky when two brothers who operated a ferryboat from the Kentucky side accused him of infringing on their business, and Lincoln was charged with operating a ferryboat without a license. A local justice of the peace , Squire Samuel Pate, ruled in Lincoln's favor.
Lincoln asked numerous questions about law and court procedure. At Pate's invitation, Lincoln returned several times to observe Pate holding court. He subsequently began reading The Revised Statutes of Indiana. As an officer of the law, Turnham was required to keep the book for ready reference and could not loan it, so Lincoln repeatedly visited his home to read it.
Turnham recalled that "he would come to my house and sit and read it. It was the first law book he ever saw. He took particular interest in the historic documents in the book such as the Declaration of Independence , the United States Constitution , and the Constitution of Indiana. In addition, Lincoln attended court sessions in Boonville , Rockport , and Princeton.
As well as reading, Lincoln cultivated other skills and interests during his youth in Kentucky and Indiana. He developed a plain, backwoods style of speaking, which he practiced during his youth by telling stories and sermons to his family, schoolmates and members of the local community. By the time he was twenty-one, Lincoln had become "an able and eloquent orator"; [ ] however, some historians have argued his speaking style, figures of speech, and vocabulary remained unrefined, even as he entered national politics.
In , when Lincoln was twenty-one years of age, thirteen members of the extended Lincoln family moved to Illinois.
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Johnston, went as one family. Dennis Hanks and his wife Elizabeth, who was also Abraham's stepsister, and their four children joined the party. Hanks's half-brother, Squire Hall, along with his wife, Matilda Johnston, another of Lincoln's stepsisters, and their son formed the third family group. Historians disagree on who initiated the move, but it may have been Dennis Hanks rather than Thomas Lincoln.
He owned land and was a respected member of his community, but Hanks had not fared as well. Dennis later remarked that Sally refused to part with her daughter, Elizabeth, so Sally may have persuaded Thomas to move to Illinois. It is generally agreed they crossed the Wabash River at Vincennes, Indiana, into Illinois, and the family settled on a site selected in Macon County, Illinois , [ ] 10 miles 16 km west of Decatur.
Lincoln, who was twenty-one years old at the time, helped his father build a log cabin and fences, clear 10 acres 40, m 2 of land and put in a crop of corn. That autumn the entire family fell ill with a fever , but all survived. The early winter of was especially brutal, with many locals calling it the worst they had ever experienced. In Illinois it was known as the "Winter of Deep Snow".
In the spring, as the Lincoln family prepared to move to a homestead in Coles County, Illinois , Lincoln was ready to strike out on his own. Although Sally Lincoln and his cousin, Dennis Hanks, maintained that Thomas loved and supported his son, the father-son relationship became strained after the family moved to Illinois.
Historian Rodney O. Davis has argued that the reason for the strain in their relationship was due to Lincoln's success as a lawyer and his marriage to Mary Todd Lincoln, who came from a wealthy, aristocratic family, and the two men no longer related to each other's circumstances in life. Departing from Springfield in late April or early May along the Sangamon River , their boat had difficulty getting past a mill dam 20 miles 32 km northwest of Springfield, near the village of New Salem.
Offutt, who was impressed by New Salem's location and believed that steamboats could navigate the river to the village, made arrangements to rent the mill and open a general store. Offutt hired Lincoln as his clerk and the two men returned to New Salem after they discharged their cargo in New Orleans.
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When Lincoln returned to New Salem in late July , he found a promising community, but it probably never had a population that exceeded a hundred residents. New Salem was a small commercial settlement that served several local communities. The village had a sawmill, grist mill, blacksmith shop, cooper's shop, wool carding shop, a hat maker, general store, and a tavern spread out over more than a dozen buildings.
Offutt did not open his store until September, so Lincoln found temporary work in the interim and was quickly accepted by the townspeople as a hardworking and cooperative young man. Lincoln's humor, storytelling abilities, and physical strength fit the young, raucous element that included the so-called Clary's Grove boys, and his place among them was cemented after a wrestling match with a local champion, Jack Armstrong.
Although Lincoln lost the fight with Armstrong, he earned the respect of the locals. His performance in the club, along with his efficiency in managing the store, sawmill, and gristmill, in addition to his other efforts at self-improvement soon gained the attention of the town's leaders, such as Dr. In March Lincoln announced his candidacy in a written article that appeared in the Sangamo Journal , which was published in Springfield.
While Lincoln admired Henry Clay and his American System , the national political climate was undergoing a change and local Illinois issues were the primary political concerns of the election. Lincoln opposed the development of a local railroad project, but supported improvements in the Sangamon River that would increase its navigability.
Although the two-party political system that pitted Democrats against Whigs had not yet formed, Lincoln would become one of the leading Whigs in the state legislature within the next few years. By the spring of , Offutt's business had failed and Lincoln was out of work. Around this time, the Black Hawk War erupted and Lincoln joined a group of volunteers from New Salem to repel Black Hawk , who was leading a group of warriors along with 1, women and children to reclaim traditional tribal lands in Illinois.
Lincoln was elected as captain of his unit, but he and his men never saw combat.
Biography of john f. kennedy: Abraham Lincoln led his country through a tumultuous period and played an instrumental role in abolishing slavery while preserving the Union as the 16th president of the United States.
Lincoln later commented in the late s that the selection by his peers was "a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. When the votes were tallied, Lincoln finished eighth out of thirteen candidates. Only the top four candidates were elected, but Lincoln managed to secure out of the votes cast in the New Salem precinct.
Without a job, Lincoln and William F. The two men signed personal notes to purchase the business and a later acquisition of another store's inventory, but their enterprise failed. By New Salem was no longer a growing community; the Sangamon River proved to be inadequate for commercial transportation and no roads or railroads allowed easy access to other markets.
In January, Berry applied for a liquor license, but the added revenue was not enough to save the business. However, in May , with the assistance of friends interested in keeping him in New Salem, Lincoln secured an appointment from President Andrew Jackson as the postmaster of New Salem, a position he kept for three years.
Another friend helped Lincoln obtain an appointment as an assistant to county surveyor John Calhoun, a Democratic political appointee. Lincoln had no experience at surveying, but he relied on borrowed copies of two works and was able to teach himself the practical application of surveying techniques as well as the trigonometric basis of the process.
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His income proved sufficient to meet his day-to-day expenses, but the notes from his partnership with Berry were coming due. In Lincoln's decision to run for the state legislature for a second time was strongly influenced by his need to satisfy his debts, what he jokingly referred to as his "national debt", and the additional income that would come from a legislative salary.
By this time Lincoln was a member of the Whig party. His campaign strategy excluded a discussion of the national issues and concentrated on traveling throughout the district and greeting voters. Local Democrats, who feared Stuart more than Lincoln, offered to withdraw two of their candidates from the field of thirteen, where only the top four vote-getters would be elected, to support Lincoln.
Stuart, who was confident of his own victory, told Lincoln to go ahead and accept the Democrats' endorsement.
On August 4 Lincoln polled 1, votes, the second highest number of votes in the race, and won one of the four seats in the election, as did Stuart. Stuart, a cousin of Lincoln's future wife, Mary Todd, was impressed with Lincoln and encouraged him to study law. While the family was still in Kentucky, his father was frequently involved with filing land deeds, serving on juries, and attending sheriff's sales, and later, Lincoln may have been aware of his father's legal issues.
When the family moved to Indiana, Lincoln lived within 15 miles 24 km of three county courthouses. Attracted by the opportunity of hearing a good oral presentation, Lincoln, as did many others on the frontier, attended court sessions as a spectator. The practice continued when he moved to New Salem. New Salem residents recalled Lincoln reading law books in or Lincoln biographer Douglas L.
Wilson considers this reading to have been "exploratory". Lincoln wrote that he began studying law "in earnest" after the election of Using books borrowed from the law firm of Stuart and Judge Thomas Drummond , Lincoln began to study law in earnest during the first half of Although he was never a formal apprentice, Lincoln may have been mentored by Stuart in his law studies.
New Salem resident William Greene stated that Stuart gave Lincoln "many explanations and elucidations" of law. After passing an oral examination by a panel of practicing attorneys, Lincoln received his law license on September 9, In April he was enrolled to practice before the Supreme Court of Illinois, and moved to Springfield, where he went into partnership with Stuart.
Lincoln's first session in the Illinois legislature ran from December 1, , to February 13, As the second youngest legislator in this term, and one of thirty-six first-time attendees, Lincoln was primarily an observer, but his colleagues soon recognized his mastery of "the technical language of the law" and asked him to draft bills for them.
When Lincoln announced his bid for reelection in June , he addressed the controversial issue of expanded suffrage. Democrats advocated universal suffrage for white males residing in the state for at least six months. They hoped to bring Irish immigrants, who were attracted to the state because of its canal projects, onto the voting rolls as Democrats.
Lincoln supported the traditional Whig position that voting should be limited to property owners. This delegation of two senators and seven representatives was nicknamed the "Long Nine" because all of them were above average height. Despite being the second youngest of the group, Lincoln was viewed as the group's leader and the floor leader of the Whig minority.
The Long Nine's primary agenda was the relocation of the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield and a vigorous program of internal improvements for the state. By the — legislative session, Lincoln served on at least fourteen committees and worked behind the scenes to manage the program of the Whig minority. Lincoln had published an inflammatory letter in the Sangamon Journal , a Springfield newspaper, that poked fun at Shields.
Lincoln's future wife, Mary Todd, and her close friend, continued writing letters about Shields without Lincoln's knowledge. Shields took offense to the articles and demanded "satisfaction". The incident escalated to the two parties meeting on Missouri 's Sunflower Island, near Alton, Illinois , to participate in a duel, which was illegal in Illinois.
Lincoln took responsibility for the articles and accepted. Lincoln chose cavalry broadswords as the duel's weapons because Shields was known as an excellent marksman. Just prior to engaging in combat, Lincoln demonstrated his physical advantage his long arm reach by easily cutting a branch above Shields's head.
Their seconds intervened and convinced the men to cease hostilities on the grounds that Lincoln had not written the letters. The Illinois governor called for a special legislative session during the winter of — in order to finance what became known as the Illinois and Michigan Canal , which connected the Illinois and Chicago rivers and linked Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River.
Lincoln voted in favor of the commitment, which passed 28— Lincoln had always supported Henry Clay's vision of the American System, which saw a prosperous America supported by a well-developed network of roads, canals, and, later, railroads. Lincoln favored raising the funds for these projects through the federal government's sale of public lands to eliminate interest expenses; otherwise, private capital should bear the cost alone.
Fearing that Illinois would fall behind other states in economic development, Lincoln shifted his position to allow the state to provide the necessary support for private developers. In the next session a newly elected legislator, Stephen A. However, the Panic of effectively destroyed the possibility of more internal improvements in Illinois. The state became "littered with unfinished roads and partially dug canals"; the value of state bonds fell; and interest on the state's debts was eight times its total revenue.
The state government took forty years to pay off this debt. Lincoln had a couple of ideas to salvage the internal improvements program. First, he proposed that the state buy public lands at a discount from the federal government and then sell them to new settlers at a profit, but the federal government rejected the idea.
Next, he proposed a graduated land tax that would have passed more of the tax burden to the owners of the most valuable land, but the majority of the legislators were unwilling to commit any further state funds to internal improvement projects. The state's financial depression continued through In the s Illinois welcomed more immigrants, many from New York and New England, who tended to move into the northern and central parts of the state.
Vandalia, which was located in the more stagnant southern section, seemed unsuitable as the state's seat of government. On the other hand, Springfield, in Sangamon County, was "strategically located in central Illinois" and was already growing "in population and refinement". Those who opposed the relocation of the state government to Springfield first attempted to weaken the Sangamon County delegation's influence by dividing the county into two new counties, but Lincoln was instrumental in first amending and then killing this proposal in his own committee.
Throughout the lengthy debate "Lincoln's political skills were repeatedly tested". The final action was tabled twice, but Lincoln resurrected it by finding acceptable amendments to draw additional support, including one that would have allowed reconsideration in the next session. Before they had a chance to be engaged, a wave of typhoid fever came over New Salem, and Anne died at age Her death was said to have left Lincoln severely depressed.
About a year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other for a few months, and marriage was considered. But in time, Lincoln called off the match. In , Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state legislature as a member of the Whig Party. More than a decade later, from to , he served a single term in the U.
House of Representatives. His foray into national politics seemed to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from Illinois, showing party loyalty but finding few political allies. As a congressman, Lincoln used his term in office to speak out against the Mexican-American War and supported Zachary Taylor for president in His criticism of the war made him unpopular back home, and he decided not to run for second term.
Instead, he returned to Springfield to practice law. By the s, the railroad industry was moving west, and Illinois found itself becoming a major hub for various companies. Lincoln served as a lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad as its company attorney. Success in several court cases brought other business clients as well, including banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing firms.
Lincoln also worked in some criminal trials. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the night in question had been too dark for the witness to see anything clearly. His client was acquitted. As a member of the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln supported the Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs.
This political understanding led him to formulate his early views on slavery, not so much as a moral wrong, but as an impediment to economic development. In , Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which repealed the Missouri Compromise , allowing individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery.
Lincoln joined the Republican Party in In , the Supreme Court issued its controversial Dred Scott decision, declaring Black people were not citizens and had no inherent rights. Lincoln decided to challenge sitting U. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. Senate campaign against Douglas, he participated in seven debates held in different cities across Illinois.
But the central issue was slavery. Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often times with partisan commentary. In the end, the state legislature elected Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics. With his newly enhanced political profile, in , political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for the presidency.
Chase of Ohio.