Brief biography of abraham lincoln
Vincent Millay — Five of our Favorite Poems! Christopher Smith:. The Englewood Review of Books. Download Ebook Now:. We respect your privacy. FREE Ebook! If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
Biography of john f. kennedy: Biography Yorgos Kazantzis was born and raised in Kalamaria of Thessaloniki (Greece), where he still lives and works. He holds the position of the “Artistic Director” at the Cultural Organisation of the Municipality of Kalamaria in Thessaloniki from March to March
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. As other locations were voted down, Springfield was selected by a 46 to 37 vote margin on February 28, Under Lincoln's leadership reconsideration efforts were defeated in the — sessions.
Lincoln, like Henry Clay, favored federal control over the nation's banking system, but President Jackson had effectively killed the Bank of the United States by That same year Lincoln crossed party lines to vote with pro-bank Democrats in chartering the Illinois State Bank. As he did in the internal improvements debates, Lincoln searched for the best available alternative.
A well-regulated bank would provide a sound, elastic currency, protecting the public against the extreme prescriptions of the hard-money men on one side and the paper inflationists on the other; it would be a safe depository for public funds and provide the credit mechanisms needed to sustain state improvements; it would bring an end to extortionate money-lending.
Opponents of the state bank initiated an investigation designed to close the bank in the — legislative session. On January 11, , Lincoln made his first major legislative speech supporting the bank and attacking its opponents. He condemned "that lawless and mobocratic spirit I make the assertion boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that no man, who does not hold an office, or does not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the Bank.
It has doubled the prices of the products of their farms, and filled their pockets with a sound circulating medium, and they are all well pleased with its operations. Westerners in the Jacksonian Era were generally skeptical of all banks, and this was aggravated after the Panic of , when the Illinois Bank suspended specie payments.
Lincoln still defended the bank, but it was too strongly linked to a failing credit system that lead to devalued currency and loan foreclosures to generate much political support. In Democrats led another investigation of the state bank, with Lincoln as a Whig representative on the investigating committee. Lincoln was instrumental in the committee's conclusion that the suspension of specie payment was related to uncontrollable economic conditions rather than "any organic defects of the institutions themselves.
In an attempt to avoid a quorum on adjournment, Lincoln and several others jumped out of a first story window, but the Speaker counted them as present and "the bank was killed. He concluded, "If there was to be this continual warfare against the Institutions of the State Lyrics Helen Fotaki. Sing George Bagiokis, Nadine Kyriazi.
Yorgos Kazantzis was born and raised in Kalamaria of Thessaloniki Greece , where he still lives and works. Participate Fotini Velesiotou. Consent to these technologies will allow us to process personal data such as browsing behavior or unique identifiers on this website. Non-consent or withdrawal of consent may adversely affect certain functions and features.
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Finally, I had hoped to meet the same colorful, intellectual and intriguing Abe Lincoln in this biography that I had met in others…and by a small margin I did not. Overall, a good but not great introduction to Lincoln. This book immediately feels like one written by a natural storyteller rather than a historian though Thomas was both.
Descriptions of both people and events are usually brilliant and make for an enjoyable reading experience. The latter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history, and the six volumes together totaled about 3, pages. Although it is unsurprising that the author of the first two volumes was a poet, the final four volumes could easily have been written by an Ivory-tower academic.
The former is often lyrical and lucid while the latter is more often needlessly verbose and tedious. One almost gets the sense Sandburg expected to be paid by the page. Full reviews here and here. The story of their relationships with each other is marvelously well-told. Goodwin weaves a narrative which is entertaining and often masterful.
Overall, this is a very good book for a new fan of Lincoln, but it is a great book for someone seeking an entertaining and informative narrative about his team of advisers. Although included on my list of best biographies, it proves far less a biography of Lincoln than a treatise on his views of slavery.
Although this is a topic well-covered in other Lincoln biographies, Foner dissects it with greater-than-average focus and effort. His analysis is generally clear and articulate, although the text can be tedious rather than interesting at times. For that reason, I declined to provide a rating for this book. And while McPherson claims no other Lincoln biography has ever focused adequately on his role as commander in chief, I find this argument less-than-convincing.
Biography of abraham lincoln books
Rather than seeing Lincoln from a new perspective, McPherson shows Lincoln from only one perspective. Through its earliest pages, and not infrequently throughout, it resembles a political and philosophical treatise rather than a biography. The book seems geared to an academic, not a broad, audience. But for someone seeking an ideal introduction to Abraham Lincoln or a fluid narrative of his life from birth to death, I would look elsewhere.
By far the most interesting and insightful portion of this book is its first sixty pages. These pages are worth reading by anyone interested in US history. The remainder of the book is often beautifully written, but barely adequate as an introductory biography. I recently read David S. However, it pre-supposes a familiarity with Lincoln and his times, fails to humanize him, largely ignores his personal life though his wife receives significant attention and brushes past several significant historical events which would receive attention in a more traditional biography.
Readers seeking a traditional biographical experience or even a cohesive introduction to the 16th president need to look elsewhere, and dedicated fans of Lincoln will the narrative interesting…but with an excess of conjecture and speculation. Dan said:. June 29, at pm.
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Steve said:. June 30, at am. Both of these bios are pretty captivating so I imagine a high percentage of folks who start actually do get through them…. Peter said:. January 26, at pm. January 27, at am. March 14, at am. Richard said:. March 20, at am. I am a university student in England and am currently doing an essay on the cause s of the American Civil War.
I am fascinated with American history and politics, and this post is very helpful. My focus is on the Lincoln, Debates and historiography. March 24, at am. Oh my, you are really testing my memory! Good luck! January 18, at pm. Finally…finally I finished Lincoln: A Life. Interestingly, Steve expressed limited discussion about the Civil War, I feel there was too much discussion about the war and not enough about policy and legislation during his terms in office.
I enjoy the policy discussions, for historical events like the war and the assination, I can read books specifically about them, the presidential biographies are seemingly the only place to find the wonky stuff. I have Team of Rivals as well, but that is on hold until I am through the list. Onto Jeffy D. January 19, at am. What are you going to read on JD?
January 23, at pm. Don said:. March 9, at am. That might be the single toughest question you could have asked me about presidential biographies, anyway. The first two are traditional, comprehensive biographies of Lincoln. I liked them both equally well and if choosing between them I would almost tell you to flip a coin — or read whichever is easier for you to get a copy of.
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So while this one is slightly less about Lincoln than the others, it offers something extra in return. March 12, at pm. Thank you for your response! Kyle said:. April 18, at am. I wanted to find a good Lincoln biography and came across your blog. Great list, thank you for such detailed descriptions of each book! April 19, at pm.
Yorgos kazantzis biography of abraham lincoln
Rick Garner said:. September 26, at pm. First, I have been following most of your suggestions since Washington and now am spending a great amount on Lincoln. I was really surprised how closely Goodwin followed Tarbell with the Lincoln portions of her work. September 27, at am. Going on my follow-up list! Joe said:.
October 15, at pm.