When Abraham was 9 years old, his mother died on October 5, 1818, of tremetol (milk sickness) at age 34. This was devastating on him and Abraham grew more alienated from his father and resented the hard work placed on him at an early age. Just over a year after his mother’s death, his father married a Kentucky widow with three children of her own. She was a strong and affectionate woman with whom Abraham quickly bonded. Though both his parents were illiterate, his stepmother encouraged Abraham to read. Because reading material was in short supply in his town, Abraham would walk for miles to borrow a book.
In March, 1830, the family moved to Macon County, Illinois. But when his father moved the family again to Coles County, the 22-year-old Abraham Lincoln struck out on this own, making a living in manual labor. He was known for his skill in wielding an ax and early on made a living splitting wood for fire and rail fencing. Lincoln eventually moved to New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, and eventually general store owner. It was here that Lincoln, working with the public, acquired social skills and honed story-telling talent that made him popular with the locals. When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832 between the United States and Native Americans, the volunteers in the area elected Lincoln to be their captain. He saw no combat during but made several political connections.
After the Black Hawk War, Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state legislature, in 1834. He supported the Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This led him to formulate his early views on slavery, as “an impediment to economic development”. It was around this time that he decided to become a lawyer, teaching himself the law by reading William Blackstone's “Commentaries on the Laws of England.” After being admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and began to practice at a law firm. Lincoln made a good living in his early years as a lawyer, but found that Springfield alone didn't offer enough work, so to supplement his income, he followed the court as it made its rounds on the circuit to the various county seats in Illinois.
Lincoln served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1847 to 1849. He was the lone Whig from Illinois and found few political allies. He used his term in office to speak out against the Mexican-American War and supported Zachary Taylor for president in 1848. His criticism of the war made him unpopular back home and he decided not to run for second term, but instead returned Springfield to practice law.
By the 1850s, 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, banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing firms.
In 1840, Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd, a high spirited, well-educated woman from a distinguished Kentucky family. Although they broke the engagement in 1841, they eventually married on November 4, 1842. The couple had four children, of which only one, Robert, survived to adulthood.
In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, and allowed individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The law provoked violent opposition in Kansas and Illinois, and it gave rise to the Republican Party. This awakened Lincoln's political enthusiasm once again, and his views on slavery moved more toward moral indignation. Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1856.
In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its controversial decision Scott v. Sanford, declaring African Americans were not citizens and had no inherent rights. Though Lincoln felt African Americans were not equal to whites, he believed the America's founders intended that all men were created with certain inalienable rights. Lincoln decided to challenge sitting U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his nomination acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court, and President Buchanan for promoting slavery and declared "a house divided cannot stand."
The 1858 Senate campaign featured seven debates held in different cities across Illinois. The two candidates debated on issues ranging from states' rights to western expansion, but the central issue was slavery. In the end, the state legislature elected Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.
In 1860, political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. On May 18, at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Lincoln surpassed better known candidates and won the nomination. His nomination was due in part to his moderate views on slavery, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the protective tariff. In the general election, Lincoln faced his rival, Stephan Douglas, this time besting him in a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Union. Lincoln received 39.8 percent of the popular vote, Douglas received 29.5 percent, and received 180 of 303 Electoral votes.
President-elect Lincoln selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals. Because of this decision, his Cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office. Before his inauguration in March, 1861, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina took the lead by adopting an ordinance of secession; by February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed. Six of these states then adopted a constitution and declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America. The upper South and border states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas) listened to, but initially rejected, the secessionist appeal. President Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy, declaring secession illegal. In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, forcing them to surrender, and signaling the start of America’s costliest and most deadly war.
The Union Army's first year and a half of battlefield defeats in the Civil War made it especially difficult to keep morale up and support strong for a reunification the nation. With the hopeful Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, President Lincoln felt confident enough to reshape the focus of the war from saving the union to abolishing slavery. He understood that the Federal government's power to end slavery was limited by the Constitution, which committed the issue to individual states. He argued before and during his election that the eventual extinction of slavery would result from preventing its expansion into new U.S. territory. At the beginning of the war, he also sought to persuade the states to accept compensated emancipation (compensating slave owners for freeing slaves) in return for their prohibition of slavery. On June 19, 1862, endorsed by President Lincoln, Congress passed an act banning slavery on all federal territory. In July, the Confiscation Act of 1862 was passed, which set up court procedures that could free the slaves of anyone convicted of aiding the rebellion.
President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which stated that all individuals who were held as slaves in rebellious states "henceforward shall be free." The action was more symbolic than effective because the North didn’t control any states in rebellion. As he signed the proclamation, he stated "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper." A few days after Emancipation was announced, 13 Republican governors met at the War Governors' Conference and offered their support of the president's Proclamation. Once the abolition of slavery in the rebel states became a military objective, as Union armies advanced south, more slaves were liberated until all three million of them in Confederate territory were freed.
Enlisting former slaves in the military was official government policy after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. By the spring of 1863, President Lincoln was ready to recruit more black troops. He stated "The bare sight of 50,000 armed and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once. By the end of 1863, 20 regiments of blacks from the Mississippi Valley were recruited.
With the great Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, President Lincoln maintained a strong base of support and was in a strong position to define the war effort. He gave the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
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The Gettysburg Address
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 1864, President Lincoln went up for re-election. George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency. The increase in Union casualties during the spring and the lack of military success wore heavily on the president's re-election prospects. Many Republicans across the country feared that he would be defeated. Sharing this fear, President Lincoln wrote and signed a pledge “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.” But the capture of Atlanta in September and the capture of Mobile boosted his prospects. The Democratic Party was deeply split, with some leaders and most soldiers openly for the president and the National Union Party was united and energized as President Lincoln made emancipation the central issue. On November 8, he was re-elected in a landslide, carrying all but three states, and receiving 78 percent of the Union soldiers' vote. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant and the war was basically over.
Reconstruction began during the war as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control. President Lincoln favored a policy of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. But he was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in the Senate and House that wanted complete allegiance and repentance from former Confederates. His Amnesty Proclamation of December 8, 1863, offered pardons to those who had not held a Confederate civil office, had not mistreated Union prisoners, and would sign an oath of allegiance. Having believed the federal government had limited responsibility to the millions of freedmen, President Lincoln signed into law a bill that set up a temporary federal agency designed to meet the immediate material needs of former slaves. The law assigned land for a lease of three years with the ability to purchase title for the freedmen.
After implementing the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not apply to every state, President Lincoln increased pressure on Congress to outlaw slavery throughout the entire nation with a constitutional amendment. He stated that such an amendment would "clinch the whole matter". By December 1863, a proposed constitutional amendment that would outlaw slavery was brought to Congress for passage. This first attempt at an amendment failed to pass. Passage of the proposed amendment became part his platform in the election of 1864. After a long debate in the House, the second attempt passed Congress on January 31, 1865, and was sent to the state legislatures for ratification. Upon ratification, it became the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 6, 1865. (New Jersey, Delaware, Kentucky, and Mississippi were the only states to reject the amendment.)
Before his reconstruction efforts, and the Thirteenth Amendment, had the chance to develop, President Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. After attending an April 11, 1865, speech in which President Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks, an enraged Booth dropped his plans of kidnaping and became determined to assassinate the president. After being on the run for 12 days, Booth was tracked down and found on a farm in Virginia. After refusing to surrender to Union troops, Booth was killed on April 26.
President Abraham Lincoln, wrapped in the flag, was taken from the theater to the White House. He laid in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. The president’s body laid in state at the Capitol before a funeral train took him back to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois.
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