Abraham Lincoln

Biography

Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February 1809 in a log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky, into a family of poor pioneers. His childhood was marked by poverty, repeated moves, first to Indiana, then to Illinois, and by the death of his mother, Nancy Hanks, from milk sickness when he was just nine years old. Self-taught, he learned to read on his own and studied law by reading legal textbooks by the light of a fireplace. By the age of twenty-three he had been elected to the Illinois Assembly; by thirty-one he was a respected attorney in Springfield.

Having entered the federal Congress in 1847 as a Republican representative from Illinois, Lincoln distinguished himself by his opposition to the Mexican War and to the extension of slavery into the new territories. His oral debates against Senator Stephen Douglas in 1858, known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, brought him national recognition, although he lost the Senate race. These debates posed the fundamental questions tearing America apart: could a nation exist half slave and half free?

Elected the 16th President of the United States in November 1860 on a platform opposing the extension of slavery, Lincoln triggered the secession of eleven Southern states even before his inauguration in March 1861. The Civil War broke out on 12 April 1861 with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. Lincoln personally directed the war effort, choosing his generals, mediating divisions within his cabinet and maintaining political unity in the North despite fierce opposition. On 1 January 1863, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared enslaved people in the rebel states to be free, transforming the war into a moral crusade for the abolition of slavery. His Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863), delivered at the dedication of a military cemetery, remains one of the greatest orations in world political history.

Re-elected in November 1864 despite heavy human losses, Lincoln witnessed the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox on 9 April 1865. The deadliest war in American history, 620,000 dead, came to an end. In his Second Inaugural Address (4 March 1865), Lincoln called for national reconciliation: "with malice toward none, with charity for all." Five days after the war's end, on 14 April 1865, he was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington by Confederate actor John Wilkes Booth. He died the following morning.

Abraham Lincoln is today regarded as the greatest president in United States history. He preserved the unity of the nation and brought slavery to an end at the cost of his own life. His image, "Honest Abe," who rose from poverty to embody the American dream, remains a worldwide symbol of democracy and equality.