Abraham_Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin on the frontier in rural Kentucky in 1809, to parents of low social standing and little education. Life for the family was lonely and hard. There was little time for play for Abraham. Most of the day was spent hunting, farming, fishing, and doing chores. When Abraham was seven, the family moved to Spencer County, Indiana. At the age of eight, little Abraham already was chopping wood for the home. When he was only 9 years old, his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died. The next year his father, remarried to Sarah Bush Johnston, who had a tremendous influence on young Abraham Lincoln. When his father could spare him from chores, Lincoln received little formal education at so-called ABC schools. Lincoln had less than one full year of education in his entire life. Abraham’s stepmother encouraged his quest for knowledge. (Whitney, 135). At an early age he could read, write, and do simple arithmetic. When Lincoln was twenty-one, the family walked 200 miles behind an ox team to migrate to Illinois. Young Lincoln split fence rails and worked aboard a flatboat to earn a living. Later, he was to serve as clerk and postmaster at New Salem, Illinois. (Miller 1851, 444). Lincoln began to court Mary Owens. But after a failed courtship with her, Lincoln moved to Springfield for legal, political, and perhaps social reasons. It wasn’t until the end of 1839, well into his thirtieth year, that Lincoln met his future wife at a Springfield dance. Mary Todd, was twenty-one years old from a distinguished Kentucky family, had recently arrived in Springfield to stay with her sister. After a long courtship, they were married on November 4, 1842. For the first eighteen months, the newlyweds live in a modest Springfield boardinghouse. Finally, in early 1844 they purchased a frame house in the city that would serve as their home for the next sixteen years. The Lincolns had four sons. The eldest, Robert Todd, was born in 1843. Edward Baker born in 1846, but died prematurely in 1850 at the age of four. William Wallace was born later that same year that Edward had died. Finally, Thomas was born in 1853. (Whitney 135). When Lincoln moved to New Salem working as a clerk and postmaster, he took advantage of idle hours to improve his therefore meager education. He read all the books, newspapers, and political tracts that came his way. Because he could read and write, Lincoln was often called on to draw up legal papers for the less literate citizens of New Salem. When Lincoln moved to Springfield in 1834 he began to study law and was admitted to the bar two years later. As a rising young lawyer, Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, and moved to Washington to serve out his term, where he spoke out against the Mexican War and unsuccessfully attempted to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1849 after his term ended, Lincoln returned to Springfield to resume his career as a lawyer and devoted move time to his family. Again, he encountered numerous business set backs and challenges…but he persisted. (Whitney 140). In 1854, he came back to the political arena. One of the first things he did was to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which threatened to extend slavery to other states. In 1855, he ran for the Senate but was defeated. He ran for the vice presidency position the following year but was also defeated. In 1860, Lincoln’s years of hard work paid off when he was elected as the sixteenth President of the United States. But at this time, the states were no longer united. Southern militants were threatening to secede from the union if Lincoln was elected. In December, with the Republican victory final, South Carolina seceded. By February, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had followed. These states joined together to form the Confederate States of America, a self-declared independent nation apart from the United States of America. Lincoln had an extremist attitude toward slavery and warned that the South’s secession threats could not be taken lightly. The newly elected President Lincoln decided that the original Union must be saved at all costs, even if it meant civil war. And in 1861, the war broke out and it lasted for four years. (Whitney 143). While Lincoln insisted that the Civil War was being fought to preserve the Union, the outcome of slavery also played a major role. Lincoln’s most significant action as president to be his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, Lincoln proclaimed that all slaves held in rebellious areas were “then, thence-forward, and forever free.” (Miller, 518). Although the proclamation actually freed no slaves at the time, it accomplished humanitarian and political purposes. The Emancipation later paved the way for the Thirteenth Amendment and the abolishment of slavery in the United States. Also, during the Civil War, on November 19th, 1863, on a battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Lincoln presented to the people his vision for a nation, conceived in liberty where everyone is created equal. This was 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 The Gettysburg Address shaped the destiny of United States of America and became one of the greatest presentations in the history of humankind. Lincoln was reelected as President on November 8, 1864 as Union military triumphs proclaimed an end to the war. The election between Lincoln and McClellan was not close in the Electoral College, Lincoln winning with 212 votes from twenty-two states to McClellan’s twenty-one. In the popular voting, Lincoln’s margin over McClellan was closer. (Scott, 180). On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln’s mind was filled with hopes of early peace and a reunited nation. In his inaugural address, Lincoln poured out his heart: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his window and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Less than one week after the Confederate surrender, while attending a Washington theater, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. (Scott, 181). The work of reconstruction would carry on without Lincoln, but his memory would live on in the nation’s imagination. Abraham Lincoln is now among the greatest of American heroes for maintaining the union and bringing an end to the institution of slavery. Bibliography: