The Life of Abraham Lincoln as President

Abraham Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. president (–65), who (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency, see presidency of the.
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Having just reached the age of 21, he was about to begin life on his own. Six feet four inches tall, he was rawboned and lanky but muscular and physically powerful. He was especially noted for the skill and strength with which he could wield an ax. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked in the long-striding, flat-footed, cautious manner of a plowman. Good-natured though somewhat moody, talented as a mimic and storyteller, he readily attracted friends. But he was yet to demonstrate whatever other abilities he possessed.

After his arrival in Illinois, having no desire to be a farmer, Lincoln tried his hand at a variety of occupations. This was his second visit to that city, his first having been made in , while he still lived in Indiana. Upon his return to Illinois he settled in New Salem, a village of about 25 families on the Sangamon River. There he worked from time to time as storekeeper, postmaster, and surveyor. With the coming of the Black Hawk War , he enlisted as a volunteer and was elected captain of his company. He considered blacksmithing as a trade but finally decided in favour of the law.

Already having taught himself grammar and mathematics, he began to study law books. In , having passed the bar examination, he began to practice law. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval.

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Page 1 of Next page Prairie lawyer. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: In contrast to many countries with parliamentary forms of government, where the office of president, or head of state, is mainly ceremonial, in the United States the president is vested with great authority and is arguably…. Remembering the American Civil War: When Abraham Lincoln , the candidate of the explicitly antislavery Republican Party, won the presidential election, seven Southern states South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas carried out their threat and seceded, organizing as the Confederate States of America.

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Internet URLs are the best. Thank You for Your Contribution! There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. In Lincoln and a friend took a flatboat loaded with farm produce down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. He repeated the experience in These trips widened his horizons and, by tradition, shocked him with the sight of men and women being bought and sold in the slave markets of New Orleans.

Although he came of age in , he did not immediately strike out on his own. Once more his father sold the farm and set forth to greener pastures, this time in central Illinois. After helping his father clear land, Abraham hired out to split rails for other farmers, and he kept his earnings. In the summer of he settled in New Salem, a village on the Sangamon River bluff about twenty miles northwest of Springfield.

For a time he drifted from one job to another: Six feet four inches tall with a lanky, rawboned look, unruly coarse black hair, a gregarious personality, and a penchant for telling humorous stories, Lincoln made many friends. Winning the match, Lincoln also won the loyalty of the Clary Grove boys despite his refusal to participate in their drinking and hell-raising. Lincoln volunteered for the militia and was elected captain of his company, which included the Clary Grove boys.

They saw no action, but Lincoln later recalled his election as captain as the most gratifying honor of his life. Their story has taken on so many layers of myth and antimyth that the truth is impossible to determine. For half a century, until the s, professional historians discounted the notion of their love and engagement, but new scholarship revived the credibility of a Lincoln-Rutledge romance Walsh, The Shadows Rise.

During the New Salem years Lincoln developed new purpose and direction. The local schoolmaster, Mentor Graham, guided his study of mathematics and literature. Lincoln joined a debating society, and he acquired a lifelong love of William Shakespeare and Robert Burns. He also acquired a passion for politics and in announced his candidacy for the legislature. Although he failed of election, he received 92 percent of the vote in the New Salem district, where he was known. When he ran again in , he campaigned throughout the county and won decisively.

In the legislature Lincoln came under the wing of John T. Stuart , a Springfield lawyer and Whig minority leader in the house. On 9 September Lincoln obtained his license. Lincoln won reelection to the legislature in , , and Legislative logrolling enabled the Long Nine to get the state capital moved from Vandalia to Springfield in During the same session Lincoln and one colleague from Sangamon County entered a protest against a resolution passed overwhelmingly by the legislature that denounced antislavery societies in such a way as to imply approval of slavery.

Although ill at ease with women, Lincoln in began a half-hearted courtship of Mary Owens, whose sister lived in New Salem. A year later she broke off the relationship, to the probable relief of both parties. Despite the contrast between the educated, cultured, and socially prominent daughter of a Lexington banker and the socially awkward, rough-hewn son of an illiterate farmer, Mary and Abraham fell in love and became engaged in What happened next remains uncertain.

Lincoln seems to have developed doubts about his fitness for marriage and broke the engagement. In January he succumbed to the worst case of hypo he had yet experienced. After a series of twists and turns, the courtship revived. On 4 November he and Mary were wed. The quality of their marriage has been much debated. It produced four sons. In personality, however, they were in many ways opposites. He was disorganized, careless in dress, and indifferent to social niceties; she was quick-tempered, sometimes shrewish, dressed expensively, and lived by the strict decorum of Victorian conventions.

He was absent from home on the legal or political circuit for weeks at a time, leaving her to cope with the trials of household management and child rearing. His moodiness sometimes clashed with her fits of temper. Over time her mental stability became more fragile. After retiring from the legislature in , Lincoln devoted most of his time to his law practice.

In he formed a partnership with Stephen T. Logan , who helped him become more thorough and meticulous in preparing his cases. The Springfield courts sat only a few weeks a year, requiring Lincoln to ride the circuit of county courts throughout central Illinois for several months each spring and fall. Most of his cases involved damage to crops by foraging livestock, property disputes, debts, and assault and battery, with an occasional murder trial to liven interest. In he bought a house in Springfield—the only home he ever owned. In he also dissolved his partnership with Logan and formed a new one with year-old William H.

Herndon , to whom Lincoln became a mentor. He wanted to run for Congress from this safe Whig district, but the concentration of Whig hopefuls in Springfield meant that he had to wait his turn under an informal one-term rotation system. He took the standard Whig position that the war had been provoked by President James K. Lincoln also voted several times for the Wilmot Proviso, declaring that slavery should be prohibited in any territory acquired from Mexico.

On these issues Lincoln sided with the majority in the Whig House of Representatives. The Whig candidate for Congress who succeeded Lincoln under the rotation system, his former partner Stephen T. Taylor nevertheless won the presidency, but Lincoln did not get the patronage appointment he expected as commissioner of the General Land Office. Lincoln returned to Springfield disheartened with politics and gave full time to his law practice. During the s he became one of the leading lawyers in the state. The burst of railroad construction during the decade generated a large caseload.

Lincoln at various times represented railroads. In one important case he represented a small firm in a patent infringement suit brought against it by the McCormick Reaper Company. Lincoln continued to ride the circuit each spring and fall; the great majority of cases handled by Lincoln and Herndon some each year concerned local matters of debt, ejectment, slander and libel, trespass, foreclosure, divorce, and the like. In a seismic political upheaval occurred that propelled Lincoln back into politics. This repeal of a crucial part of the Missouri Compromise of opened Kansas Territory to slavery.

It polarized the free and slave states more sharply than anything else had done. It incited several years of civil war between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas, which became a prelude to the national Civil War that erupted seven years later, and it gave birth to the Republican party, whose principal plank was exclusion of slavery from the territories.

Public Speaker [], pp. By opening all of the Louisiana Purchase territory to slavery, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had reversed the course of the Founding Fathers. Let us repurify it…. That same year a coalition of anti-Nebraska Whigs and Democrats, including Lincoln, appeared to have gained control of the legislature. Their first task in February was to elect a U. Through six ballots he led other candidates but fell short of a majority. To prevent the election of a regular Democrat, Lincoln then threw his support to Lyman Trumbull , an anti-Nebraska Democrat, who was elected on the tenth ballot.

Deeply disappointed, Lincoln picked up his law practice again. In he helped found the Republican party in Illinois. Lincoln campaigned for the Republican ticket headed by John C. By the time Senator Douglas came up for reelection in , he had broken with the Buchanan administration over the Lecompton constitution in Kansas and thus appeared vulnerable to a Republican challenge.

The party nominated Lincoln an almost unprecedented procedure in that time, when state legislatures elected U. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates. Douglas accepted, and the two met in seven three-hour debates in every part of the state. Why could the country not continue to exist half slave and half free as it had for seventy years? The popular vote for Republican and Democratic legislators was virtually even in , but because apportionment favored the Democrats, they won a majority of seats and reelected Douglas.

Childhood and youth

Lincoln once again swallowed his disappointment and continued to speak for Republican candidates in the off-year elections of several midwestern states in In retrospect, Lincoln was the real winner of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The Freeport Doctrine further alienated Douglas from southern Democrats and kindled their demand for a federal slave code in the territories.

This issue split the Democratic party in , virtually assuring the election of a Republican president. The national visibility achieved by Lincoln in the debates caused his name to be increasingly mentioned as the possible Republican nominee. On the basis of thorough research, Lincoln explicated the parallels between the Republican position on slavery and that of the Founding Fathers. His success at Cooper Union brought Lincoln numerous invitations to speak in New England on his way to visit his oldest son Robert Robert Todd Lincoln , who had enrolled at Phillips Exeter Academy for a year of preparatory work before entering Harvard.

All work in a free society was honorable. Slavery degraded manual labor by equating it with bondage. Free men who practiced the virtues of industry, thrift, self-discipline, and sobriety could climb the ladder of success. Lincoln returned from his eastern tour to find Illinois friends mounting a concerted effort for his nomination as president.

The leading candidate was William H. Seward of New York. His chief liability was a reputation as an antislavery radical who could not carry the crucial lower North states of Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania that the Republicans had lost in Seward led on the first ballot; Lincoln almost caught up on the second and won on the third. The ensuing four-party campaign was the most fateful in American history. The Democrats split into northern and southern parties, while a remnant of Whigs, mostly from the border states, formed the Constitutional Union party. Lincoln carried every free state except New Jersey, whose electoral votes he divided with Douglas, and thereby won the election despite garnering slightly less than 40 percent of the popular votes—no popular votes at all in ten southern states.

Between the election and his inauguration, Lincoln remained in Springfield, putting together an administration. He made no public statements despite panicky advice that he say something to reassure the South. He was already on record many times saying that he had no constitutional power and no intention to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed. To Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who opposed secession until his state went out, Lincoln wrote in December that the slave states had nothing to fear, but he added: You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted.

It was indeed the rub. For most secessionists there was no turning back. Nevertheless, a host of compromise proposals emerged during the — session of Congress. The most important were embodied in constitutional amendments sponsored by Senator John J. Such a compromise would not only negate the chief plank of the Republican platform but would also step up the drive to acquire Cuba and other tropical territories suitable for slavery.

Seward whom Lincoln had designated as secretary of state and some other Republicans seemed prepared to tilt toward compromise, but from Springfield came admonitions to stand firm. If we surrender, it is the end of us…. The Crittenden Compromise went down to defeat, but there is no reason to believe that the seven seceded states would have returned even if it had passed.

Abraham Lincoln

These states had seized all federal property within their borders except Fort Pickens on an island off Pensacola and Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. A month before Congress adjourned and before Lincoln was inaugurated , delegates from the seven seceded states met at Montgomery, Alabama, and formed the Confederate States of America.

This hope was founded on an erroneous but widely shared assumption in the North that a silent majority of southerners were Unionists who had been swept along by the passions of the moment. But time was running out.

Abraham Lincoln | Biography, Facts, History, & Childhood | leondumoulin.nl

The day after his inauguration, Lincoln learned that Major Robert Anderson , commander of the besieged federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, had only supplies enough to last a few more weeks. Fort Sumter was the flash point of tension. Charleston was proud of its reputation as the cradle of secession. Insisting that a sovereign nation could not tolerate a foreign fort in one of its harbors, Confederate leaders demanded the transfer of Fort Sumter to the Confederacy. For a month Lincoln endured sleepless nights and conflicting advice on what to do.

To give it up would constitute de facto if not de jure recognition of the Confederacy. On the other hand, it would preserve peace and keep the upper South in the Union. On 15 March a majority of the cabinet, with Seward as the strongest voice, counseled Lincoln to yield Fort Sumter. Lincoln explored the possibility of pulling out in return for an assurance from Virginia that it would remain in the Union. By the end of March, however, Lincoln had made the opposite decision.

He let Seward know in no uncertain terms that he would be premier of his own administration. The problem was how to do it. To send reinforcements prepared to shoot their way into the bay would surely provoke a war that Lincoln would be blamed for starting. Lincoln hit upon an ingenious solution. If the Confederates attacked the supply ships or the fort, they would suffer the onus of starting a war and would unite a divided North.

Davis did not hesitate; he ordered the Confederate guns to fire on Sumter. They did so on 12 April. And the war came. On 15 April Lincoln called out 75, militia to quell the rebellion, prompting four more states to secede.


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On 19 April Lincoln proclaimed a naval blockade of the Confederate coastline. From there the war escalated step by step on a scale of violence and destruction never dreamed of by those who fired the guns at Sumter. On the Union side Lincoln was the principal architect of this escalation. He insisted on a policy of unconditional surrender. Sovereignty, the central issue of the war, was not negotiable. Between him and us the issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible. He borrowed books on military history and strategy from the Library of Congress and burned the midnight oil mastering them.

Eleven times he visited troops at the front in Virginia or Maryland. The greatest frustrations he experienced were the failures of Union generals to act with the vigor and aggressiveness he expected of them. Perhaps one of the greatest satisfactions he experienced was the ultimate victory of commanders who had risen to the top in large part because Lincoln appreciated their vigor and aggressiveness. In Union armies achieved limited but important successes by gaining control of Maryland, Missouri, part of Kentucky, and also much of western Virginia, which paved the way for the later admission of West Virginia as a new state.

Union naval forces gained lodgments along the South Atlantic coast. Lincoln then appointed year-old George B. McClellan commander of the Army of the Potomac and, from 1 November, general in chief of all Union armies. He repeatedly exaggerated enemy strength as an excuse for postponing offensive operations. When McClellan finally began a glacial advance up the Virginia peninsula toward Richmond in the spring of , Lincoln admonished him on 9 April: I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you….

Lincoln already had his eye on a commander who had proved he could act. His name was Ulysses S. Grant , and he had captured Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers and then beat back a Confederate counteroffensive in the bloody battle of Shiloh, 6—7 April Other Union forces in the West also scored important victories in the spring of , capturing New Orleans and Memphis and gaining control of most of the Mississippi River.

The Confederacy seemed doomed.

Abraham Lincoln - The America's Greatest President

Then the Union war machine went into reverse. By September Confederate counteroffensives in Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky took southern armies across the Potomac into Maryland and almost north to the Ohio River. This inversion stunned the northern people and caused home-front morale to plummet, but Lincoln did not falter. Nicolay and John Hay [], vol. Rosecrans as commander of the Army of the Ohio renamed the Army of the Cumberland. A week later he removed McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac.

Smith, Francis Preston Blair [], p. Lincoln did not have any better luck with the next two commanders of the Army of the Potomac.