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Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union during the American Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing enslaved people.

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Abraham Lincoln was the 16 th president of the United States , serving from 1861 to 1865, and is regarded as one of America’s greatest heroes due to his roles in guiding the Union through the Civil War and working to emancipate enslaved people. His eloquent support of democracy and insistence that the Union was worth saving embody the ideals of self-government that all nations strive to achieve. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves across the Confederacy. Lincoln’s rise from humble beginnings to achieving the highest office in the land is a remarkable story, and his death is equally notably. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865, at age 56, as the country was slowly beginning to reunify following the war. Lincoln’s distinctively humane personality and incredible impact on the nation have endowed him with an enduring legacy.

FULL NAME: Abraham Lincoln BORN: February 12, 1809 DIED: April 15, 1865 BIRTHPLACE: Hodgenville, Kentucky SPOUSE: Mary Todd Lincoln (m. 1842) CHILDREN: Robert Todd Lincoln , Edward Baker Lincoln, William Wallace Lincoln, and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius HEIGHT: 6 feet 4 inches

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to parents Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln in rural Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Thomas was a strong and determined pioneer who found a moderate level of prosperity and was well respected in the community. The couple had two other children: Lincoln’s older sister, Sarah, and younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy. His death wasn’t the only tragedy the family would endure.

In 1817, the Lincolns were forced to move from young Abraham’s Kentucky birthplace to Perry County, Indiana, due to a land dispute. In Indiana, the family “squatted” on public land to scrap out a living in a crude shelter, hunting game and farming a small plot. Lincoln’s father was eventually able to buy the land.

When Lincoln was 9 years old, his 34-year-old mother died of tremetol, more commonly known as milk sickness, on October 5, 1818. The event was devastating to the young boy, who grew more alienated from his father and quietly resented the hard work placed on him at an early age.

In December 1819, just over a year after his mother’s death, Lincoln’s father Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a Kentucky widow with three children of her own. She was a strong and affectionate woman with whom Lincoln quickly bonded.

Although both his parents were most likely illiterate, Thomas’ new wife Sarah encouraged Lincoln to read. It was while growing into manhood that Lincoln received his formal education—an estimated total of 18 months—a few days or weeks at a time.

Reading material was in short supply in the Indiana wilderness. Neighbors recalled how Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow a book. He undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progres s, and Aesop’s Fable s.

In March 1830, the family again migrated, this time to Macon County, Illinois. When his father moved the family again to Coles County, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, making a living in manual labor.

Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall, rawboned and lanky yet muscular and physically strong. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked with a long-striding gait. He was known for his skill in wielding an ax and early on made a living splitting wood for fire and rail fencing.

Young Lincoln eventually migrated to the small community of New Salem, Illinois, where over a period of years he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, and eventually general store owner. It was through working with the public that Lincoln acquired social skills and honed a storytelling talent that made him popular with the locals.

Not surprising given his imposing frame, Lincoln was an excellent wrestler and had only one recorded loss—to Hank Thompson in 1832—over a span of 12 years. A shopkeeper who employed Lincoln in New Salem, Illinois, reportedly arranged bouts for him as a way to promote the business. Lincoln notably beat a local champion named Jack Armstrong and became somewhat of a hero. (The National Wrestling Hall of Fame posthumously gave Lincoln its Outstanding American Award in 1992.)

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 this time, save for “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes,” but was able to make several important political connections.

As he was starting his political career in the early 1830s, Lincoln decided to become a lawyer. He taught 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 in the John T. Stuart law firm.

In 1844, Lincoln partnered with William Herndon in the practice of law. Although the two had different jurisprudent styles, they developed a close professional and personal relationship.

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.

On November 4, 1842, Lincoln wed Mary Todd , a high-spirited, well-educated woman from a distinguished Kentucky family. Although they were married until Lincoln’s death, their relationship had a history of instability.

When the couple became engaged in 1840, many of their friends and family couldn’t understand Mary’s attraction; at times, Lincoln questioned it himself. In 1841, the engagement was suddenly broken off, most likely at Lincoln’s initiative. Mary and Lincoln met later at a social function and eventually did get married.

The couple had four sons— Robert Todd , Edward Baker, William Wallace, and Thomas “Tad”—of whom only Robert survived to adulthood.

Before marrying Todd, Lincoln was involved with other potential matches. Around 1837, he purportedly met and became romantically involved with Anne Rutledge. Before they had a chance to be engaged, a wave of typhoid fever came over New Salem, and Anne died at age 22.

Her death was said to have left Lincoln severely depressed. However, several historians disagree on the extent of Lincoln’s relationship with Rutledge, and his level of sorrow at her death might be more the makings of legend.

About a year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other for a few months, and marriage was considered. But in time, Lincoln called off the match.

In 1834, Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state legislature as a member of the Whig Party . More than a decade later, from 1847 to 1849, he served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His foray into national politics seemed to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from Illinois, showing party loyalty but finding few political allies.

As a congressman, Lincoln 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. Instead, he returned to 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, including banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing firms. Lincoln also worked in some criminal trials.

In one case, a witness claimed that he could identify Lincoln’s client who was accused of murder, because of the intense light from a full moon. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the night in question had been too dark for the witness to see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.

As a member of the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln supported the Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This political understanding led him to formulate his early views on slavery, not so much as a moral wrong, but as an impediment to economic development.

In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which repealed the Missouri Compromise , allowing 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 today’s Republican Party .

This awakened Lincoln’s political zeal 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 Dred Scott decision, declaring Black people were not citizens and had no inherent rights. Although Lincoln felt Black people weren’t equal to whites, he believed 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 James Buchanan for promoting slavery then declared “a house divided cannot stand.”

During Lincoln’s 1858 U.S. Senate campaign against Douglas, he participated in seven debates held in different cities across Illinois. The two candidates didn’t disappoint, giving stirring debates on issues such as states’ rights and western expansion. But the central issue was slavery.

Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often times with partisan commentary. In the end, the state legislature elected Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.

With his newly enhanced political profile, in 1860, political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for the presidency. On May 18, at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Lincoln surpassed better-known candidates such as William Seward of New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s nomination was due, in part, to his moderate views on slavery, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the protective tariff.

In the November 1860 general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival Stephen Douglas, this time besting him in a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of the Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Party. Lincoln received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote but carried 180 of 303 Electoral College votes, thus winning the U.S. presidency. He grew his trademark beard after his election.

Lincoln’s Cabinet

Following his election to the presidency in 1860, Lincoln selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Edwin Stanton.

Formed out the adage “Hold your friends close and your enemies closer,” Lincoln’s cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office, and he would need them as the clouds of war gathered over the nation the following year.

Before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, and by April, the U.S. military installation Fort Sumter was under siege in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort, signaling the start of the U.S. Civil War , America’s costliest and bloodiest war.

The newly President Lincoln responded to the crisis wielding powers as no other president before him: He distributed $2 million from the Treasury for war material without an appropriation from Congress; he called for 75,000 volunteers into military service without a declaration of war; and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, allowing for the arrest and imprisonment of suspected Confederate States sympathizers without a warrant.

Crushing the rebellion would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil War, after decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. From all directions, Lincoln faced disparagement and defiance. He was often at odds with his generals, his cabinet, his party, and a majority of the American people.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln delivered his official Emancipation Proclamation , reshaping the cause of the Civil War from saving the Union to abolishing slavery.

The Union Army’s first year and a half of battlefield defeats made it difficult to keep morale high and support strong for a reunification of the nation. And the Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, while by no means conclusive, was hopeful. It gave Lincoln the confidence to officially change the goals of the war. On that same day, he issued a preliminary proclamation that slaves in states rebelling against the Union would be free as of January 1.

The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all individuals who were held as enslaved people in rebellious states “henceforward shall be free.” The action was more symbolic than effective because the North didn’t control any states in rebellion, and the proclamation didn’t apply to border states, Tennessee, or some Louisiana parishes.

As a result, the Union army shared the Proclamation’s mandate only after it had taken control of Confederate territory. In the far reaches of western Texas, that day finally came on June 19, 1865—more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. For decades, many Black Americans have celebrated this anniversary, known as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day, and in 2021, President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a national holiday.

Still, the Emancipation Proclamation did have some immediate impact. It permitted Black Americans to serve in the Union Army for the first time, which contributed to the eventual Union victory. The historic declaration also paved the way for the passage of the 13 th Amendment that ended legal slavery in the United States.

On November 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered what would become his most famous speech and one of the most important speeches in American history: the Gettysburg Address .

Addressing a crowd of around 15,000 people, Lincoln delivered his 272-word speech at one of the bloodiest battlefields of the Civil War, the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania. The Civil War, Lincoln said, was the ultimate test of the preservation of the Union created in 1776, and the people who died at Gettysburg fought to uphold this cause.

Lincoln evoked the Declaration of Independence , saying it was up to the living to ensure that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and this Union was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

A common interpretation was that the president was expanding the cause of the Civil War from simply reunifying the Union to also fighting for equality and abolishing slavery.

Following Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war effort gradually improved for the North, though more by attrition than by brilliant military victories.

But by 1864, the Confederate armies had eluded major defeat and Lincoln was convinced he’d be a one-term president. His nemesis George B. McClellan , the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency, but the contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 of 243 electoral votes.

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee , commander of the Army of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant . The Civil War was for all intents and purposes over.

Reconstruction had already began during the Civil War, as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control, and Lincoln favored a policy of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. He was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in Congress that wanted complete allegiance and repentance from former Confederates. Before a political debate had any chance to firmly develop, Lincoln was killed.

Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. He was 56. His death was mourned by millions of citizens in the North and South alike.

Lincoln’s body first lay in state at the U. S. Capitol. About 600 invited guests attended a funeral in the East Room of the White House on April 19, though an inconsolable Mary Todd Lincoln wasn’t present.

His body was transported to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois, by a funeral train. Newspapers publicized the schedule of the train, which made stops along various cities that played roles in Lincoln’s path to Washington. In 10 cities, the casket was removed and placed in public for memorial services. Lincoln was finally placed in a tomb on May 4.

On the day of Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17 th president at the Kirkwood House hotel in Washington.

Lincoln, already taller than most, is known for his distinctive top hats. Although it’s unclear when he began wearing them, historians believe he likely chose the style as a gimmick.

He wore a top hat to Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination. Following his death, the War Department preserved the hat until 1867 when, with Mary Todd Lincoln’s approval, it was transferred to the Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution. Worried about the commotion it might cause, the Smithsonian stored the hat in a basement instead of putting it on display. It was finally exhibited in 1893, and it’s now one of the Institution’s most treasured items.

Lincoln is frequently cited by historians and average citizens alike as America’s greatest president. An aggressively activist commander-in-chief, Lincoln used every power at his disposal to assure victory in the Civil War and end slavery in the United States.

Some scholars doubt that the Union would have been preserved had another person of lesser character been in the White House. According to historian Michael Burlingame , “No president in American history ever faced a greater crisis and no president ever accomplished as much.”

Lincoln’s philosophy was perhaps best summed up in his Second Inaugural Address , when he stated, “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 widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

The Lincoln Memorial

Since its dedication in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington has honored the president’s legacy. Inspired by the Greek Parthenon, the monument features a 19-foot high statue of Lincoln and engravings of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Former President William Howard Taft served as chair of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, which oversaw its design and construction.

The monument is the most visited in the city, attracting around 8 million people per year. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the memorial’s steps in 1963.

Lincoln has been the subject of numerous films about his life and presidency, rooted in both realism and absurdity.

Among the earlier films featuring the former president is Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), which stars Henry Fonda and focuses on Lincoln’s early life and law career. A year later, Abe Lincoln in Illinois gave a dramatized account of Lincoln’s life after leaving Kentucky.

The most notable modern film is Lincoln , the 2012 biographical drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and Sally Field as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln . Day-Lewis won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the film was nominated for Best Picture.

A more fantastical depiction of Lincoln came in the 1989 comedy film Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure , in which the titular characters played by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter travel back in time for the president’s help in completing their high school history report. Lincoln gives the memorable instruction to “be excellent to each other and... party on, dudes!”

Another example is the 2012 action film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , based on a 2010 novel by Seth Grahame-Smith. Benjamin Walker plays Lincoln, who leads a secret double life hunting the immortal creatures and even fighting them during the Civil War.

Lincoln’s role during the Civil War is heavily explored in the 1990 Ken Burns documentary The Civil War , which won two Emmy Awards and two Grammys. In 2022, the History Channel aired a three-part docuseries about his life simply titled Abraham Lincoln .

• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
• I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
• No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other ’ s consent.
• I have learned the value of old friends by making many new ones.
• Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
• Whenever I hear anyone arguing over slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
• To give the victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
• Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
• Don ’ t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
• Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
• 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 widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
• I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
• Nearly all men can handle adversity, if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
• I ’ m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.
• We can complain because rose bushes have thorns.
• Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
• It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

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Abraham Lincoln

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 7, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

Abraham Lincoln , a self-taught lawyer, legislator and vocal opponent of slavery, was elected 16th president of the United States in November 1860, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Lincoln proved to be a shrewd military strategist and a savvy leader: His Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for slavery’s abolition, while his Gettysburg Address stands as one of the most famous pieces of oratory in American history. 

In April 1865, with the Union on the brink of victory, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln’s assassination made him a martyr to the cause of liberty, and he is widely regarded as one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history.

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky . His family moved to southern Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal schooling was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he had to work constantly to support his family.

In 1830, his family moved to Macon County in southern Illinois , and Lincoln got a job working on a river flatboat hauling freight down the Mississippi River to New Orleans . After settling in the town of New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a shopkeeper and a postmaster, Lincoln became involved in local politics as a supporter of the Whig Party , winning election to the Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay and Daniel Webster , Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery to the territories, and had a grand vision of the expanding United States, with a focus on commerce and cities rather than agriculture.

Did you know? The war years were difficult for Abraham Lincoln and his family. After his young son Willie died of typhoid fever in 1862, the emotionally fragile Mary Lincoln, widely unpopular for her frivolity and spendthrift ways, held seances in the White House in the hopes of communicating with him, earning her even more derision.

Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar examination in 1836. The following year, he moved to the newly named state capital of Springfield. For the next few years, he worked there as a lawyer and served clients ranging from individual residents of small towns to national railroad lines.

He met Mary Todd , a well-to-do Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future political rival, Stephen Douglas ), and they married in 1842. The Lincolns went on to have four children together, though only one would live into adulthood: Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following year. As a congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with many Illinois voters for his strong stance against the Mexican-American War. Promising not to seek reelection, he returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back into national politics, however: Douglas, a leading Democrat in Congress, had pushed through the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than the federal government, had the right to decide whether the territory should be slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large crowd in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Douglas, denouncing slavery and its extension and calling the institution a violation of the most basic tenets of the Declaration of Independence .

With the Whig Party in ruins, Lincoln joined the new Republican Party–formed largely in opposition to slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate again that year (he had campaigned unsuccessfully for the seat in 1855 as well). In June, Lincoln delivered his now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels to illustrate his belief that “this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.”

Lincoln then squared off against Douglas in a series of famous debates; though he lost the Senate election, Lincoln’s performance made his reputation nationally. 

Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Presidential Campaign

Lincoln’s profile rose even higher in early 1860 after he delivered another rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for president, passing over Senator William H. Seward of New York and other powerful contenders in favor of the rangy Illinois lawyer with only one undistinguished congressional term under his belt.

In the general election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the northern Democrats; southern Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Union Party. With Breckenridge and Bell splitting the vote in the South, Lincoln won most of the North and carried the Electoral College to win the White House .

He built an exceptionally strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates and Edwin M. Stanton .

Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War

After years of sectional tensions, the election of an antislavery northerner as the 16th president of the United States drove many southerners over the brink. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated as 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America .

Lincoln ordered a fleet of Union ships to supply the federal Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April. The Confederates fired on both the fort and the Union fleet, beginning the Civil War . Hopes for a quick Union victory were dashed by defeat in the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) , and Lincoln called for 500,000 more troops as both sides prepared for a long conflict.

While the Confederate leader Jefferson Davis was a West Point graduate, Mexican War hero and former secretary of war, Lincoln had only a brief and undistinguished period of service in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised many when he proved to be a capable wartime leader, learning quickly about strategy and tactics in the early years of the Civil War, and about choosing the ablest commanders.

General George McClellan , though beloved by his troops, continually frustrated Lincoln with his reluctance to advance, and when McClellan failed to pursue Robert E. Lee’s retreating Confederate Army in the aftermath of the Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln removed him from command.

During the war, Lincoln drew criticism for suspending some civil liberties, including the right of habeas corpus , but he considered such measures necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address

Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation , which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the enslaved people in the rebellious states not under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal to the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln once maintained that his “paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery,” he nonetheless came to regard emancipation as one of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after his death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of the war. General George Meade missed the opportunity to deliver a final blow against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, and Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant , as supreme commander of the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication ceremony for the new national cemetery at Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Address eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the pursuit of human equality. It became the most famous speech of Lincoln’s presidency, and one of the most widely quoted speeches in history.

Abraham Lincoln Wins 1864 Presidential Election

In 1864, Lincoln faced a tough reelection battle against the Democratic nominee, the former Union General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William T. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s way. In his second inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the South and rebuild the Union: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through the Carolinas after staging his March to the Sea from Atlanta, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House , Virginia , on April 9. Union victory was near, and Lincoln gave a speech on the White House lawn on April 11, urging his audience to welcome the southern states back into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry out his vision of Reconstruction .

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On the night of April 14, 1865, the actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth slipped into the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in the back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across the street from the theater, but he never regained consciousness, and died in the early morning hours of April 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s assassination made him a national martyr. On April 21, 1865, a train carrying his coffin left Washington, D.C. on its way to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4. Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train traveled through 180 cities and seven states so mourners could pay homage to the fallen president.

Today, Lincoln’s birthday—alongside the birthday of George Washington —is honored on President’s Day , which falls on the third Monday of February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”

“Fourscore 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.”

“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.”

HISTORY Vault: Abraham Lincoln

A definitive biography of the 16th U.S. president, the man who led the country during its bloodiest war and greatest crisis.

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Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky on February 12, 1809. His family moved to Indiana when he was seven and he grew up on the edge of the frontier. He had very little formal education, but read voraciously when not working on his father’s farm.  A childhood friend later recalled Lincoln's "manic" intellect, and the sight of him red-eyed and tousle-haired as he pored over books late into the night.  In 1828, at the age of nineteen, he accompanied a produce-laden flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, Louisiana—his first visit to a large city--and then walked back home.  Two years later, trying to avoid health and finance troubles, Lincoln's father moved the family moved to Illinois.

After moving away from home, Lincoln co-owned a general store for several years before selling his stake and enlisting as a militia captain defending Illinois in the Black Hawk War of 1832.  Black Hawk, a Sauk chief, believed he had been swindled by a recent land deal and sought to resettle his old holdings.  Lincoln did not see direct combat during the short conflict, but the sight of corpse-strewn battlefields at Stillman's Run and Kellogg's Grove deeply affected him. As a captain, he developed a reputation for pragmatism and integrity.  Once, faced with a rail fence during practice maneuvers and forgetting the parade-ground instructions to direct his men over it, he simply ordered them to fall out and reassemble on the other side a minute later.  Another time, he stopped his men before they executed a wandering Native American as a spy.  Stepping in front of their raised muskets, Lincoln is said to have challenged his men to combat for the terrified native's life.  His men stood down.

After the war, he studied law and campaigned for a seat on the Illinois State Legislature. Although not elected in his first attempt, Lincoln persevered and won the position in 1834, serving as a Whig.

Abraham Lincoln met Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois where he was practicing as a lawyer. They were married in 1842 over her family’s objections and had four sons.  Only one lived to adulthood.  The deep melancholy that pervaded the Lincoln family, with occasional detours into outright madness, is in some ways sourced in their close relationship with death. 

Lincoln, a self-described "prairie lawyer," focused on his all-embracing law practice in the early 1850s after one term in Congress from 1847 to 1849. He joined the new Republican party—and the ongoing argument over sectionalism—in 1856. A series of heated debates in 1858 with Stephen A. Douglas , the sponsor of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act , over slavery and its place in the United States forged Lincoln into a prominent figure in national politics. Lincoln’s anti-slavery platform made him extremely unpopular with Southerners and his nomination for President in 1860 enraged them.

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln won the presidential election without the support of a single Southern state.  Talk of secession, bandied about since the 1830s, took on a serious new tone. The Civil War was not entirely caused by Lincoln’s election, but the election was one of the primary reasons the war broke out the following year.

Lincoln’s decision to fight rather than to let the Southern states secede was not based on his feelings towards slavery.  Rather, he felt it was his sacred duty as President of the United States to preserve the Union at all costs.  His first inaugural address was an appeal to the rebellious states, seven of which had already seceded, to rejoin the nation.  His first draft of the speech ended with an ominous message: "Shall it be peace, or the sword?" 

The Civil War began with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter , South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.  Fort Sumter, situated in the Charleston Harbour, was a Union outpost in the newly seceded Confederate territory. Lincoln, learning that the Fort was running low on food, sent supplies to reinforce the soldiers there. The Southern navy repulsed the supply convoy. After this repulse, the Southern navy fired the first shot of the war at Fort Sumter and the Federal defenders surrendered after a 34-hour long battle. 

Throughout the war, Lincoln struggled to find capable generals for his armies.  As commander-in-chief, he legally held the highest rank in the United States armed forces, and he diligently exercised his authority through strategic planning, weapons testing, and the promotion and demotion of officers.  McDowell , Fremont, McClellan , Pope , McClellan again, Buell , Burnside , Rosecrans --all of these men and more withered under Lincoln's watchful eye as they failed to bring him success on the battlefield. 

He did not issue his famous Emancipation Proclamation until January 1, 1863 after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam .  The Emancipation Proclamation, which was legally based on the President’s right to seize the property of those in rebellion against the State, only freed slaves in Southern states where Lincoln’s forces had no control. Nevertheless, it changed the tenor of the war, making it, from the Northern point of view, a fight both to preserve the Union and to end slavery.

In 1864, Lincoln ran again for President.  After years of war, he feared he would not win.  Only in the final months of the campaign did the exertions of Ulysses S. Grant , the quiet general now in command of all of the Union armies, begin to bear fruit.  A string of heartening victories buoyed Lincoln's ticket and contributed significantly to his re-election.  In his second inauguration speech , March 4, 1865, he set the tone he intended to take when the war finally ended. His one goal, he said, was “lasting peace among ourselves.” He called for “malice towards none” and “charity for all.” The war ended only a month later.

The Lincoln administration did more than just manage the Civil War, although its reverberations could still be felt in a number of policies.  The Revenue Act of 1862 established the United States' first income tax, largely to pay the costs of total war.  The Morrill Act of 1862 established the basis of the state university system in this country, while the Homestead Act, also passed in 1862, encouraged settlement of the West by offering 160 acres of free land to settlers.  Lincoln also created the Department of Agriculture and formally instituted the Thanksgiving holiday.  Internationally, he navigated the "Trent Affair," a diplomatic crisis regarding the seizure of a British ship carrying Confederate envoys, in such a way as to quell the saber-rattling overtures coming from Britain as well as the United States.  In another spill-over from the war, Lincoln restricted the civil liberties of due process and freedom of the press. 

On April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln was shot by Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth.  The assassination was part of a larger plot to eliminate the Northern government that also left Secretary of State William Seward grievously injured.  Lincoln died the following day, and with him the hope of reconstructing the nation without bitterness.

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Abraham Lincoln

The 16th President of the United States

The biography for President Lincoln and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

Abraham Lincoln became the United States’ 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863.

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party’s nomination for President, he sketched his life:

“I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families–second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks…. My father … removed from Kentucky to … Indiana, in my eighth year…. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up…. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher … but that was all.”

Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.”

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: “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.”

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: “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…. ”

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln’s death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

Learn more about Abraham Lincoln’s spouse, Mary Todd Lincoln .

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Abraham Lincoln: Facts and Brief Biography

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Abraham Lincoln

Life span: Born: February 12, 1809, in a log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. Died: April 15, 1865, in Washington, D.C., the victim of an assassin.

Presidential term: March 4, 1861 - April 15, 1865.

Lincoln was in the second month of his second term when he was assassinated.

Accomplishments: Lincoln was the greatest president of the 19th century, and perhaps of all American history. His greatest accomplishment, of course, was that he held the nation together during the Civil War while also bringing an end to the great divisive issue of the 19th century, slavery in America .

Supported by: Lincoln ran for president as the candidate of the Republican Party in 1860, and was strongly supported by those who opposed the extension of slavery into new states and territories.

The most devoted Lincoln supporters had organized themselves into marching societies, called Wide-Awake Clubs . And Lincoln received support from a broad base of Americans, from factory workers to farmers to New England intellectuals who opposed the institution of slavery.

Opposed by: In the election of 1860 , Lincoln had three opponents, the most prominent of whom was Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Lincoln had run for the senate seat held by Douglas two years previously, and that election campaign featured the seven Lincoln-Douglas Debates .

In the election of 1864 Lincoln was opposed by General George McClellan, whom Lincoln had removed from command of the Army of the Potomac in late 1862. McClellan’s platform was essentially a call to bring an end to the Civil War.

Presidential campaigns: Lincoln ran for president in 1860 and 1864, in an era when candidates did not do much campaigning. In 1860 Lincoln only made one appearance at a rally, in his own hometown, Springfield, Illinois.

Personal Life

  Spouse and family:  Lincoln was married to  Mary Todd Lincoln . Their marriage was often rumored to be troubled, and there were many rumors focusing on her  alleged mental illness .

The Lincolns had four sons, only one of whom,  Robert Todd Lincoln , lived to adulthood. Their son Eddie died in Illinois. Willie Lincoln died in the White House in 1862, after becoming ill, probably from unhealthy drinking water. Tad Lincoln lived in the White House with his parents and returned to Illinois after his father's death. He died in 1871, at the age of 18.

Education:   Lincoln only attended school as a child for a few months, and was essentially self-educated. However, he read widely, and many stories about his youth concern him striving to borrow books and reading even while working in the fields.

Early career:  Lincoln practiced law in Illinois, and became a well-respected litigator. He handled all sorts of cases, and his legal practice, often with frontier characters for clients, provided many stories he would tell as president.

Later career:  Lincoln died while in office. It is a loss to history that he was never able to write a memoir.

Facts to Know About Lincoln

  Nickname:  Lincoln was often called "Honest Abe." In the 1860 campaign, his history of having  worked with an ax  prompted him to be called the “Rail Candidate” and “The Rail Splitter.”

Unusual facts:  The only president to have received a patent, Lincoln designed a boat that could, with inflatable devices, clear sandbars in a river. The inspiration for the invention was his observation that riverboats on the Ohio or even the Mississippi River could get stuck trying to cross the shifting obstacles of silt that would build up in the river.

Lincoln's fascination with technology extended to the telegraph. He relied on telegraphic messages while living in Illinois in the 1850s. And in 1860 he learned about his nomination as the Republican candidate via a telegraph message. On Election Day that November, he spent much of the day at a local telegraph office until word flashed over the wire that he had won.

As president, Lincoln used the telegraph extensively to communicate with generals in the field during the Civil War.

Quotes:  These  ten verified and significant Lincoln quotes  are only a fraction of the many quotes attributed to him.

Death and funeral:   Lincoln was shot  by  John Wilkes Booth  at Ford’s Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865. He died early the next morning.

Lincoln’s funeral train  traveled from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, stopping for observances in major cities of the North. He was buried in Springfield, and his body was eventually placed in a large tomb.

Legacy:  Lincoln’s legacy is enormous. For his role in guiding the country during the Civil War and his actions that made enslavement illegal, he will always be remembered as one of the great American presidents.

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• National Parks in Illinois: Politics, Commerce, and Religious Freedom
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Abraham Lincoln — Facts, Information and History on the Life of the 16th U.S. President

Facts, information and articles about the life of abraham lincoln, 16th president of the united states, abraham lincoln facts.

February 12, 1809, Hodgenville, Kentucky

April 15, 1865, Petersen House, Washington, D.C.

Presidential Term

March 4, 1861 – April 15, 1865

Mary Todd Lincoln

Major accomplishments.

Served Four Terms in Illinois Legislature

Member of U.S. House of Representatives

16th President of the United States

Commander in Chief During Civil War

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Abraham Lincoln Summary

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States of America, who successfully prosecuted the Civil War to preserve the nation. He played in key role in passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially ended slavery in America. Murdered by John Wilkes Booth , Lincoln became the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Prior to his election as president in 1860, he had successful careers as a lawyer and politician in Illinois, serving several terms in the state legislature and one in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also holds the distinction of being the only U.S. president to receive a patent; in 1849, he designed a system for lifting riverboats off sandbars.

Abraham Lincoln’s Life: Youth

Abraham Lincoln was born on Sinking Springs Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809, to Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. He was named for his paternal grandfather. His birthplace is believed to have been a 16-foot by 18-foot log cabin, which no longer exists. Lincoln had a sister, Sarah, who was two years and two days older than he was, and a younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy.

When Abraham was two, the family moved to nearby Knob Creek Farm. Five years later, the family moved again, to the wilderness on Little Pigeon Creek in Indiana. On October 5, 1818, his mother died, reportedly of “milk sickness,” caused by drinking milk from cows that have eaten a poisonous, blossoming plant called snakeroot. Thomas Lincoln remarried a year later, to Sarah Bush Johnston, a woman of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, whom he had known for many years. She had three children by a previous marriage, Elizabeth, Matilda, and John. Although Abraham and his father were never close, Sarah and nine-year-old Abraham formed a loving relationship that continued throughout their lives. She encouraged him in his attempts to educate himself, which he did by borrowing and studying books.

Lincoln Moves To Illinois

In 1830, when Abraham was 21, the family moved to Illinois. He performed odd jobs and took a flatboat of goods to New Orleans. At New Salem, he was a partner in a store at that failed and would be many years paying off the last of the store’s creditors, an obligation he referred to as “the National Debt.” Elected captain of a militia unit during the 1832 Black Hawk War —an election he later would say pleased him more than any other—he saw no combat, but he met the man who would change his life in many ways: John Todd Stuart.

Lincoln Becomes A Lawyer

Stuart and Lincoln both ran for the Illinois General Assembly that year; Stuart won, Lincoln didn’t. Two years later, however, both men won election. The more experienced Stuart, known as “Jerry Sly” for his skills at management and intrigue, showed Lincoln the ropes and loaned him law books, that he might study to become an attorney. In 1836, Lincoln received a license to practice law. He would go on to establish a respectable record as an attorney and was often hired by the Illinois Central Railroad.

Lincoln won reelection to the General Assembly in 1836, 1838, and 1840; among his accomplishments was a major role in getting the state capital moved to Springfield. He did not actively seek the post again after 1840, but won the popular vote in 1854; however, he resigned so he would be eligible for election to the U.S. Senate.

Lincoln Goes To Congress

In 1846, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he gave the infamous “Spot” speech about the war that had begun with Mexico. He demanded President James K. Polk reveal the exact spot on which American blood had been shed, starting the war, and whether that spot was on American or Mexican soil.

The speech may have been a reflection of words his “beau ideal” statesman, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, had uttered in a speech Lincoln heard while visiting Lexington, Kentucky, on the way to Washington. Or it may have been a partisan maneuver—Lincoln was a Whig, Polk a Democrat—to ingratiate himself with the older Whigs in Washington. Popular opinion in most of the country supported the war, and newspapers around the country ridiculed him as “Spotty Lincoln.” He did not run for reelection to Congress in 1848, but for the first time in its history, his home district elected a Democrat instead of a Whig. He spent the next several years focusing on his law practice to support his growing family.

In the Illinois legislature, he’d served with Ninian Wirt Edwards of Springfield, the son of a former governor of Illinois. Edwards’ wife was the former Elizabeth Todd of Lexington, Kentucky. When her younger sister, Mary, came from Lexington Lincoln became smitten; as Ninian observed, “Mary could make a bishop forget his prayers.” Although facts are unclear, an understanding apparently developed between Lincoln and Mary, but they parted ways in December of 1840 or January of 1841. Over a year later, a friend brought them back together, and they wed November 4, 1842.

There have long been stories—begun by Lincoln’s long-time law partner, William Herndon—that Lincoln had previously been engaged to Ann Rutledge in New Salem and had nearly lost his mind when she died. However, she was betrothed to another and there is no verifiable evidence of any romantic relationship or understanding between her and Lincoln. Neighbors’ stories indicate Lincoln did take her death hard. He was always prone to fits of “melancholia”—depression—and one state legislator claimed Lincoln told him he wouldn’t carry a pocket knife for fear he’d use it to harm himself.

Family Life With Mary Todd Lincoln

Abraham and Mary Lincoln would produce four children: Robert Todd, named for Mary’s father; Edward (Eddie) Baker, named for a close friend; William (Willie) Wallace, named for Dr. William Wallace, who had married Francis, another Todd sister, and had become close friends with Lincoln; and Thomas (Tad), named for Lincoln’s father who had died two years earlier. Eddie died in 1850, Willie in 1862, and Tad in 1871. Only Robert lived to adulthood; the last of his descendants would die in 1985, ending the Abraham Lincoln family line. (Learn more about Mary Todd Lincoln )

Although Lincoln did not seek office himself during these years, he remained active in the Whig Party, counseling candidates who sought his advice and occasionally responding to speaking requests. In 1854, he essentially was campaign manager for Richard Yates, who was running for the General Assembly. Lincoln did not want to be elected to that body again himself because he knew the legislature would be electing a new U.S. Senator during its coming term, to fill the position of James Shields, who had moved to the Minnesota Territory. (At that time, nearly 60 years before the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provided for direct election of senators by the voters, they were chosen by each state’s legislature.) By Illinois law, sitting state legislators could not be elected to the U.S. Congress—and Lincoln desperately wanted to become the new senator, a position he said he would prefer over being president. Regardless, eventually he reluctantly agreed to run . He won more votes than any other candidate but resigned in order to keep his senatorial chances open.

His hopes were dashed again when the vote for senator was taken in 1857. Despite a strong start, he saw that a Democrat would be elected unless the Whigs united, so he threw his supporters’ votes to another candidate.

Since the early 1830s, abolitionists—those who adamantly favored abolishing slavery everywhere in the United States—had become increasingly strident. Even many people like Lincoln who did not approve of slavery also did not approve of the sectional divisiveness engendered by the abolitionists. Slaveholding states—virtually all of which were in the South—in responding to abolitionists’ attacks defended the “peculiar institution” of slavery more vociferously, and sectional tensions grew.

A Nation Dividing

In 1854, a passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed residents of any new states admitted to the Union to decide for themselves whether or not the state would be free or slaveholding. In the 1857 Dred Scott decision the Supreme Court ruled that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the rights guaranteed by the Constitution applied to Negroes and never had. As a result of these events, many who had disassociated themselves with abolitionists’ agitation began drifting into their camp, and the abolitionists movement intensified.

Like his father, Lincoln opposed slavery; however, he also deplored abolitionists’ activities because they threatened to cause a schism in the nation. In regard to “slavery agitation” he said, “In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand'”

Notes for a speech he delivered in Ohio clearly articulate his opinions on the slavery issue in the 1850s:

“We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the Constitution, and the peace of the country both forbid us – We must not withhold an efficient fugitive slave law, for the constitution demands it – But we must, by a national policy, prevent the spread of slavery into new territories, or free states, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does demand such prevention.” (Abraham Lincoln, (September 16–17, 1859), Notes for Speech in Kansas and Ohio)

The Whig Party to which he had always been dedicated was dying. By 1854, a new party, the Republicans, was taking its place. Comprised of old Whigs, disaffected Democrats and members of the Native American Party (“Know-Nothings”), its unifying theme was opposition to the institution of slavery. In 1856, Lincoln joined the new party.

The Lincoln Douglas Debates

In 1858, he engaged in a legendary series of debates across Illinois with the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Sen. Stephen Douglas. The five-foot, four-inch Douglas—”the Little Giant”—and the lanky, six-foot-four Lincoln faced off over the issue of expanding slavery beyond the states where it currently existed. Lincoln carefully made a distinction between slavery where it existed and its expansion into new territories and states. The debates grew national attention, and Lincoln was invited to speak in other states. (Read more about the Lincoln Douglas Debates )

The national attention he received resulted in the Republican Party making him its presidential candidate in the 1860 election. On the divisive matter of slavery, the Republican platform supported prohibiting slavery in the territories but opposed interfering with it in the states where it already existed.

The Democratic Party split, producing two candidates, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. An independent Constitutional Union Party ran John Bell of Tennessee as its candidate. Two other independent parties formed but failed to carry a single state in the fall elections. Breckinridge carried the Deep South and two slave-holding East Coast states, Maryland and Delaware; Bell won Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia; Douglas only carried Missouri. Lincoln won every Northern state, California and Oregon; although he failed to win a majority of the popular vote in this drawn-and-quartered election, he won enough electoral votes—180 compared to 123 for all his opponents combined—to become the 16th president.

President Abraham Lincoln

On December 20, nearly three months before Lincoln would take office (presidential inaugurations occurred in March at that time), South Carolina officially seceded from the Union. It was soon joined by all states of the Deep South. They feared the rise of this new, sectional party that opposed expansion of slavery. If the peculiar institution was not allowed to spread, slaveholding states would be outnumbered, and they feared losing the political power that protected slavery.

For weeks, president-elect Lincoln said nothing as state after state renounced its compact with the United States, though it is questionable whether anything he said would have halted the secession movement. Previous presidents under whom secession was threatened—Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor—had both said they would send troops to force states to remain in the Union but never had to take that action. Lincoln, faced with the reality of losing a section of the country, felt he did have to after Confederate guns fired during the Battle of Fort Sumter , South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.

The Civil War Begins

He called for 75,000 troops to suppress the Southern rebellion. Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee then seceded, refusing to fight their fellow Southerners and claiming Lincoln had overreached his authority because Congress was not in session and therefore could not authorize a war.

The new president knew little of military affairs, but just as he had educated himself as a youth, he began a self-education in the art of war, checking books of military history out of the Library of Congress. From this reading, and perhaps from an innate sense of what needed to be done, he at times seemed to understand better than some of his generals that destroying the enemy’s armies was more important than capturing the Confederate capital.

He endured outright insubordination from one commander, Major General George B. McClellan, in charge of the largest Union army. Lincoln said he’d hold McClellan’s horse if it would help to win the war, but once he determined “Little Mac” was too cautious to win much of anything, he removed him. Not until March of 1864, when he placed Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant in charge of all Union armies, did Lincoln find a general in whom he had trust. Grant had previously won major victories at the Siege of Fort Donelson , Battle of Vicksburg , and Battle of Chattanooga .

Lincoln, in choosing his cabinet, had selected those men he felt most capable of handling the duties of the posts he asked them to fill. Some of them had hoped during the last election that they would be filling the chair of the presidency. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin called the Lincoln Cabinet “A Team of Rivals.” His willingness to work with men, some of whom he knew had a low opinion of him—at least initially—says much about Lincoln’s character and his determination to do whatever it took to preserve the Union.

The Emancipation Proclamation

In the autumn of 1862, following the Battle of Antietam, he announced his  Emancipation Proclamation . It granted freedom to slaves—but only to those in the areas still in rebellion, which didn’t recognize his authority. It was a war measure, meant to prevent European recognition of the slaveholding Confederacy, and it shifted the war from one to preserve the Union to one that would both preserve the Union and end slavery.

Other controversial war measures taken by Lincoln and his administration included infringing on some Constitutional rights, including suspending habeas corpus and shutting down newspapers that opposed the war. He signed the bill admitting West Virginia as a state of the Union, although it had been formed from Virginia without the permission of the state’s government at Richmond, which many, including half of his cabinet members, believed was a violation of Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution. Nevada was admitted at least in part to provide another pro-Union state.

Lincoln Reelected In 1864

In presidential elections of 1864, Lincoln believed he would not be reelected. The war had dragged on for over three years, draining the treasury. Major battles, like the Battle of Shiloh , the Battle of Antietam , the Battle of Fredericksburg , the Battle of Chancellorsville , the Battle Gettysburg , and the Battle of Chickamauga , had each produced over 10,000 casualties, far beyond anything the nation had experienced in previous wars. Grant’s current campaign in Virginia had already suffered nearly 50,000 losses. Radical abolitionists in the North were upset with him for not pressing harder on the slavery issue.

The Democratic Party, banking on war weariness, was running George McClellan, the former general, as their candidate, under the slogan, “The Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is,” and pledging a truce with the Confederacy. Indeed, Lincoln might have lost his bid for re-election, and with it the war, had Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman not captured Atlanta in early September, giving the Union a major victory. Other contributing factors included Lincoln allowing soldiers in the armies to vote in their camps, something that had never been done before. The Democrats themselves made several missteps that hurt their chances. Lincoln won reelection and in his second inaugural address called for, “malice toward none, with charity for all,” attempting to set the stage for a reconciliation with the South.

He had personally experienced the “divided house” he’d once warned of. All but one of his wife’s half-siblings fought for the Confederacy or married men who did, and one of her full brothers became a Confederate surgeon. Only three of her sisters in Illinois and their husbands remained firmly with the Union.

The End Of The Civil War

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the largest Confederate army to Grant following the Appomattox Campaign and the Appomattox Courthouse , virtually ending the war. Lincoln, asked what should be done with the citizens of the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, responded, “I’d let ’em up easy, let ’em up easy.”

Abraham Lincoln Assassinated

With the light of victory clearly breaking over the horizon, Lincoln and Mary went to Ford’s Theater on the night of April 14 to see the comedy, “Our American Cousin.” During the performance, an actor and staunch Confederate sympathizer named John Wilkes Booth slipped into the presidential box and shot Lincoln in the head. The president died the following morning. Within 24 hours, not a shred of black crepe was to be had in the nation’s capitol as homes, stores and government buildings were draped in mourning. Even some Southern newspapers condemned the assassination.

Lincoln was laid to rest in Springfield, Illinois. In 1876, a counterfeiting gang attempted to steal his body, to exchange it for their master engraver, who had been imprisoned. The plan was thwarted, and when the president’s body was placed in a new tomb in 1901, some 4,000 pounds of cement were poured on top of his coffin to prevent any future attempts.

The popular image of Lincoln has changed many times. He is beloved as the Great Emancipator and the Savior of the Union, but many people, particularly in the South, regard him as a tyrant and a dictator. He has been accused of being racist, though his views were in keeping with those of most Americans of his times. During his presidency, association with black leaders such as Frederick Douglass seem to have made his racial views more enlightened than those of most mid-19th-century Americans.

His primary focus as president always was on restoring the United States as a single nation under the Constitution; ending slavery was secondary to that goal. However, the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery throughout the United States, was passed only after Lincoln pulled political strings and granted favors in return for “Aye” votes. It had already failed once in the House, prior to Lincoln’s backroom negotiations. In the words of Thaddeus Stevens, “The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”

Lincoln’s service as president is also notable for the day of thanksgiving he proclaimed on the last Thursday of November 1864. America’s modern Thanksgiving holiday dates from that first national observation.

To learn more about the assassination of Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre including information on John Wilkes Booth and HistoryNet Articles, please see our Abraham Lincoln Assassination page.

Lincoln Pictures

Abraham Lincoln was the most photographed President of his era. There are portraits, lithographs, and photos of many highlights of his Presidential term.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Abraham Lincoln was one of the most famous writers/orators in American history, known for pithy and insightful sayings like “A house divided against itself cannot stand” and “Four score and seven years ago” the opening phrase of the Gettysburg address.

There are many interesting facts about the life of Abraham Lincoln, like the fact that only one of his children, Robert Todd, survived to adulthood. View some little known facts about Lincoln as well as frequently asked questions about the 16th President of the United States

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 rank as one of the most famous debates in history. Though vying for a Senate seat, the debates, which centered around the institution of slavery, had a great effect on the future presidency for Lincoln.x

Mary Todd Lincoln, the spouse of Abraham Lincoln, is one of the most prominent first ladies in history. Born to a prominent Southern family, she helped her husband’s political career. Following his assassination, she remained in mourning until her death in 1884. In 1875, a court judged her insane for a time.

Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, freed all slaves in areas still in rebellion against the federal government. Delivered soon after the Union victory at the battle of Antietam, it motivated the Northern war effort and gave the war a higher purpose.

The Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address, written and delivered by Abraham Lincoln after the battle of Gettysburg, is one of the most famous speeches in American History.

Lincoln Speeches

A skilled statesman and orator, Abraham Lincoln gave many memorable speeches, including his most famous, the Gettysburg Address, which is considered one of the greatest speeches in American history.

Lincoln Timeline

Few figures in American History are as significant and memorable as Abraham Lincoln. From his birth in 1809 to his assassination in 1864 to the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922, the timeline of Abraham Lincoln’s life and legacy changed our nation profoundly.

Robert Todd Lincoln

Robert Todd Lincoln was the firstborn son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. He served in the Union Army and was Secretary of War under President Garfield. He witnessed Garfield’s assassination, and was present at the assassination of President McKinley.

Lincoln’s Assassination

Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at the Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865.

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Abraham lincoln: the lawyer.

Abraham Lincoln spent only four of his 56 years as president of the United States. Yet, given the importance of the events that marked his 1861-65 term of office, the nation’s admiration for him as a man of courage and principle, and the abundance of photographic images that recorded his presidency, it is hard for most people to think of him as anything else.

But there were other facets to the career of this man who led the nation through the Civil War years. Prior to his presidency, Lincoln honed his political skills and aspirations through the practice of law.

In 1837, while serving in the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln completed his legal training and joined the office of John Todd Stuart in the new Illinois capital at Springfield. Except for a sojourn in Washington, D.C., as a Whig Congressman during 1847-49, the law remained the future president’s chief occupation until his election to the White House in 1860.

In his book  Life of Lincoln , William H. Herndon* stated that his partner was a good lawyer but not a scholarly one. Lincoln, he wrote, was “strikingly deficient in the technical rules of law….I doubt if he ever read a single elementary law book through in his life. In fact, I may truthfully say, I never knew him to read through a law book of any kind.”

This assessment has been disputed or at least modified by those who have since studied Lincoln’s law career. But whether or not Lincoln lost some cases due to a lack of technical expertise on certain points of law, the fact remains that he was a successful trial attorney. He knew, everyone agrees, how to win over a jury.

The bulk of Lincoln’s courtroom work took place away from Springfield as he traveled twice a year with the presiding judge and fellow lawyers to the county seats of Illinois’ Eighth Circuit Court. Since most of those who served on the juries in these small towns were farmers and other country folk, Lincoln—himself a product of a rural environment and by nature a slow talker—recognized the need to argue his cases in the simplest and most straightforward manner. As one observer noted, “his illustrations were often quaint and homely, but always clear and apt, and generally conclusive. . . . His wit and humor and inexhaustible store of anecdotes, always to the point, added immensely to his powers as a jury advocate.”

A medical malpractice suit— Fleming vs. Rogers & Crothers —in which Lincoln represented the physician defendants is a case in point.

Just after midnight, on the morning of October 17, 1855, the sleeping residents of Bloomington, Illinois, awoke to the sound of fire bells ringing throughout the community. Before long a crowd of more than 4,000 had congregated to watch firemen struggle to contain the blaze that had begun in the livery stable behind the Morgan House and had spread to neighboring buildings. By the time the fire was extinguished, most of the buildings on the block, including those housing the newspaper offices of the Central Illinois Times and Bloomington Pantagraph , had been destroyed; only the bank and a hardware store remained.

There was one fatality—William Green, a local drayman—and among those injured was Samuel G. Fleming, a carpenter from Bloomington who suffered two broken thighs when a Morgan House chimney collapsed on him. Fleming was carried to the home of his brother John, where he was treated by Drs. Thomas P. Rogers, Jacob R. Freese, and Eli K. Crothers. Dr. Freese set and bandaged Fleming’s left leg, while Crothers worked on the right, assisted by Dr. Rogers. The physicians dressed the limb, Freese later said, “with care and in the same manner as I have seen it done by some of the most celebrated Surgeons of this Country, and in the same manner as is recommended by some of the best authors on Surgery.”

At least one of the doctors visited Fleming daily for the next two weeks and each was satisfied with his progress. In fact, Dr. Freese claimed in a deposition taken in August 1857 that Fleming had stated that, “‘He was getting along first rate, and that, were it not for the confinement, He would scarcely Know that his thighs were broken—so little pain did he suffer.”

That changed about 16 days after the accident, when Fleming began to experience severe pain at the “fracture point of the right leg….” When his sister, who had been nursing him since a week after his injury, ran her hand along the fracture, she thought that she “could discover it misplaced.” The doctors, however, believed the leg was mending as it should and merely ordered an increase in morphine for the injured man. A few days later, Dr. Crothers told Fleming that his pain was a symptom of pleurisy, not anything to do with his leg.

Twenty-four days after the fire, Dr. Rogers, who had been out of town for some time, visited Fleming and removed the bandages. The doctor remarked, according to Miss Fleming, that the legs “were crooked as Ram’s horns.” Rogers sent for the other doctors, and the three measured Fleming’s legs, one of which was found to be almost an inch shorter than the other. They redressed the legs, this time changing the arrangement of the splints.

Eight days later, the trio again removed the bandages and found, Dr. Freese stated, “the left one doing well—but the right one had a considerable bend at the point of fracture. The fracture was originally oblique, and now we found the lower Sharp point of the upper Portion of the thigh bone bending outward from a proper line of the bone—when in sound condition.”

This time, the physicians recommended that Fleming allow them to “break up” the adhesions, reset the thigh, and let the leg again begin the knitting process. After careful discussions with the three doctors, the patient and his family agreed to this procedure.

Dr. Freese administered chloroform to Fleming. He was assisted by Isaac M. Small, a cabinet maker and medical student who was present on this occasion only out of curiosity. Once Fleming was thought to be unconscious, Small stated, Dr. Crothers began “manipulating the limb—That is to break up and re-adjust the fracture, [and] Dr. Rogers took hold of the foot with a view to produce the proper amount of extension.”

As it happened, however, Fleming had not felt the full effects of the chloroform and soon began to scream in pain, ordering the doctors to stop. Dr. Crothers, explained to the patient that if they did not continue, his leg would always be deformed and he would suffer permanent damage, with the possibility of continuing pain and discomfort. Nonetheless, Small remembered, Fleming once again screamed at the doctors to “let him alone, he had suffered enough.” Relatives present in the room reinforced Fleming’s decision, so the doctors discontinued the procedure. Crothers, according to Small, told Fleming “that he would not be responsible for the result, unless [they continued], but acceding to his wishes, they again bandaged the right leg.”

By spring, the leg had healed, but, as Dr. Crothers had expected, it was badly misshapen, causing Fleming to have limited mobility and to walk with a limp. Fleming blamed the doctors for the condition of his leg and, after securing the services of a team of six lawyers, filed suit on March 28, 1856, in the McLean Circuit Court against Drs. Crothers and Rogers.

In his declaration, Fleming alleged that his attending physicians had deliberately failed “to use due and proper care, skill and diligence” in caring for his broken thighs. As a result of this negligence, the suit claimed, Fleming had “thereby suffered and underwent great and unnecessary pain and anguish and…is much reduced and weakened in body…,” and his legs, having healed in an “unsightly and unnatural a manner,” were “crooked, misshapen and useless.” As compensation for his suffering and the expenses incurred during his convalescence, the plaintiff demanded payment by the defendants of $10,000.

To plead their case, Crothers and Rogers turned to attorneys David Brier, Jessie Birch, L. L. Strain, and Andrew W. Rogers, all of Bloomington. To counter the presence on the plaintiff’s legal team of lawyer Leonard Swett, who was known for his grasp of medical issues and the subject of anatomy, Crothers also sought the counsel of Abraham Lincoln and John Stuart.

The former partners, who took the lead in the doctors’ defense, had only a week to prepare their case before the Circuit Court’s spring term opened in Bloomington on April 7, 1856. They requested a continuance from Judge David Davis on the grounds that Dr. Rogers, “the major physician, is now so unwell as to be unable to attend the present term of court, and…his personal presence at the trial is necessary to enable them to conduct the defense of the case properly….” Rogers, they stated, had “visited said plaintiff much more frequently than did said Cerothers [ sic. ] and…has the more intimate acquaintance with, and perfect knowledge of the whole case.” Judge Davis, having been assured that Dr. Rogers would be able to attend the Court’s fall term, continued the case until then but required the defendants to pay the court costs.

Judge Davis and Lincoln enjoyed a close working relationship, as well as a personal friendship. Lincoln traveled with other attorneys who followed Davis’s circuit in a “circus like caravan,” often entertaining the judge and his fellow lawyers after hours with his humorous stories and anecdotes. The judge respected the future president’s legal opinions and his skill as a hardworking frontier lawyer and occasionally asked Lincoln to take the bench in his absence. As a result of this interaction, Judge Davis became one of Lincoln’s mentors.

This apparent conflict of interest was not uncommon on the circuit and rarely aroused objections from other lawyers familiar with the rigors of travel within the Court’s jurisdiction. Younger attorneys on the trial circuit often sought the services of Lincoln, whose experience and presence in the courtroom had earned their respect.

When the Fleming case was called before Judge Davis in September, the defendants again requested a postponement. Dr. Freese, it seemed, had moved to Cincinnati on short notice and had not been able to give his deposition to the attorneys before leaving Bloomington. His testimony was considered vital to the defense because he was present “when plaintiff’s limb was first set, and knows that it was [done] properly . . . .” Likewise he was there when the leg was examined several days later and “saw that it was right then . . . .” Freese had also taken part in the consultation at which the doctors decided not to take immediate action in the hope that the bone “would improve without rebreaking.” And no other witness, the deposition concluded, could so knowledgeably testify to the correctness of the doctors’ efforts on the day that the attempt was made to break the bone’s adhesions. Judge Davis—assured that Freese’s testimony would be available at the next court term and that “this application is not made for delay, but that justice may be done”—again granted the continuance at the defendants’ expense.

Lincoln, William Herndon noted, possessed a “keen sense of justice, and struggled for it, throwing aside forms, methods, and rules, until it appeared as pure as a ray of light flashing through a fog-bank. . . . [W]hen he had occasion to learn or investigate any subject he was thorough and indefatigable in his search. He not only went to the root of the question, but dug up the root, and separated and analyzed every fiber of it.” For this kind of effort, Lincoln, who was always handling several cases simultaneously and who was, during the mid-1850s, heavily involved in politics, required the time that the two continuances provided.

Before Fleming vs. Rogers and Crothers finally came to trial in the spring of 1857, Lincoln had sought instruction from Dr. Crothers in the more technical medical aspects of the case. Using chicken bones to demonstrate his points, Crothers described the chemistry of bone growth and the organic changes that take place in bones during the aging process.

Lincoln found that Crothers’ use of the chicken bones made the technical medical evidence completely comprehensible, and he immediately decided to adopt the same technique in the courtroom. It would not be the only time that the frontier-bred Lincoln would use farm-related metaphors to make his points to a jury or, as president, to Congress and the American people.

During the well-attended, week-long trial, 15 doctors and 21 other witnesses testified on behalf of the plaintiff. The defendants also called upon a bevy of medical men to buttress their claims. Many years after the trial, Dr. Crothers’ daughter Lulu wrote that she had been told of an exchange that took place during Lincoln’s cross-examination of Fleming on the witness stand. When Lincoln asked the plaintiff if he were able to walk, she related, Fleming answered that he could, “but my leg is short, so I have to limp.” At that, Miss Crothers continued, Lincoln dramatically replied: “Well! What I would advise you is to get down on your knees and thank your Heavenly Father, and also these two Doctors that you have any legs to stand on at all!”

Lincoln saved his lesson on how bones heal for his summation to the jury. Then, holding up two chicken-leg bones—one from an old chicken and the other from a young one—he demonstrated to the jury their respective texture and resilience. The bones of the young bird were supple, while those of the old chicken were brittle and broke easily. Fleming, being in middle age, Lincoln pointed out, would have bones more closely resembling the latter than the former. Unable, according to Lulu Crothers, to “remember about the lime or calcium deposited in older peoples’ bones,” Lincoln told the jurors that the bone from the older chicken, “has the starch all taken out of it—as it is in childhood.”

This graphic demonstration had the desired effect on some of the jurors, a majority of whom probably entered the courtroom predisposed toward Fleming and prejudiced against the more affluent defendants. After 18 hours of deliberation, the jurors failed to reach a decision. Judge Davis put the case over to the fall term of court.

By September, the doctors had suffered the loss of another vital witness from the Bloomington area. Isaac Small, who had helped to administer the chloroform to Fleming at the time the attempt was made to re-break his right thigh bone, had moved to Nashville, Tennessee. Judge Davis’s decision to grant this latest continuance in the Fleming suit, however, was based more on Lincoln’s preoccupation at the time with an important regional case involving the Rock Island Bridge—the first built over the Mississippi River—and the importance of east-west transportation to the expanding United States.

Just before 1857 came to an end, Brier and Birch, two of the other attorneys for the defense, asked the judge for a change of venue for the case on the grounds that Fleming had “undue influence over the minds” of the people of McLean County, where the first trial had been heard. The plaintiff’s lawyers not objecting, Davis ordered the case transferred to the Logan County Circuit Court, whose county seat of Lincoln was, ironically, named for opposing counsel.

The retrial of the case never took place, both sides having agreed to a settlement before the March 1858 court term began. The doctors named in the suit agreed to pay the fees incurred by Fleming, whose expense probably totaled less than a thousand dollars.

The “Chicken Bone Case” illustrates the great communicative skills of Abraham Lincoln, who understood his audiences—in this case, the jury—and used wit and metaphor to explain complex issues. Soon after the Fleming suit was settled, Lincoln became preoccupied with the race for U.S. senator from Illinois. Nominated by the new Republican Party in June, Lincoln engaged in a series of debates with the Democratic incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas, that propelled him onto the national political stage.

Although Lincoln lost that election, the campaign was an important step on his road to the White House. Once elected president, he used his language skills to craft carefully worded public statements that rank among America’s greatest expressions of political philosophy. And to a great extent, he used the talents that he had honed as an Illinois circuit lawyer to maintain popular support in the North for the war effort and to develop a political constituency that sustained the army in the field.

*Four years after John T. Stuart, who had encouraged Lincoln’s legal studies, took him in as a partner in 1837, Lincoln joined the firm of Stephen T. Logan, again as a junior partner. In 1844, Lincoln teamed up with William H. Herndon, this time as a senior partner.

Charles M. Hubbard is the Dean of Lincolniana and Associate Professor of History at Lincoln Memorial University.

This article was originally published in the August 1998 issue of American History magazine.

Abraham Lincoln: Commander In Chief

More out of necessity than inclination, Abraham Lincoln became one of the most active commanders in chief in American history, directly influencing and managing events and generals in every field of operations during the Civil War. Never before had a president been able to communicate his desires to far-off commanders as quickly as Lincoln was able to. He could do this because of recent inventions that speeded communication, most notably the telegraph.

Lincoln’s active managerial style was most prominent in 1863. At the beginning of that year, the Union was poised on all fronts to take the offensive. In the West, Federal forces were preparing to move down the Mississippi River to capture Vicksburg, Miss., the last major port along that river not already in Union hands. When this was done, the Confederacy would be cut in two. In Tennessee, a Northern army had fought the Confederates to a draw at Stones River and was preparing to push the Southerners out of middle and eastern Tennessee. In the East, after suffering many defeats in 1862, Union forces had a new commander and were preparing to take the war deeper into Virginia.

As promising as the Union outlook was at the beginning of the year, there would be many problems and disappointments before 1863 ended. Lincoln would be forced to deal with numerous commanders who failed to understand that the main objective of the Union military machine should be defeating the Confederate armies, not merely occupying enemy territory. Lincoln often had to beg his commanders to take action, or relieve and replace a general when he failed to prosecute the war in an aggressive manner.

The stage had been set in July 1862, when Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck had replaced Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan as general in chief of the Union Army. Lincoln hoped that he had found a competent leader to aggressively prosecute the war without much direction from the White House, and at first glance Halleck appeared to be a fine choice. He was a West Point graduate with many years of experience in the Regular Army who had captured Corinth, Miss.

Events, however, soon showed that Halleck was not the aggressive general Lincoln believed him to be. After the Union defeat at the Second Battle of Manassas in August 1862, Halleck seemed to lose confidence in both himself and his generals, and adopted a style of giving suggestions and advice to his subordinates rather than direct orders. He explained his indirect approach to managing his generals’ tactics this way: “To order a general to give battle against his own wishes and judgement is to assume the responsibility of a probable defeat. If a general is unwilling to fight, he is not likely to gain victory.”

Lincoln came to view Halleck as “little more than a first rate clerk,” and the president was forced to take a more active role in military matters than he would have liked. Although Lincoln continued to work through Halleck, he also often communicated directly with his field commanders by telegraph. Earlier in 1862, Lincoln had made a wise move by establishing governmental control of the U.S. telegraph system. Initially, telegraph operations were under the Signal Corps but by 1863, they were placed under a separate entity known as the U.S. Military Telegraph Service. During the course of the war, Lincoln became a common sight at War Department’s telegraph office, reading and composing telegrams that allowed him to follow and supervise Union operations in all theaters of the war.

Lincoln’s main military concerns were focused on three major areas of operation: the Mississippi River, Tennessee, and northern Virginia. Initially, each of these areas had a main field commander with whom Lincoln would have many dealings over the course of the year. In the West, the campaign to capture the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River was under the direction of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had proved to be an aggressive general, winning several important victories in 1862 that helped to clear the Confederate presence from western Tennessee. Promoted to head the Department of the Tennessee when Halleck left to become general in chief, in November 1862, Grant launched a campaign to capture Vicksburg by an overland route through the state of Mississippi. Confederate cavalry raids on his supply lines forced Grant to cancel this operation and return his army to its initial starting point near Memphis, Tenn. The persistent commander then determined that his next attempt to capture Vicksburg would be via the Mississippi River itself.

In central Tennessee, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was in command of the Army of the Cumberland. In October 1862, he had relieved Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell as head of the army. By January 1, 1863, Rosecrans had fought a Confederate army at the Battle of Stones River, forcing the Southerners to withdraw. Rosecrans was then poised to begin a campaign to drive the Confederates from the eastern half of the state.

In northern Virginia, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside led the Union Army of the Potomac at the start of 1863. But due to Burnside’s crushing defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, Lincoln had lost faith in his ability to lead the army, and he soon replaced him with Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker. Lincoln had his doubts about Hooker, too, mainly due to his vocal criticism of Burnside, but he had performed well as a corps commander and talked aggressively about what he intended to do in the spring campaign.

Politics played a major part in the initial stages of Grant’s advance on Vicksburg. In 1862, a politically appointed general named John A. McClernand, a Democrat, had been authorized by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to raise troops in several northwestern states as an expeditionary force for use in capturing Vicksburg. The wording of the order made it appear that McClernand would be in command of the operation. But after McClernand had raised the troops and sent them to Memphis, Grant simply took control of the soldiers for his operations down the Mississippi.

Although he disliked and distrusted McClernand, Grant wisely retained him as a corps commander, knowing that Lincoln wished to keep the Illinois Democrat in an important capacity for political reasons. McClernand was not satisfied by the arrangements, and he appealed directly to Lincoln. The president responded directly to McClernand: “I have too many family controversies (so to speak) already on my hands to voluntarily, or so long as I can avoid it, take up another. You are now doing well—much better than you could possibly be if engaged in open war with Gen. Halleck. Allow me to beg that for your sake, for my sake, & for the country’s sake, you give your whole attention to the better work.”

Lincoln also let Grant know when he thought a particular project was especially important. The long winter months had hampered the offensive capabilities of Grant’s army. In order to keep his men occupied and make them feel they were making some headway against the Confederates, Grant had his soldiers work on cutting a canal that would bypass the Vicksburg defenses. Although Grant had little hope of success for the effort, Lincoln felt the project was important. In a January 25 telegram, Halleck told Grant: “Direct your attention particularly to the canal proposed across the point. The President attaches much attention to this.”

The president’s attention was also focused on the Army of the Cumberland and General Rosecrans in central Tennessee. Following Stones River, Rosecrans had the full support of the administration and was advised by Stanton, “There is nothing within my power to grant yourself or your heroic command that will not be carefully given.” But Rosecrans stalled in making any further move against the enemy. As weeks dragged by, Rosecrans continued to request more supplies from the government while making no effort to move. Lincoln’s frustration mounted.

The government tried many different tactics to get Rosecrans to advance, but to no avail. Finally, in an apparent attempt to infuse some spirit of competition between Rosecrans and Grant, Halleck sent each a telegram that offered what could fairly be interpreted as a bribe. The general in chief told them that he was authorized to award a major generalcy in the Regular Army to the first commander who could win an “important, decisive victory.” Instead of choosing to consider it an incentive for good performance, or at the very least ignoring it as Grant did, Rosecrans decided to be insulted by the message. He let his superiors know that he was offended, further worsening relations between himself and Washington.

Meanwhile in the East, the Army of the Potomac was being reorganized in the early months of 1863. Lincoln was still uncertain about Hooker mainly due to his outspoken opinions about the government and Burnside. Hooker had used such terms as “imbecile” and “played out” in describing the president and the government. He even went so far as to say that “nothing [will] go right until we have a dictator, and the sooner the better.”

During the next few months, however, Hooker proved to be a good administrator of the army, reorganizing it into an efficient fighting force. By April, it was ready once again to begin offensive operations. Because of Virginia’s proximity to Washington, Lincoln maintained closer personal contact with and supervision of the general than he did with his western commanders. The president even personally reviewed Hooker’s army on April 6 and gave the general a verbal push, telling him that it was time for his army to move. The Northern public was growing weary of inaction by the Army of the Potomac.

Approximately 130,000 Union soldiers were present for duty in the upcoming Chancellorsville campaign, a large, powerful force with which Hooker could assault the Army of Northern Virginia’s approximately 60,000 soldiers. Having done all that he could to ensure success, Lincoln should have felt confident about victory. But he still had his doubts about the campaign, saying, “I expect the best, but I am prepared for the worst.”

The president could not visit and actively supervise the Union armies in the West, but he could send a personal representative to be his eyes and ears. When the government began to get complaints about Grant from various parties, Lincoln dispatched Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana on a fact-finding mission in April. The commander in chief’s anxiety about Grant was alleviated by Dana’s report, which echoed his later feelings that the general was “an uncommon fellow—the most modest, the most disinterested, and the most honest man I ever knew.”

That spring, Grant attempted several different schemes to bypass the Confederate defenses at Vicksburg. While none proved successful, at least he and his command were making attempts to defeat the enemy. Their efforts did not go unnoticed in Washington, but Lincoln was concerned that Grant was dividing his army before the enemy, which might prove costly. He wanted Grant to unite with Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks’ forces moving north out of New Orleans. In a telegram to Grant dated April 2, Halleck echoed Lincoln’s concerns, warning him, “The division of your army into small expeditions destroys your strength, and when in the presence of the enemy, is very dangerous…what is most desired…is that your forces and those of General Banks should be brought into co-operation as early as possible.”

On April 4, Grant notified Halleck in a dispatch that he was prepared to march his army down the west bank of the Mississippi while “a portion of the naval fleet” would run past the Confederate batteries by night. Then the Navy would ferry his men to the east bank of the river, where they would be on the same side as their objective—Vicksburg. In mid-April, Grant did just what he said he would do. Amazingly, only one naval vessel was lost when the Union navy ran past the guns on Vicksburg’s bluff. Grant’s gamble, contrary to all military logic, paid off, and by the end of the month his army was on the east bank of the river south of Vicksburg and ready to take the fight to the enemy.

Hooker was also ready to fight by the end of April. In a series of brilliant maneuvers, he managed to keep the South in the dark about his intentions and get his army across the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers without interference. Once the army began to move, Lincoln monitored its progress by telegram. On April 27, Lincoln telegraphed Hooker, “How does it look now?” Ninety minutes later, the commander replied: “I am not sufficiently advanced to give an opinion. We are busy. Will tell you as soon as I can, and have it satisfactory.”

On May 1, the Union and Confederate forces collided in a region known as the Wilderness. Over the next three days, a tremendous battle would be fought near a crossroads known as Chancellorsville. Lincoln knew little about the battle until Hooker’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Daniel Butterfield, sent the following message: “Though not directed or specially authorized to do so by General Hooker, I think it not improper that I should advise you that a battle is in progress.”

Later during the battle, Butterfield informed Lincoln: “The battle has been most fierce and terrible. Loss heavy on both sides. General Hooker slightly, but not severely, wounded.” Impatient with the lack of information, and perhaps a little alarmed, Lincoln wired back: “Where is General Hooker?”

Finally, on May 5, Butterfield sent a telegram to Lincoln (that was not received until the next day) explaining the dire situation that Hooker and the Army of the Potomac faced. Butterfield advised that the army was still south of the Rappahannock in a strong position, but that Hooker believed it was possible the enemy might have crossed the river and turned his right flank. Butterfield said Hooker believed that “circumstances…make it expedient…that he should retire from this position to the north bank of the Rappahannock for his defensible position.” Momentarily in despair at the prospect of another Union defeat, Lincoln exclaimed after reading the report: “My God! My God! What will the country say! What will the country say!”

By May 7, Lincoln was back to trying to actively manage the army and salvage something from a bad situation. He wrote Hooker to ask if the general had another plan to rebound from this most recent Union defeat. “Have you already in mind a plan wholly or partially formed?” Lincoln wondered. “If you have, prosecute it without interference from me. If you have not, please inform me, so that I, incompetent as I may be, can try and assist in the formation of some plan for the army.”

While Grant and Hooker were moving—with variable results—Rosecrans continued to tarry in Tennessee. By the end of May 1863, Lincoln’s patience with Rosecrans was nearly at an end. It seemed that no one in the government, including Lincoln, could get him to engage the enemy. Not only did Lincoln want Tennessee cleared of the enemy, he also wanted to ensure that the Confederates were prevented from reinforcing their army facing Grant at Vicksburg. On May 23, Lincoln telegraphed Rosecrans directly, “I would not push you to any rashness, but I am very anxious that you do your utmost, short of rashness, to keep [General Braxton] Bragg from getting on to help [General Joseph] Johnston against Grant.” The Army of the Cumberland commander replied: “Dispatch received. I will attend to it.”

But he failed to “attend to it.” On June 2, Halleck informed Rosecrans that if he did not soon move, some of his troops would be transferred to help Grant. The next day, Halleck telegraphed Rosecrans that intelligence indicated that enemy troops in his front were leaving to oppose Grant. Halleck added, “If you cannot hurt the enemy now, he will soon hurt you.” On June 11, the general in chief again telegraphed Rosecrans, informing him of the president’s great dissatisfaction with his inaction. Still he failed to move.

On the same day, Rosecrans responded to Halleck that he had held a council of war with his corps and division commanders, and they had a much different view of events than did Washington. They believed that it was not advisable to move until the fate of Vicksburg had been decided. Rosecrans offered a military maxim that an army should not attempt to fight two decisive battles at the same time. Halleck shot back with a maxim of his own: Councils of war do not fight.

Finally, on June 23, after much prodding by Lincoln and Halleck, Rosecrans finally began his much-awaited advance southward. During the next two weeks, through efficient movement but little actual combat, Rosecrans managed to maneuver the Confederate forces completely out of middle Tennessee. But much to Lincoln’s dismay, Rosecrans missed what should have been the real objective of the campaign, the destruction of the enemy. That failure would come back to haunt him.

In the East, Hooker had intended to launch another campaign against Lee after Chancellorsville. On May 13, Lincoln met with Hooker in Washington. There he gave the general a letter indicating that the time to hit the enemy’s extended lines of communication had passed. Lincoln now expected Hooker to do no more than keep the Confederates at bay with occasional harassing cavalry raids while he put the Army of the Potomac back in good condition.

Over the course of the next few weeks, General Robert E. Lee launched his second invasion of the North in less than a year. It was Hooker’s job to shadow the Confederates and keep his army between the enemy’s forces and Washington. Every decision had to be checked with Lincoln, for he had by then lost nearly all confidence in the Army of the Potomac’s commander. Realizing that the president had no faith in him, Hooker offered his resignation, and perhaps to his surprise, Lincoln immediately accepted it.

The president promoted Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, a corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, to command the army. Halleck informed Meade that he was “free to act as you may deem proper under circumstances as they arise.” Lincoln had chosen Meade because the general hailed from the state in which a major battle was likely to be fought. Lincoln believed that Meade, a Philadelphian, would lead his army well in Pennsylvania, “on his own dunghill.”

The Army of the Potomac met the enemy near the town of Gettysburg, Pa., on July 1. Once the battle was joined, Lincoln kept up with the action via telegrams sent to the War Department. There he read Meade’s dispatches on the first, second and third days of the battle. The last told of the enemy’s withdrawal from the battlefield. Victory had been achieved.

Meanwhile, Grant’s campaign to capture Vicksburg was making steady progress. His main problem was that he faced two separate Confederate armies in Mississippi. One occupied Vicksburg, while the other was assembling at Jackson. Not wanting these two forces to unite, Grant moved his army between them.

Grant’s forces clashed with elements of the Confederate troops from Vicksburg at Champion’s Hill on May 16, and the Southerners then retreated into the defenses around Vicksburg. Grant quickly attempted to take the city by assault, but failed and then turned to a siege to starve out the defenders. As the weeks went by, Halleck reminded Grant that time was of the utmost importance and that the siege “should be pushed day and night.” But Grant could do little but wait out the enemy.

Finally, on July 4, the waiting ended for Grant, Lincoln and the country. Grant sent a message up the Mississippi to be telegraphed Halleck, informing him that the “enemy surrendered this morning.”

The president was in the War Department when the announcement came over the wire on July 7. A humble Lincoln sent Grant a gracious letter of appreciation: “I do not remember that you and I have met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgement for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally did….When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgement that you were right and I was wrong.”

Following Grant’s success, Meade came under pressure to finish off Lee’s army before it could retreat back across the Potomac River. Halleck telegraphed Meade on July 7 that he had given the Confederates a hard blow and that he should follow it up and “give him another before he can reach the Potomac.” On the same day, Halleck forwarded to Meade the text of a note from Lincoln stating that Vicksburg had fallen and “if General Meade can complete his work…by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee’s army, the rebellion will be over.”

Lincoln became convinced that Meade would allow the enemy to escape unless he was pressured to attack. On July 8, Halleck once again urged Meade to attack the enemy’s divided forces as soon as possible–ordering forced marches if necessary. Finally, on July 12, Meade notified Washington that he would attack the next day. Lincoln was in the telegraph office when the message was received. “They will be ready to fight a magnificent battle when there is no enemy there to fight,” Lincoln scoffed.

The president proved to be right. As he predicted, Lee’s army escaped across the Potomac with little additional harm done to it. Lincoln was truly devastated by Meade’s failure to destroy Lee. His feelings about the matter are most evident in a letter that he composed to Meade but never sent him: “I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape, he was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our recent successes have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.”

Lincoln, however, was not ready to give up on Meade as commander of the Army of the Potomac. He had, after all, won a major, if incomplete, victory against Lee. Very few others could boast of that. Lincoln decided to “try him farther.”

By August, Meade’s army had shrunk to two-thirds the strength it had boasted in July. Several thousand men had been discharged when their enlistments expired. A division was sent to South Carolina for siege operations, and more than 1,500 men were sent to New York City to quell draft riots. Lee actually mounted a minor offensive against Meade, forcing the Union general to fall back from the Rappahannock River toward Washington. Meade checked this movement with a clash at Bristoe Station and eventually pushed southward again. The Federals won a victory at Rappahannock Station in November, but their weak advance ground to a halt later that month along Mine Run. Aside for minor operations against the enemy, the Army of the Potomac would do nothing more until the spring of 1864.

In Tullahoma, Tenn., during the summer of 1863, Rosecrans once again settled into a secure base and began stockpiling supplies for a vague advance sometime in the future. Lincoln wanted a quick advance by the Army of the Cumberland into the strategically important eastern part of the state. The president said that he wanted to do “as much for East Tennessee as I would, or could, if my own home & family were in Knoxville.” Rosecrans again was slow in moving, and once again telegrams flew from Washington to Tennessee in an effort to get the overly deliberate general to move. Finally, on August 4, Halleck telegraphed Rosecrans, “Your forces must move forward without delay.”

The army finally began advancing on August 16. Over the next several weeks, Bragg’s Confederate army retreated into Georgia, abandoning the key railroad center of Chattanooga. Believing that he had the enemy in full retreat and forgetting that Bragg still had an intact army, Rosecrans continued his advance into Georgia. After he belatedly realized that his own army was overextended, Rosecrans attempted to consolidate his force in defensive positions near Chickamauga Creek, 10 miles south of Chattanooga. The Confederates struck the Union positions on September 19, and in a vicious two-day battle Rosecrans and his army were sent scurrying back to Chattanooga.

Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana was with the Union army at Chickamauga and telegraphed Lincoln details of the defeat on September 20. A rattled Rosecrans wired Washington the same day, saying that he was uncertain whether his army could hold Chattanooga. Lincoln responded immediately that he still had confidence in the general and that the government would do all it could to assist him.

By September 22, concerned that he had not heard from Rosecrans in two days, Lincoln wired him and asked the condition of his forces in Chattanooga. Rosecrans responded that he held the town with 30,000 men but that their fate was in the hands of God—hardly a response to instill confidence. Lincoln continued to try to help Rosecrans restore his faith in himself and his army. But privately, Lincoln had his doubts about Rosecrans, who he said was acting “confused and stunned, like a duck hit on the head.”

On September 23, the Confederate siege of Chattanooga began. The trapped Rosecrans needed help, and Lincoln attempted to find a way to send him reinforcements, debating the best way to do this with Halleck and Stanton. The secretary of war proposed to send soldiers from Meade’s army by railroad. He said that 20,000 troops could be moved in a few weeks—Halleck said such an operation would more likely take a few months.

The two-hour debate ended with Lincoln accepting Stanton’s proposal, and soon the efficiency of the Union railroad system was proven when more than 15,000 men quickly arrived in the vicinity of Chattanooga to augment Rosecrans’ force.

By mid-October, Lincoln had decided that a change in the command system in the West was in order. Grant was promoted to head a unified command that included most of the armies and departments from Tennessee westward. Lincoln gave Grant authority to retain or relieve Rosecrans. Grant chose the latter, replacing the lethargic general with Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. Grant then proceeded to Chattanooga to take personal command of the efforts to break the siege.

The siege of Chattanooga was broken on October 30 when a small supply line—dubbed the Cracker Line—was opened into the city. Between November 23 and 25, the Union armies under Grant at Chattanooga launched a concerted offensive to clear the Confederates from around the city that ended with Bragg’s army in full retreat southward to Georgia.

By the end of 1863, it was clear to Lincoln that in Grant he had found the aggressive commander he had been seeking since the beginning of the war. In March 1864, Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general, and appointed him general in chief of the Union armies. From this point until the end of the war, the president would no longer actively manage military matters. Having Grant at the helm saved the president time and energy.

The course of events in 1863 had forced Lincoln to become an active commander in chief. It is hard to imagine generals such as Rosecrans ever moving without pressure from above. On all fronts except Grant’s, inaction might have remained the order of the day if not for the president’s vigorous involvement in the prosecution of the war. Perhaps there might not have been the Union defeats at Chancellorsville and Chickamauga, but there might not have been the Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg or Chattanooga, either.

After 1863 the Confederacy’s main armies would undertake no more major offensives, and the Southern bid for a separate, independent nation would fail. Had it not been for Lincoln’s active management of military affairs and steady prodding of his commanders, the outcome of the Civil War and the history of the United States would likely have been very different.

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Abraham Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consummate Statesman

Most Americans—including most historians—regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and the left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man.

For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an exposé of the “Lincoln myth,” which is well described in William Lee Miller’s 2002 book Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography . How odd it is, Miller writes, that an ‘unschooled’ politician ‘from the raw frontier villages of Illinois and Indiana’ could become such a great president. ‘He was the myth made real,’ Miller writes, ‘rising from an actual Kentucky cabin made of actual Kentucky logs all the way to the actual White House.’

Lincoln’s critics have done us all a service by showing that the actual author of the myth is Abraham Lincoln himself. It was Lincoln who, over the years, carefully crafted the public image of himself as Log Cabin Lincoln, Honest Abe and the rest of it. Asked to describe his early life, Lincoln answered, “the short and simple annals of the poor,” referring to Thomas Gray’s poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Lincoln disclaimed great aspirations for himself, noting that if people did not vote for him, he would return to obscurity, for he was, after all, used to disappointments.

These pieties, however, are inconsistent with what Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, said about him: “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.” Admittedly in the ancient world ambition was often viewed as a great vice. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar , Brutus submits his reason for joining the conspiracy against Caesar: his fear that Caesar had grown too ambitious. But as founding father and future president James Madison noted in The Federalist , the American system was consciously designed to attract ambitious men. Such ambition was presumed natural to a politician and favorable to democracy as long as it sought personal distinction by promoting the public good through constitutional means.

What unites the right-wing and left-wing attacks on Lincoln, of course, is that they deny that Lincoln respected the law and that he was concerned with the welfare of all. The right-wing school—made up largely of Southerners and some libertarians—holds that Lincoln was a self-serving tyrant who rode roughshod over civil liberties, such as the right to habeas corpus. Lincoln is also accused of greatly expanding the size of the federal government. Some libertarians even charge—and this is not intended as a compliment—that Lincoln was the true founder of the welfare state. His right-wing critics say that despite his show of humility, Lincoln was a megalomaniacal man who was willing to destroy half the country to serve his Caesarian ambitions. In an influential essay, the late Melvin E. Bradford, an outspoken conservative, excoriated Lincoln as a moral fanatic who, determined to enforce his Manichaean vision—one that sees a cosmic struggle between good and evil—on the country as a whole, ended up corrupting American politics and thus left a “lasting and terrible impact on the nation’s destiny.”

Although, Bradford viewed Lincoln as a kind of manic abolitionist, many in the right-wing camp deny that the slavery issue was central to the Civil War. Rather, they insist, the war was driven primarily by economic motives. Essentially, the industrial North wanted to destroy the economic base of the South. Historian Charles Adams, in When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession , published in 2000, contends that the causes leading up to the Civil War had virtually nothing to do with slavery.

This approach to rewriting history has been going on for more than a century. Alexander Stephens, former vice president of the Confederacy, published a two-volume history of the Civil War between 1868 and 1870 in which he hardly mentioned slavery, insisting that the war was an attempt to preserve constitutional government from the tyranny of the majority. But this is not what Stephens said in the great debates leading up to the war. In his “Cornerstone” speech, delivered in Savannah, Ga., on March 21, 1861, at the same time that the South was in the process of seceding, Stephens said that the American Revolution had been based on a premise that was ‘”fundamentally wrong.” That premise was, as Stephens defined it, “the assumption of equality of the races.” Stephens insisted that instead: “Our new [Confederate] government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. Slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great and moral truth.”

This speech is conspicuously absent from the right’s revisionist history. And so are the countless affirmations of black inferiority and the “positive good” of slavery—from John C. Calhoun’s attacks on the Declaration of Independence to South Carolina Senator James H. Hammond’s insistence that “the rock of Gibraltar does not stand so firm on its basis as our slave system.” It is true, of course, that many whites who fought on the Southern side in the Civil War did not own slaves. But, as Calhoun himself pointed out in one speech, they too derived an important benefit from slavery: ‘With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.’ Calhoun’s point is that the South had conferred on all whites a kind of aristocracy of birth, so that even the most wretched and degenerate white man was determined in advance to be better and more socially elevated than the most intelligent and capable black man. That’s why the poor whites fought—to protect that privilege.

Contrary to Bradford’s high-pitched accusations, Lincoln approached the issue of slavery with prudence and moderation. This is not to say that he waffled on the morality of slavery. “You think slavery is right, and ought to be extended,” Lincoln wrote Stephens on the eve of the war, “while we think it is wrong, and ought to be restricted.” As Lincoln clearly asserts, it was not his intention to get rid of slavery in the Southern states. Lincoln conceded that the American founders had agreed to tolerate slavery in the Southern states, and he confessed that he had no wish and no power to interfere with it there. The only issue—and it was an issue on which Lincoln would not bend—was whether the federal government could restrict slavery in the new territories. This was the issue of the presidential campaign of 1860; this was the issue that determined secession and war.

Lincoln argued that the South had no right to secede—that the Southern states had entered the Union as the result of a permanent compact with the Northern states. That Union was based on the principle of majority rule, with constitutional rights carefully delineated for the minority. Lincoln insisted that since he had been legitimately elected, and since the power to regulate slavery in the territories was nowhere proscribed in the Constitution, Southern secession amounted to nothing more than one group’s decision to leave the country because it did not like the results of a presidential election, and no constitutional democracy could function under such an absurd rule. Of course the Southerners objected that they should not be forced to live under a regime that they considered tyrannical, but Lincoln countered that any decision to dissolve the original compact could only occur with the consent of all the parties involved. Once again, it makes no sense to have such agreements when any group can unilaterally withdraw from them and go its own way.

The rest of the libertarian and right-wing case against Lincoln is equally without merit. Yes, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and arrested Southern sympathizers, but let us not forget that the nation was in a desperate war in which its very survival was at stake. Discussing habeas corpus, Lincoln insisted that it made no sense for him to protect this one constitutional right and allow the very Union established by the Constitution, the very framework for the protection of all rights, to be obliterated. Of course the federal government expanded during the Civil War, as it expanded during the Revolutionary War, and during World War II. Governments need to be strong to fight wars. The evidence for the right-wing insistence that Lincoln was the founder of the modern welfare state stems from the establishment, begun during his administration, of a pension program for Union veterans and support for their widows and orphans. Those were, however, programs aimed at a specific, albeit large, part of the population. The welfare state came to America in the 20th century. Franklin Roosevelt should be credited, or blamed, for that. He institutionalized it, and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon expanded it.

The left-wing group of Lincoln critics, composed of liberal scholars and social activists, is harshly critical of Lincoln on the grounds that he was a racist who did not really care about ending slavery. Their indictment of Lincoln is that he did not oppose slavery outright, only the extension of it, that he opposed laws permitting intermarriage and even opposed social and political equality between the races. If the right-wingers disdain Lincoln for being too aggressively antislavery, the left-wingers scorn him for not being antislavery enough. Both groups, however, agree that Lincoln was a self-promoting hypocrite who said one thing while doing another.

Some of Lincoln’s defenders have sought to vindicate him from these attacks by contending that he was a “man of his time.” This will not do, because there were several persons of that time, notably the social-reformer Grimké sisters, Angelina and Sarah, and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who forthrightly and unambiguously attacked slavery and called for immediate and complete abolition. In one of his speeches, Sumner said that while there are many issues on which political men can and should compromise, slavery is not such an issue: “This will not admit of compromise. To be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. It is our duty to defend freedom, unreservedly, and careless of the consequences.”

Lincoln’s modern liberal critics are, whether they know it or not, the philosophical descendants of Sumner. One cannot understand Lincoln without understanding why he agreed with Sumner’s goals while consistently opposing the strategy of the abolitionists. The abolitionists, Lincoln thought, approached the restricting or ending of slavery with self-righteous moral display. They wanted to be in the right and—as Sumner himself says—damn the consequences. In Lincoln’s view, abolition was a noble sentiment, but abolitionist tactics, such as burning the Constitution and advocating violence, were not the way to reach their goal.

We can answer the liberal critics by showing them why Lincoln’s understanding of slavery, and his strategy for defeating it, was superior to that of Sumner and his modern-day followers. Lincoln knew that the statesman, unlike the moralist, cannot be content with making the case against slavery. He must find a way to implement his principles to the degree that circumstances permit. The key to understanding Lincoln is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. He always sought the common denominator between what was good to do and what the people would go along with. In a democratic society this is the only legitimate way to advance a moral agenda.

Consider the consummate skill with which Lincoln deflected the prejudices of his supporters without yielding to them. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates during the race for the Illinois Senate, Stephen Douglas repeatedly accused Lincoln of believing that blacks and whites were intellectually equal, of endorsing full political rights for blacks, and of supporting “amalgamation” or intermarriage between the races. If these charges could be sustained, or if large numbers of people believed them to be true, then Lincoln’s career was over. Even in the free state of Illinois—as throughout the North—there was widespread opposition to full political and social equality for blacks.

Lincoln handled this difficult situation by using a series of artfully conditional responses. “Certainly the Negro is not our equal in color—perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man. In pointing out that more has been given to you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little which has been given to him. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.” Notice that Lincoln only barely recognizes the prevailing prejudice. He never acknowledges black inferiority; he merely concedes the possibility. And the thrust of his argument is that even if blacks were inferior, that is not a warrant for taking away their rights.

Facing the charge of racial amalgamation, Lincoln said, “I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife.” Lincoln is not saying that he wants, or does not want, a black woman for his wife. He is neither supporting nor opposing racial intermarriage. He is simply saying that from his antislavery position it does not follow that he endorses racial amalgamation. Elsewhere Lincoln turned antiblack prejudices against Douglas by saying that slavery was the institution that had produced the greatest racial intermixing and the largest number of mulattoes.

Lincoln was exercising the same prudent statesmanship when he wrote to New York newspaper publisher Horace Greeley asserting: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” The letter was written on August 22, 1862, almost a year and a half after the Civil War broke out, when the South was gaining momentum and the outcome was far from certain. From the time of secession, Lincoln was desperately eager to prevent border states such as Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri from seceding. These states had slavery, and Lincoln knew that if the issue of the war was cast openly as the issue of slavery, his chances of keeping the border states in the Union were slim. And if all the border states seceded, Lincoln was convinced, and rightly so, that the cause of the Union was gravely imperiled.

Moreover, Lincoln was acutely aware that many people in the North were vehemently antiblack and saw themselves as fighting to save their country rather than to free slaves. Lincoln framed the case against the Confederacy in terms of saving the Union in order to maintain his coalition—a coalition whose victory was essential to the antislavery cause. And ultimately it was because of Lincoln that slavery came to an end. That is why the right wing can never forgive him.

In my view, Lincoln was the true “philosophical statesman,” one who was truly good and truly wise. Standing in front of his critics, Lincoln is a colossus, and all of the Lilliputian arrows hurled at him bounce harmlessly to the ground. It is hard to put any other president — not even George Washington — in the same category as Abraham Lincoln. He is simply the greatest practitioner of democratic statesmanship that America and the world have yet produced.

This article was written by Dinesh D’Souza and originally published in the April 2005 issue of American History Magazine.

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Biography Online

Abraham Lincoln Biography | Quotes | Facts

“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…. ”

– Abraham Lincoln

“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”

Work colleagues and friends noted that Lincoln had a capacity to defuse tense and argumentative situations, though the use of humour and his capacity to take an optimistic view of human nature. He loved to tell stories to illustrate a serious point through the use of humour and parables.

Lincoln was shy around women but after a difficult courtship, he married Mary Todd in 1842. Mary Todd shared many of her husband’s political thinking but they also had different temperaments – with Mary more prone to swings in her emotions. They had four children, who Lincoln was devoted to. Although three died before reaching maturity – which caused much grief to both parents.

As a lawyer, Abraham developed a capacity for quick thinking and oratory. His interest in public issues encouraged him to stand for public office. In 1847, he was elected to the House of Representatives for Illinois and served from 1847-49. During his period in Congress, Lincoln criticised President Folk’s handling of the American-Mexican War, arguing Polk used patriotism and military glory to defend the unjust action of taking Mexican territory. However, Lincoln’s stance was politically unpopular and he was not re-elected.

He gave influential speeches, which drew on the Declaration of Independence to prove the Founding Fathers had intended to stop the spread of slavery. In particular, Lincoln used a novel argument that although society was a long way from equality, America should aspire towards the lofty statement in the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal”

Lincoln had a strong capacity for empathy. He would try to see problems from everyone’s point of view – including southern slaveholders. He used this concept of empathy to speak against slavery.

“I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

Lincoln’s speeches were notable because they drew on both legal precedents but also easy to understand parables, which struck a chord with the public.

In 1858, Lincoln was nominated as Republican candidate for the Senate. He undertook a series of high-profile debates with the Democratic incumbent Stephen Douglass. Douglass was in favour of allowing the extension of slavery – if citizens voted for it. Lincoln opposed the extension of slavery. During this campaign, he gave one of his best-remembered speeches, which reflected on the divisive nature of America.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. ” ( House Divided )

In this House Divided speech, Lincoln gave a prophetic utterance to the potential for slavery to divide the nation.

Although he lost this 1858 Senate election, his debating skills and oratory caused him to become well known within the Republican party.

On February 27, 1860. Lincoln was also invited to give a notable address at Cooper Union in New York. The East Coast was relatively new territory for Lincoln; many in the audience thought his appearance awkward and even ugly, but his calls for moral clarity over the wrongness of slavery struck a chord with his East coast audience.

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” (Cooper Union address)

The reputation he gained on the campaign trail and speeches on the East coast caused him to be put forward as a candidate for the Republican nominee for President in 1860. Lincoln was an outsider because he had much less experience than other leading candidates such as Steward, Bates and Chase, but after finishing second on the first ballot he went on to become unexpectedly nominated.

After a hard-fought, divisive campaign of 1860, Lincoln was elected the first Republican President of the United States. Lincoln’s support came entirely from the North and West of the country. The south strongly disagreed with Lincoln’s position on slavery

The election of Lincoln as President in 1861, sparked the South to secede from the North. Southern independence sentiment had been growing for many years, and the election of a president opposed to slavery was the final straw. However, Lincoln resolutely opposed the breakaway of the South, and this led to the American civil war with Lincoln committed to preserving the Union.

Lincoln surprised many by including in his cabinet the main rivals from the 1860 Republican campaign. It demonstrated Lincoln’s willingness and ability to work with people of different political and personal approaches. This helped to keep the Republican party together.

Initially, the war was primarily about the secession of southern states and the survival of the Union, but as the war progressed, Lincoln increasingly made the issue of ending slavery paramount.

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared the freedom of slaves within the Confederacy.

“… all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free” ( Emancipation Proclamation )

The Proclamation came into force on January 1, 1863. Towards the end of the year, many black regiments were raised to help the Union army.

Gettysburg address

After a difficult opening two years, by 1863, the tide of war started to swing towards the Union forces – helped by the victory at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. Lincoln felt able to redefine the goals of the civil war to include the ending of slavery.

Dedicating the ceremony at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, Lincoln declared:

“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. … 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.”

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address November 19, 1863

Eventually, after four years of attrition, the Federal forces secured the surrender of the defeated south. The union had been saved and the issue of slavery had been brought to a head.

After the Civil War

Lincoln 1862

In the aftermath of the civil war, Lincoln sought to reunite the country – offering a generous settlement to the south. When asked how to deal with the southern states, Lincoln replied. “Let ’em up easy.” Lincoln was opposed by more radical factions who wanted greater activism in the south to ensure civil rights for freed slaves.

On January 31, 1865, Lincoln helped pass through Congress a bill to outlaw slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was officially signed into law on December 6, 1865.

Some northern abolitionists and Republicans wanted Lincoln to go further and implement full racial equality on issues of education and voting rights. Lincoln was unwilling to do this (it was a minority political view for the time) Frederick Douglass , a leading black activist (who had escaped from slavery) didn’t always agree with the policies of Lincoln but after meeting Lincoln, he said enthusiastically of the President.

“He treated me as a man; he did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the color of our skins! The President is a most remarkable man. I am satisfied now that he is doing all that circumstances will permit him to do.”

Assassination

Five days after the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while visiting Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln’s death was widely mourned across the country.

Lincoln is widely regarded as one of America’s most influential and important presidents. As well as saving the Union and promoting Republican values, Lincoln was viewed as embodying the ideals of honesty and integrity.

“Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure.”

– Giuseppe Garibaldi , 6 August 1863.

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”

Martin Luther King Jr ., “I Have a Dream” speech (28 August 1963), at the Lincoln Memorial

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Abraham Lincoln Biography ”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net , 11th Feb 2013. Updated 21st February 2018.

Lincoln – by David Herbert Donald

Lincoln – David Herbert Donald at Amazon

A. Lincoln – a Biography

I am Abraham Lincoln by Brad Meltzer at Amazon

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U.S. Presidents

Abraham lincoln.

16th president of the United States

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky on February 12, 1809, to parents who could neither read nor write. He went to school on and off for a total of about a year, but he educated himself by reading borrowed books. When Lincoln was nine years old, his mother died. His father—a carpenter and farmer—remarried and moved his family farther west, eventually settling in Illinois .

As a young adult, Lincoln worked as a flatboat navigator, storekeeper, soldier, surveyor, and postmaster. At age 25 he was elected to the local government in Springfield, Illinois. Once there, he taught himself law, opened a law practice, and earned the nickname "Honest Abe."

He served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives but lost two U.S. Senate races. But the debates he had about the enslavement of people with his 1858 senatorial opponent, Stephen Douglas, helped him win the presidential nomination two years later. (Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery in the United States .) In the four-way presidential race of 1860, Lincoln got more votes than any other candidate.

A NATION DIVIDED

When Lincoln first took office in 1861, the United States was not truly united. The nation had been arguing for years about enslaving people and each state’s right to allow it. Now Northerners and Southerners were close to war. When he became president, Lincoln allowed the enslavement of people to continue in southern states but he outlawed its spread to other existing states and states that might later join the Union.

Southern leaders didn’t agree with this plan and decided to secede, or withdraw, from the nation. Eventually, 11 southern states formed the Confederate States of America to oppose the 23 northern states that remained in the Union. The Civil War officially began on April 12, 1861, at Fort Sumter, South Carolina , when troops from the Confederacy attacked the U.S. fort.

WARTIME PRESIDENCY

Lincoln’s primary goal as president was to hold the country together. For a long time, it didn’t look as if he would succeed. During the early years, the South was winning the war. It wasn’t until the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania during July 1863 that the war turned in favor of the Union.

Through speeches such as the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln encouraged Northerners to keep fighting. In this famous dedication of the battlefield cemetery, he urged citizens to ensure "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." Earlier that same year Lincoln called for the end of the enslavement of people in his Emancipation Proclamation speech.

When the war was nearly over, Lincoln was re-elected in 1864. Civil War victory came on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Some 750,000 soldiers had died during the four-year conflict.

OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Seeing the Union successfully through the Civil War was Lincoln’s greatest responsibility, but it wasn’t his only triumph during his presidential years. Together with Congress, he established the Department of Agriculture; supported the development of a transcontinental railroad; enacted the Homestead Act, which opened up land to settlers; and crafted the 13th Amendment, which ended the enslavement of people.

TRAGIC FATE

Less than a week after people celebrated the end the Civil War, the country was mourning yet again. Lincoln became the first president to be assassinated when he was shot on April 14, 1865.

The night he was shot, he and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, were watching a play in Washington, D.C. The entrance to their box seats was poorly guarded, allowing actor John Wilkes Booth to enter. Booth hoped to revive the Confederate cause by killing Lincoln. He shot Lincoln in the back of the head, then fled the theater. He wasn’t caught until two weeks later. He was shot during his eventual capture and died from his wounds.

The wounded and unconscious president was carried to a boardinghouse across the street, where he died the next morning, April 15, 1865. Lincoln’s presidency was tragically cut short, but his contributions to the United States ensured that he would be remembered as one of its most influential presidents.

• The Lincoln family ate at the White House dinner table with their cat.

• Lincoln sometimes kept important documents under the tall black hats he wore.

• Lincoln was taller (at six feet four inches) than any other president.

From the Nat Geo Kids books Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum and Weird But True Know-It-All: U.S. Presidents by Brianna Dumont, revised for digital by Avery Hurt 

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The best way to predict the future is to create it.

- By Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809, was the 16th President of the United States. Many historians and politicians believe he was the greatest president in terms of leadership, political acumen and character. Lincoln's biography is the stuff of legend. He rose from poverty to become a lawyer, leader and statesman, primarily by virtue of his own determination. During his presidency, Lincoln brought the nation through its greatest challenge, the Civil War, and helped it emerge united if not unscathed. It is impossible to overstate Lincoln's influence on American history from the mid-1800s to the present day.

From Humble Beginnings

Abraham Lincoln was born in LaRue County, Ky., on Sinking Springs Farm. His parents, Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, had moved into the one-room log cabin just two months before Abraham's birth. He was the couple's second child. They had an older daughter, Sarah. Later a younger son, Thomas, would come along, but the boy would not live beyond infancy.

His father was a farmer and carpenter by trade. When Abe was born, Thomas owned or controlled a number of farms in the area but lost most of the land due to property deed disputes. The family moved to Indiana two years after the boy's birth to start over.

Unlike Kentucky, Indiana did not allow residents to own slaves. It was a "free" territory. In addition, Abe's parents belonged to a strict Separate Baptists church, which prohibited drinking, dancing and slavery. Although the Lincolns chose Hurricane Township, Ind. as their new home because it had more reasonable land ownership statues, the fact that it was a free state likely influenced Abe's future stance on slavery.

Thomas Lincoln was a hard worker who supported his family through farming, cabinet making and other carpentry. He was also a community leader as a land and livestock owner. In Hurricane Township, Thomas managed to recoup his losses in Kentucky and acquired 80 acres of land where he founded the Little Pigeon Creek community.

When Abraham was just nine years old, he lost his mother to milk sickness, which results from drinking milk tainted with white snakeroot. His sister Sarah, 11 years old at the time, had to take over her mother's role in the family and became Abe's chief caretaker.

A year later in 1819, Thomas remarried. His bride was Sally Bush Johnson, a widow with three children. Abe and his stepmother became close over the years, and he called her Mother.

A Love of Learning

Abraham Lincoln preferred reading and writing over farm work, which many around him at the time considered to be laziness. Even so, he educated himself for the most part, with help from time to time from itinerant teachers who passed through town. All in all, Abe had only about 12 months' worth of formal instruction growing up. His early reading material included the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress," "Aesop's Fables" and biographies of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

As a teenager, Abe earned a reputation for physical strength by besting the leader of the Clary's Grove boys, a group of local bullies. In addition to his farm chores at home, he did odd jobs and gave any earnings to his father to help with family maintenance.

The family moved to Macon County, Ill., in 1830 when Abraham was 21 years of age. He went with them on this move, but as the family prepared to relocate to another part of Illinois the next year, Abe decided it was time he was out on his own.

He lived in the town of New Salem for the next six years. He held various jobs, including boatman, surveyor, soldier, rail splitter and postmaster. He owned and operated a general store. In 1834, Lincoln ran for and was elected as a representative to the Illinois General Assembly. He earned his license to practice law two years later.

Life and Politics

After moving to Springfield, Ill., in 1937, Abe became a junior partner in the law firm of John Todd Stuart. Through Stuart, he met Mary Todd, a visiting cousin from Springfield. She was the daughter of a Kentucky slave owner, Robert Smith Todd.

Abe and Mary began courting three years later, and Abe asked her to marry him in 1840. The wedding took place in Springfield in 1842 when Abe was 33 and Mary just 23 years old.

At first, the newlyweds lived in a second-floor room above a local bar, the Globe Tavern. While there, they welcomed their first child, Robert Todd Lincoln. In 1844, Abe and Mary bought a house near his law office. That same year, Abe established his own law office and took on William Herndon as a junior partner.

The couple's second son, Edward Baker Lincoln, was born in 1846. Soon thereafter, Abe won a seat in the United States Congress as a representative for Illinois. He and his family moved to Washington D.C. in 1847. The following year, Mary took their sons and left Washington, returning to their home in Springfield. She said she believed that their departure would allow Abe to give his full attention to his work, although her husband disagreed. In 1849, Lincoln introduced a bill that would abolish slavery in Washington D.C.

In February the following year, the Lincolns' youngest son, Edward, died of what historians believe was tuberculosis. The boy was not quite four years old. In December, Mary gave birth to another son, William Wallace Lincoln. The couple added yet another son to their family two years later. They named him Thomas and called him Tad.

Abe, whose constituents had been regularly re-electing him to the House, made a bid for the Senate in 1854, but dropped out of the race in favor of the front-runner, Lyman Trumbull. Lincoln did get the nomination for the Senate in 1858, delivering the first of his most well-known speeches at the Illinois Republican Convention with the famous line about the house divided.

His opponent for the Senate seat was Stephen Douglas, and over the next few months, they would engage in the Lincoln-Douglas debates in towns throughout the state. Although Douglas ultimately prevailed in the senate race, Lincoln won a presidential nomination in 1860 at the Republican National Convention in Chicago.

Voters elected Lincoln in November 1860. He chose Maine's Hannibal Hamlin as his vice president.

A Nation Divided

The first state, South Carolina, seceded from the Union late 1860. Three months later, a coalition of southern states established The Confederate States of America with president Jefferson Davis, effectively splitting the nation in two.

In March, Abraham Lincoln officially became the 16th President of the United States at the age of 52. In April, before he and his family had the chance to settle into the White House, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in North Carolina, and the Civil War was underway.

Abe's 11-year-old son, William, died in February 1862. The cause of death was likely typhoid fever.

In September 1862, Lincoln released the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation , legislation that would free those who were enslaved. It would be effective as of January 1, 1863. Congress subsequently passed the Thirteenth Amendment, also promoted by Lincoln, in 1865, which put an end to legal slavery in the U.S.

Meanwhile, throughout the next couple of years until the spring of 1865, the Civil War raged on. Lincoln delivered several well-known speeches at battle sites, including the Gettysburg Address in November, 1863.

President Lincoln won re-election and delivered his second inaugural speech in March 1865. This time, he tapped Andrew Johnson to be his vice president. A month later, General Robert E. Lee, head of the Confederate forces, conceded defeat, and the war was over.

On April 14, 1865, Confederate spy John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln during a play at the Ford Theater in Washington D.C. The president died the next morning.

The Legacy of Abraham Lincoln

As a self-educated man who rose from humble beginnings to the highest office in the nation, Abraham Lincoln's personal life story is a powerful inspiration to others throughout history. As a politician who led the country through its most trying times since its inception, President Lincoln stands as an icon of resolve, wisdom and compassion. His legacy remains just as influential as it was in the post-Civil War era following his untimely death.

Historians view Lincoln's greatest contributions as president to be preserving the Union throughout the war between the states, his championship of democracy and the abolishment of slavery. Through his courageous leadership in a time of extreme crisis, Abraham Lincoln showed strength and determination. Through his notable addresses to the nation, often on the sites of bloody battles, the president demonstrated his commitment to the Union and compassion for the loss of life. Despite his own losses, including a son who died during his presidency, Lincoln managed to keep the welfare of the nation at the forefront of his political actions.

Lincoln's humanitarian commitment to the emancipation of American slaves earned him the enmity of many and certainly contributed to death. However, it is this commitment, along with his solid leadership through crisis and accomplishments in the face of the nation's strife, that keeps his legacy alive throughout the world and makes him the most admired U.S. president in history.

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Abraham Lincoln was humbly born, self-taught and ambitious—he seized the opportunities of an expansive society to rise the country’s highest office. Over 150 years after his death, people from around the world continue to take inspiration from the principles, words, and resolute leadership of the sixteenth President of the United States. He is frequently invoked by political and social leaders. Lincoln’s words have shaped the way we think about our country and ourselves as citizens, and few figures loom larger in the American imagination. —The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

AbrahamLincoln.org brings together the scholarship and resources of The Lincoln Institute and The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Here you’ll find timelines, documents, essays, lesson plans, video, and multimedia presented both by theme and type of featured resource.

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Ten Best Abraham Lincoln Biographies

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of Lincoln biographies ? Don’t know where to start ?

Abraham Lincoln books far outnumber those about any other US president.  Here are ten of the best Lincoln biographies …

1. Lincoln by David Herbert Donald.

Many critics agree that if you are only going to read one Abraham Lincoln biography this is the one to read…

When and Where was Abraham Lincoln born?

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Larue County, Kentucky

How many books about Abraham Lincoln have been published?

Over 16,000 books about Lincoln have been published, as of May 2021, including over 125 books on his assassination. This number is larger than the number of books written about any other person in U.S. history.

To What Political Party did Lincoln belong?

Although Lincoln belonged to the Whig Party early in his career, he ran for President as a Republican, and he is best known for his identification with the Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln Biographies NEXT BOOK >>>>>>

  UPDATED January 2024 – To clean up formatting issues.

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Selected Writings of Abraham Lincoln

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The Playwright Who Fearlessly Reimagines America

In her new play, ‘Sally & Tom,’ Suzan-Lori Parks brings exuberant provocation to the gravest historical questions.

Suzan-Lori Parks Credit... Arielle Bobb-Willis for The New York Times

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By Imani Perry

• April 11, 2024

When the playwright Suzan- Lori Parks was in high school,a teacher asked what she wanted to be as an adult. Parks already knew. She had been sitting under the family piano writing songs and plays since elementary school. “I was like, ‘I wanna be a writer,’” she recalled. The teacher’s response was not encouraging. “It was suggested to me that I not be a writer — because I was such a poor speller.”

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Rather than sink into discouragement, Parks absorbed the insult, turning it into part of her origin story. “I appreciated the note,” she said wryly, “because it planted a little seed in my subconscious: I gotta learn to spell. So I’m really good at spelling now.” She has recast that potentially hurtful experience using her own distinct sense of playfulness, frequently deploying the phrase “a spell” as a stage direction. She defines it as an elongated pause, or a place “where the figures experience their pure true state.”

When we met in January at a downtown cafe, Parks greeted me enthusiastically, standing before a wall of blooming flowers in the dead of New York winter. Dressed in purple-and-lavender-striped fingerless gloves, fur-lined boots and a black Comme des Garçons jacket, she looked every bit the iconoclastic downtown New Yorker. At 60, Parks carries herself with the energy of someone half her age, her presence a combination of gravitas and lightness, wisdom and childlike exuberance. One of America’s most celebrated playwrights — a recipient of the MacArthur “genius grant,” a Guggenheim fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize — she is in the midst of a renaissance. There is renewed recognition that her plays, inventive provocations whose sometimes scathing visions of race and gender can unsettle audiences, have something to tell us about the troublesome relationship between individual identity and national community.

Heidi Griffiths, a longtime collaborator and friend of Parks’s who has worked as her casting director, described the playwright to me as someone “who will go off into the wilderness and find a place that she has to excavate. Often the things she reveals are the things that history has left long buried. She doesn’t look away; she keeps excavating.”

The 2022 Tony Award-winning revival of “Topdog/Underdog” was a reminder of the intellectual and aesthetic commitments that make Parks a one-of-a-kind figure in American theater. It starred Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins as two brothers who are victims of an existential joke. Before their parents abandoned them, their father named them Lincoln and Booth — after the American president and the man who assassinated him. Lincoln, who works at a local arcade as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator and is repeatedly assassinated, moves in with his younger brother, Booth, after his wife throws him out. Booth, a street hustler, wants Lincoln to teach him three-card monte, a game Lincoln mastered before giving it up for a respectable, if demoralizing, job. They are loving yet also distrustful and wounded, interacting with the world through a bittersweet swagger. Through the brothers, Parks brought vital, sometimes biting street language into the theater. She also suggested how history resonates down through generations. Lincoln’s repeated assassination is not just a clever conceit: In watching the brothers, we witness how the American backlash against emancipation shadows Black life.

In “Sally & Tom,” which opens this month at the Public Theater, Parks takes up the “relationship” between Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved woman who bore him seven children: Sally Hemings, who was 14 when Jefferson began a sexual relationship with her. It tells the story of a Black female playwright named Luce and her white director husband, Mike, veterans of a radical outsider theater troupe called Good Company who are trying to break into the mainstream with a production about Hemings and Jefferson. Under pressure from a fickle financier, Mike pushes for a simple story about reconciliation and forgiveness. Luce works at cross purposes, struggling with how to portray a more complicated version of Hemings and Jefferson’s entanglement — they are slave and master, girl and adult male, as well as lovers. In Luce’s rendering, this is not a love story, but it also isn’t one of simple violence.

With the help of the director Steve H. Broadnax III, Parks has constructed a dizzying production that weaves a story of Luce and Mike’s backstage wrestling with needy actors, nervous backers and their own diverging desires with scenes from rehearsals of their play in progress. We shuttle between two communities — Good Company and Jefferson’s plantation at Monticello — whose members are bound to one another yet often at odds, poised at the intersection of coercion and acceptance, cruelty and care.

Parks forces the audience to contemplate how intimacy takes root in the thick of injustice. The reality of this ambivalent attachment — and the vulnerability required to address it — is her starting point. Rather than evade the question of intimacy in favor of tidy social and political arguments, Parks embraces its formidable complications. “Vulnerability and introspection are our superpowers,” she told me at the cafe. “And we all have them — so why don’t we use them? We’re not using our superpowers.” One of her superpowers is using theater and history as invitations to be in the world together in a new way.

Rather than evade the question of intimacy in favor of tidy social and political arguments, Parks embraces its formidable complications.

A Kentucky-born daughter of an Army officer from Chicago and a college professor from Texas, Parks had a childhood that unfolded across Texas, California, North Carolina, Vermont and Germany. Her middle-school years in Germany were disorienting: While the other American kids attended American schools, her mother placed Parks and her brother — two lone Black children — in German schools.

They became fluent in German, but Parks struggled to make friends. She remembers herself as a frightened kid holding a lunch tray in the cafeteria, uncertain how to go about connecting with her peers. Libraries became a solace. “The library was a refuge for me,” she recalled. “Every lunchtime it was like, What do you do?” She mimicked her childhood self, standing before a cafeteria with her lunch tray in hand. “You look around, hoping to find a friendly face, and everyone else is already in their group. So anyway, I would go to the library and sit.” The librarians allowed her to eat her lunch even though food wasn’t allowed there, a kindness for which she was grateful. There she would immerse herself in books, and had a special fondness for Greek mythology and African folk tales.

Parks’s library isolation gave her the gift of self-reflection and creation — going the way your blood beats, to riff on James Baldwin’s advice about living truthfully. “I mean, there I am again with my lunch tray, not fitting in anywhere. There’s a certain anxiety of ‘Who am I?’” She found her identity to be, as she put it, “one of the ones who listens to the spirit.”

When it came time for Parks to apply to colleges, her parents encouraged her to consider New England, where they had attended graduate school. Parks ultimately settled on Mount Holyoke after she fell in love with the campus’s 1,200 trees. She started there in 1981, and in her junior year was admitted into a seminar taught by James Baldwin, who was then on faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She had been an admirer of Baldwin’s since 1972 — her parents gifted her a copy of “The Fire Next Time” for Valentine’s Day that year when she told them she wanted to be a writer — and was thrilled to study with him. Each week, the 15-person seminar workshopped a few students’ writing, and when Parks brought her stories to class, she would stand up and perform them as if they were theater. “I’m acting out these stories, and Mr. Baldwin suggested I try writing for the theater. He told me I could be good.”

After class, Baldwin would invite the students for drinks at a nearby bar, but Parks couldn’t bring herself to go. “To me, it wasn’t appropriate,” she told me, gently mocking her genteel Southern side. “I’d been looking at his face on the back of this paperback since I was in fifth grade!” For the young Parks, Baldwin was an educator, not a peer. The most important lesson she learned from Baldwin’s seminar, though, was how to show up, not just as a writer but as a human being. “What I received was how to conduct myself in the presence of spirit,” she told me, conjuring the religious underpinnings of Baldwin’s work. “You have to wrestle, tussle with the angels. I like writing because you get to hold the hand of the spirit.” For Parks, it became clear that the writer’s vocation was one of listening to the ancestors, and reverence for what you might learn.

Parks graduated in 1985 and moved to London to study theater at the Drama Studio for a year before returning to the United States and settling in New York. In 1987, she staged her first production, “Betting on the Dust Commander,” in a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It was only the second play she ever wrote, but it features all of her signatures: a mythic sense of time, a concern with how history echoes in intimate relationships and a reveling in language. The play tells the story of a Black couple, Lucius and Mare, who have somehow been married for over 100 years and speak in a style so country and rough that to an untrained ear it could read as pure caricature. At one point, speaking of his own death, Lucius compares himself to an old racing horse. He hopes that when he nears the end, “they stretch me out like that. Hope they get me in thuh home stretch fore I get all stuck up: arms this way, elbows funny, knees knocking, head all wrong.” Dwelling in the language of the rural South, which many might dismiss as backward, Parks listened for and shared its wisdom.

What followed was a prolific run of incisive and experimental productions. In the 1990 jazz requiem “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of Dead,” Parks filled the stage with a parade of historical figures, racial stereotypes and folklore characters (the play opens, for example, with a line from a character named Black Man With Watermelon). She confronted racial stereotype and distortion while also exploring Black people’s complex interiority. Her 30-year relationship with the Public began in 1994 with “The America Play,” about a Black man who works as both a gravedigger and (like the character in “Topdog/Underdog”) an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, and “Venus” (1996), a lyrical portrait of Sarah Baartman, the 19th-century Khoekhoe woman known as the Venus Hottentot. In Parks’s depiction, the woman who was exhibited like a zoo animal and exploited is not simply a victim but a woman in search of intimacy and a sense of self. Aside from the steady production of new plays, Parks has embraced a variety of projects. She wrote the screenplay for Spike Lee’s 1996 film “Girl 6,” about a young Black woman actor who becomes a phone-sex operator. She was tapped to write the screenplays for film adaptations of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” as well as for Lee Daniels’s 2021 biopic “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.”

Parks’s day-to-day doings have a disciplined rhythm that is conventional even in what is an unconventional, spellbound life. She and her husband, Christian, a jazz musician and composer from Munich, are parents of a 12-year-old son. “When you’re a parent, life sort of has a certain flexibility,” she says, “respectful flexibility, where you can include and incorporate the boundaries that you have to erect to get your work done.” Each weekday, she wakes up at 4 to meditate and do yoga. Her son rises at 5:30 to read and play the violin beside her. She teaches in the Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University, where she delights in facilitating among her students the kind of community she values dearly. “I love being with people and talking about the creative, being with people as they walk their path, because it can be very lonely. It can be very frightening. It’s a trip, so I’m like, ‘I’m a trip advisor!’”

Parks likens her eclectic body of work to a circle of trees: “You might have five redwoods in a circle. They’re all separate trees, but they’re actually all joined at the root. Some of us as artists flower like that; and some of us flower like the oak.”

If her corpus is a circle of redwoods, they’re joined at the root by her commitment to depicting Black life with historical and cultural specificity, and to understanding history’s absurd impact on individual lives. But at a deeper level, Parks is obsessed with the interplay between devastation and joy. The director Kenny Leon, who helmed the recent production of “Topdog/Underdog,” told me that “Parks, like many of the greats, loves her people, her culture and her country.” Contextualizing Parks among some of Black theater’s titans — Baldwin, Hansberry and August Wilson — he emphasized that she “loves Black culture and tackles its complex challenges.” That love insists on play and fun in order to disintegrate easy ways of thinking about race.

In her plays, humor is a place where we might set down, however briefly, the baggage of racism that weighs down every interaction. But there are also moments of vulnerability that allow us to see things differently. Simply put, Parks disarms. In “Sally & Tom,” there’s an instability at work in the play’s very staging and conceit: Tracking Luce and Good Company in the run-up to the premiere of their own play, “Sally & Tom” alternates between backstage drama and rehearsals that teleport the cast into Monticello, forcing them to confront the oppressive racial order that supported Jefferson’s intellectual life. One moment we are listening to Hemings beg Jefferson not to split up her family; the next she removes her curly wig, pale makeup and corset to become Luce, a contemporary Black woman who, though confronting the complexities of an interracial relationship, is not held captive.

With its multiracial cast, interest in interracial and queer intimacy and emphasis on race’s psychosexual dimension, “Sally & Tom” echoes recent theater hits like “Hamilton” and “Slave Play” in order to ironize both starry-eyed multiculturalism and cynical provocation. At one point, two members of the cast and crew — Geoff, who is white, and Devon, who is Black — are talking about the relationship. “Tom was nice to Sally,” Geoff says, nostalgically comparing Jefferson’s supposed chivalry to the coldness of contemporary hookups. “ ’Cause, I mean, they did stay together for over 30 years.” Devon retorts: “She was his slave, yo.” The company’s stage manager, Scout, is an aspiring Asian American actor who plays Jefferson’s younger daughter, Polly. In a nod to the vexations of nontraditional casting, she wonders whether she really has a role to play in this story. “Were there any Korean Americans in America in 1790?” she jokes. “How much skin do I actually have in this game?” The play’s jagged humor cuts in many directions at once, poking fun at the narrow and simplistic terms of our racial discourse. Instead, Parks asks us to reckon with the ways race confounds easy accounting.

In a striking scene from Luce’s play within the play, after Sally begs Jefferson not to send her family away, he attempts to elide his power over the teenage girl. “I love you,” he whispers. “I thank you,” Sally responds. At the performance I saw, the audience laughed at Sally’s answer. When Parks recounted the scene to me during a conversation, though, I did not interpret it as a joke. I heard it as both an assertion of a strategic transaction and an open question in Sally’s mind. Never mind love: Could good will and favor, the root of gratitude, be bestowed from slave to master? Could such warm feeling honestly coexist with the bitterness of unfreedom? Or was it just an act of sour piety to get along?

In March I saw Parks perform at Manhattan’s Rockwood Music Hall — not a play, but a set with her band, Sula and the Joyful Noise. (The band’s name is not a reference to Toni Morrison’s 1973 novel, “Sula,” as I first thought, but a childhood nickname Parks’s father gave her.) Parks isn’t new to music — she has played piano since she was a child, and has written songs for and played music in her plays. Inside the venue, as she met up with the other band members, the energy was warm. The room filled up with a multiracial and multigenerational group of friends and fans. The band, as Parks described it, is a “test kitchen,” and this was their first live gig.

Onstage, Parks was petite but mighty, with an electric guitar strapped in front of her. Her husband, Christian, armed with a perennially amused countenance and a deeply grooving bass, stood on one side of her. She is the one woman in the band of “dudes,” as she calls them, wearing a miniskirt and pink-glitter-dyed boots that once belonged to a beloved deceased neighbor, and a matching pink ruffled guitar strap, with her waist-length dreadlocks rolled up into huge buns as if she were a feminist superhero. Singing in a voice that sounded like what might happen if Bette Davis, Ida Cox and David Byrne had a baby, she channeled different personae. In one song, she embodied the spirit of a fugitive slave with a sardonic take on self-emancipation: “I have misplaced myself,” she repeated, eliciting a lively call and response from the crowd.

The lyrics and situation — a diverse crowd joining Parks to evoke the spirit of a runaway slave — felt like the kind of productive provocation Parks’s work insists on. She delivered a message from the American underside, welcoming all comers. In the venue, the fabled “e pluribus unum” was the song of the slave rather than that of the master.

Even though the Sula of this band is Suzan-Lori Parks, I couldn’t help thinking, as she sang, of Toni Morrison’s Sula: a Black woman who came of age in the Jim Crow 1920s, made dangerous because she was an “artist with no art form.” Parks is the opposite, a Black woman artist of the 2020s who has many art forms — playwright, novelist, screenwriter, composer, actor, musician — all because, as she says, she can. As I watched Parks thrust her shoulders forward, one eyebrow cocked, inviting the crowd to sing along with her the refrain “I misplaced myself,” I thought: Here is a woman who has rooted herself to her values, her communities. Here is a woman who has placed herself.

Imani Perry is a professor at Harvard University and a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Her book “South to America” won the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction.

Read by Janina Edwards

Narration produced by Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan

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Here are some other laws Arizona had on the books in 1864

Arizona sprang into existence in February 1863, just under halfway through the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln, having signed the act that created the new territory, appointed judges to administer it. Among them was a native New Yorker, William T. Howell .

The appointed governor, John Goodwin, soon determined that the laws established at the territory’s founding (imported from New Mexico) didn’t work. He tasked Howell with writing Arizona’s first set of laws and procedures, a job Howell began with the help of a former Wisconsin governor, Coles Bashford. In late 1864, the Howell Code , Arizona’s first set of laws, was born.

And on Tuesday, its original ban on abortion again became Arizona’s legal standard.

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The decision by Arizona’s Supreme Court to revive that initial ban triggered an enormous backlash and elevated difficult political questions for Republicans nationally and in the state. It also spurred no small amount of scoffing about how archaic the law must be, given the year of its provenance. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), for example, pointed out that Arizona relied on dirt roads when the territorial legislature passed the Howell Code.

Those particular complaints, though, miss the point. It isn’t that the law is old that makes it a dubious fit for the moment. After all, the Bill of Rights is old and it contains rules and guidelines that deserve to be maintained. Instead, the point is that the Howell Code was a product of its time and its time’s morality , a point that is made more obvious when considering other elements of the law that clearly do not conform to 2024 beliefs.

The most obvious difference between now and then that is reflected in the Howell Code is that the United States was, at the time, at war with Southern secessionists desperate to maintain the institution of slavery. (Coincidentally, Tuesday also marked the anniversary of the South’s final surrender.) Slavery was not allowed in Arizona, but the Howell Code does recognize it as a legal issue. Section 55 of Chapter 10 (“Of Crimes and Punishments”) makes it illegal to entice Black people to leave Arizona so that they can be sold into slavery.

The prohibition on abortion comes a bit before that, just after the section banning duels. Section 45, focused initially on making intentional poisoning a crime, also establishes the ban on abortion:

“[E]very person who shall administer or cause to be administered or taken, any medicinal substances, or shall use or cause to be used any instruments whatever, with the intention· to procure the miscarriage of any woman then being with child, and shall be thereof duly convicted, shall be punished by imprisonment in the Territorial prison for a term not less than two years nor more than five years: Provided, that no physician shall be affected by the last clause of this section, who in the discharge of his professional duties deems it necessary to produce the miscarriage of any woman in order to save her life.”

This is the origin of the law that remains on the books .

Consider, though, the other prohibitions that surround the initial Howell language. A bit before that, for example, the code establishes what constitutes a murder or a manslaughter. In Section 34, it also creates the category of “excusable homicides.” Those include situations such as when “a man is at work with an axe, and the head flies off and kills a bystander” or “a parent is moderately correcting his child, or a master his servant or scholar.” Only when that correction is “moderate,” mind you. Exceed the bounds of moderation correction, and you’re subject to more severe charges.

Section 38 offers another assessment of pregnancy.

“If any woman shall endeavor, privately, either by herself or the procurement of others, to conceal the death of any issue of her body, male or female, which, if born alive, would be a bastard, so that it may not come to light, whether it shall have been murdered or not,” it reads, “every such mother being convicted thereof shall suffer imprisonment in the county jail for a term not exceeding one year.”

In other words, if you were to become pregnant out of wedlock and have a miscarriage — and then conceal it — you could go to jail for a year. If you disagreed with this rule, of course, you had little recourse. Only “white male citizens” of the United States or Mexico who’d lived in the territory for six months were allowed to vote.

In Section 47, the Howell Code addresses rape, which is defined as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.” It also specifies penalties for having “carnal knowledge of any female child under the age of ten years, either with or without her consent.” To put a fine point on it, the “consent” at issue there is purportedly coming from a 9-year-old.

Many of the punishments identified for criminal actions result in execution. There’s even a stipulation that those who “by willful and corrupt perjury or subornation of perjury” get someone convicted and executed for a crime might themselves be subject to capital punishment.

Here, again, we encounter a specific rule centered on women. If there was “good reason” to believe that a condemned woman was pregnant, the Code states, the sheriff could ask a panel of three doctors to determine her status to the best of her ability. If she wasn’t pregnant, she was executed. If she was, she was allowed to live — until she gave birth, at which point the governor could once again move the execution forward.

There are other reminders that this is a legal framework centered around the frontier, from sanctions for refusing to join a posse or the rules governing citizen’s arrests. There’s also an interesting process established for holding accountable elected officials. The Howell Code establishes that third parties could level accusations of misconduct against sitting officials, forcing the official to appear at a hearing. Barring admission, a jury trial ensued and could leave to removal from office. Safe to say, some prominent elected officials would rather not have that be the national standard.

The Arizona Supreme Court decision Tuesday did not immediately revert the state law on abortion to the standard established in 1864, allowing two weeks for challenges. Should those challenges fail, though, women in Arizona could face criminal punishment for seeking an abortion, in keeping with the mores of a 19th-century society in which parents were allowed to accidentally beat their children to death and 9-year-olds were considered capable of giving consent to sexual encounters.

I try, often with mixed success, to read the Tampa Bay Times and the Washington Post on a daily basis. Last month, two articles appeared in close proximity to each other, one in the Times and one in the Post, that took me back in an instant to my graduate school days many years ago and the words of the professor I went to Johns Hopkins University to study Southern history under, C. Vann Woodward.

The first of these two articles appeared in the Tampa Bay Times on March 9.

“ Hate crime alleged in slaying ,” the stark headline read. “Hillsborough County prosecutors charged a man with murder Friday, alleging that the fatal shooting of a gay man last month at the West Dog Park in Tampa was a hate crime.” The man charged with second degree murder, Gerald Declan Radford, according to “friends of both men … had been harassing” the victim, John Walter Lay, “…for months, hurling homophobic slurs and threatening him.” The Times article concluded by reporting that “Radford claimed the shooting was self-defense.”

The Washington Post story appeared three days later.

“In states with laws targeting LGBTQ issues, school hate crimes quadrupled,” read the March 12 Post headline. “In 28 states with restrictive laws, the number of hate crimes on K-12 campuses has more than quadrupled since the onset of a divisive culture war that often centered on the rights of LGBTQ+ youth.” Not surprisingly, Florida took pride of place, if that is the right word, among these 28 states.

These were the two articles. What they called to mind were professor Woodward’s telling words that appeared in a reading assignment in “The Strange Career of Jim Crow,” his pioneering account, originally published in 1955, of the rise of racial segregation in the American South. His insight had a profound impact on me when I read it, and it was at the center of the spirited seminar discussion that followed. I think it is fair to say that I never forgot it.

Across the South and the rest of America during the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, Woodward wrote, “permissions to hate went up.”

That searing phrase: “Permissions to hate went up.”

He then masterfully summarized this turn-of-the-century process.

“These ‘permissions to hate’ came from sources that had formerly denied such permission,” he wrote:

From the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court;

From Northern liberals eager to conciliate the white South;

From Southern conservatives, who had abandoned their race policy of moderation in their struggle against the Populists;

From the Populists, in their mood of disillusionment with their former Black allies;

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And from a national temper suddenly expressed by imperialistic adventures and aggressions against colored peoples in distant lands.

As a native Floridian sitting in Woodward’s seminar that day, I was particularly mortified to learn that during the Jim Crow era, my state had joined North Carolina in requiring that “textbooks used by the public-school children of one race be kept separate from those used by the other.” And Florida had outdone North Carolina in mandating that separation occur “even while those books were in storage.” Using the principle outlined by the Supreme Court in its infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision validating segregation by law, I presume these were separate but equal warehouses.

But that was then. What about now?

Are we not witnessing exactly the same thing? Aren’t state-sanctioned “permissions to hate” once again being written into law? How else are we supposed to read Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, also known as the Don’t Say Gay law, which limits open discussion of gender and sexuality issues in our public schools? And what about the other culture war measures put forth by our governor and his administration and rubber-stamped by a majority GOP Legislature: the systematic dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at our public colleges and universities; the restrictions, including book banning, surrounding the teaching of African American history? And then there is a major party presidential candidate referring to migrants as “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

A gay man shot down in Tampa. Young people across multiple states bullied on their school grounds. Denial and censorship of sensitive racial history topics. Anti-immigrant political rhetoric reaching hateful and increasingly vitriolic depths. It is a long and ever-growing list.

We know that prejudice and bigotry are always lurking in the darker corners of human existence, willing to pounce on “the better angels of our nature,” to quote Abraham Lincoln’s memorable phrase. But it seems to me that when “permissions to hate” once again emanate from the words and actions of our public leaders, we, as a state and as a country, have truly lost our way.

There is, of course, a path to redemption in our still democratic society. It begins at the ballot box, on the first Tuesday in November 2024.

Charles B. Dew, a native of St. Petersburg, is Ephraim Williams Professor of American History, emeritus, at Williams College and the author of “The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade.”

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