Abraham Lincoln
1809–1865 2 entries
Biography
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States. He was born in a log cabin in Kentucky, grew up on the frontier in Indiana, and had barely a year of schooling, teaching himself from borrowed books. In Illinois he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster and surveyor before becoming a lawyer and a member of the state legislature. His debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858 made him known across the country as an opponent of the spread of slavery.
His election in 1860 led eleven Southern states to leave the Union, and he led the country through the Civil War that followed. In 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and, at Gettysburg, gave a short address that became one of the most famous speeches in history. He pressed for the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, but on 14 April 1865, days after the war’s end, he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, and he died the next morning.
- Quotes 2