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During Lincoln presidency he found himself engaged in the Civil War, fighting a battle over the emancipation of southern slaves. His leadership and skills as president have found him an everlasting home among some of America’s greatest minds. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. His mother and father were Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln. Thomas was a migratory carpenter and farmer who was nearly always poverty-stricken. “He was also a religious Baptist and was outspoken in his beliefs against slavery.
While this humanistic anti-slavery attitude influenced Abraham from birth, he did not share in his father’s religious levels. It is believed that a combination of Thomas refusal to support slavery and in increasing amount of debt led to the family leaving Abraham’s birthplace in 181 6 (Abraham was 7 years old) to what is now known as Spencer County in Indiana” (Anonymous). This was only one Of many different situations Lincoln faced in his life. By the age of 10, Abraham lost both his mother and younger brother.
His mother died of “milk sickness,” a form of poisoning caused by cows ingesting a plant known as white snakeroot, which goes through to their milk, causing some who ingest it to become sick and die from it, and his brother died in infancy. Not long after the death of his wife and young son, Thomas Lincoln married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow who was a kind and affectionate stepmother to who encouraged him to do the best he could in school and life. Lincoln education consisted of little more than a total of 18 months throughout his early life, mainly due to frequent moving.
Despite this, he was an avid reader. Neighbors recalled Lincoln walking for miles to borrow a book. His first glimpse of the wider world came in a voyage downriver to New Orleans on a flatboat in 1828, but little is known of that journey. In 1 830 the Lincoln moved once more, this time to Macon County, Illinois. After another visit to New Orleans, Lincoln Decided to Stay. At the age Of 22, Abe packed his few belongings and moved to New Salem, Illinois where he began working in a store and managing a mill.
He was a tall 6 fit in. , rawboned young man, who won much popularity among the inhabitants of the frontier town by his great strength and his flair for storytelling, but most of all by his strength of character. His sincerity and capability won respect that was strengthened by his ability to hold his own in the roughest society. It was in New Salem he earned the title of “Honest Abe”. He was chosen captain off volunteer company gathered for the Black Hawk War in 1832, but the company did not see battle. Pond returning to New Salem, Lincoln became a partner in a grocery store that failed, leaving him with a heavy burden of debt. In order to pay this debt, he became a surveyor for a time, a village postmaster, as well as various odd jobs, including rail splitting. All the while he sought to improve his education and studied law. This education led him to politics. Lincoln began by being elected to the Illinois state legislature in 1 834 as a member of he Whig Party. He 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. He worked hard to achieve his goals in politics. “In 1836 he obtained his license as an attorney, and the next year he moved to Springfield, where he became a law partner of John T. Stuart. Lincoln practice steadily increased. Lincoln displayed great ability in law, a ready grasp of argument, and sincerity, color, and lucidity of speech.
He continued his interest in politics and entered on the national scene by serving one term in Congress (1847-49). Lincoln worked hard for the election of the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor, in 1 848, but when he was not rewarded with the office he desired-??Commissioner of the General Land Office-??he decided to retire from politics and return to the practice of law” (Abraham Lincoln: Early Political Career). Later Lincoln emerged again into politics in 1854, when he was caught up in the rising quarrel over slavery. He stoutly opposed the policy of Stephen A.
Douglas and particularly the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement. In a speech at Springfield, repeated at Peoria, he attacked the compromises concerning the question of slavery in the territories and invoked the democratic ideals contained in the Declaration of Independence. In 1 855 he sought to become a Senator but failed. He realized his sentiments were leading him away from the Whig and toward the new Republican party, and in 1856 he became a Republican.
At the Republican national convention of 1 856 he was prominent as a possible vice presidential candidate. Two years later he was nominated by the Republican Party to oppose Douglas in the Illinois senatorial race. Accepting the nomination (in a speech delivered at Springfield on June 16), Lincoln gave a ringing declaration in support Of the Union; “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Lincoln). The campaign that followed was impressive. Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates, in which he delivered masterful addresses for the Union and for the democratic idea.
He was not an abolitionist, but he regarded slavery as an injustice and an evil, and uncompromisingly opposed its extension. In 1 860, Lincoln was nominated as the Republican candidate for the U. S. Presidency and won the election. He was elected as the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Uncoil received only 40 percent of the popular vote, but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Befriending, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas.
On March 4, 1861, the day Abraham Lincoln was first sworn into office as President of the United States, the Chicago Tribune printed a special ample of his First Inaugural Address. In the address, the new president appealed to the “mystic chords of memory’ and to “the better angels of our nature” to hold the nation together. Seeking to alleviate the “Apprehension [that] seems to exist among the Southern States,” Lincoln pledged not to interfere with slavery in the South and pleaded with the Confederate states to reconcile with the North.
However, he also sent a clear message that he would not allow the Union to be peacefully dissolved. “We cannot separate,” Lincoln declared, and “the Union … Will constitutionally defend, and maintain itself. ” Though he wished for a peaceful resolution to the conflicts between the North and the South, Lincoln made clear that the Union would not back down if provoked and would not condone secession: ‘There needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority’ (President Lincoln First Inaugural Address, 1861).
With firm conviction, Lincoln declared South Carolina’s secession illegal and pledged to go to war to protect the federal union in 1 861. During the four years of the American Civil War, the president steered the North to victory ND authored the Emancipation Proclamation, which dealt a severe blow to the institution of slavery in the U. S. Lincoln was a thoughtful and soft-spoken man who used words sparingly but to great effect. His brilliance was captured in the Gettysburg Address, in which he movingly related the ongoing Civil War to the founding principles of America, all in less than two minutes.