biography abraham lincoln

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Childhood and youth

• Prairie lawyer
• Lincoln’s family
• Early political career
• The road to presidency
• At a glance: the Lincoln presidency
• Leading a house divided
• Outbreak of the U.S. Civil War
• Leadership in war
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• Postwar policy
• Reputation and character
• Cabinet of President Abraham Lincoln

What were Abraham Lincoln’s politics?

How did abraham lincoln get into politics, what were abraham lincoln’s chief goals in the american civil war, what is abraham lincoln’s legacy, what was abraham lincoln’s personal life like.

Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party and later a Republican . He believed that the government’s job was to do what a community of people could not do for themselves. One of his greatest preoccupations as a political thinker was the issue of self-governance and the promise and problems that could arise from it. The choice by some to allow the expansion of slavery was one such problem and was central to the American Civil War . Although opposed to slavery from the outset of his political career, Lincoln would not make its abolition a mainstay of his policy until several years into the war.

From 1834 to 1840, Abraham Lincoln occupied a seat in the Illinois state legislature. He also practiced law in Illinois during the 1830s and ’40s, and in that time he became one of the state’s most renowned lawyers. He first entered national politics in 1847 while serving a single term in Congress . In 1858 he made a bid for the Senate in a much-publicized race which he ultimately lost but which transformed him into a nationally recognized political figure. In 1860 he was nominated at the Republican National Convention to be the party’s presidential candidate, and he embarked on a presidential campaign that he would win.

Abraham Lincoln’s chief goal in the American Civil War was to preserve the Union. At the outset of the war, he would have done so at any cost, including by allowing slavery to continue. But abolishing slavery would become a nonnegotiable objective for him as the war progressed because of his own long-expressed abhorrence for the practice and because of the growing antislavery sentiment among his fellow Northerners. His intransigence on the subject scuttled possibilities of a peace conference between the Union and the Confederacy in 1864. By winning the war, he achieved both these objectives—reunion and abolition.

For many, Abraham Lincoln has gone down in history as something of a martyr for his country. That’s in part because of his assassination by John Wilkes Booth , which happened to occur on Good Friday —a connection that has been drawn time and again. But Lincoln had already begun to be mythicized during his lifetime, some of his contemporaries drawing parallels between him and figures like George Washington . Lincoln had his critics as well, particularly in the South: there were those who regarded him as an opponent to the values of personal freedom and states’ rights .

Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 in a backwoods cabin in Kentucky. His father was a pioneer and a farmer, and his mother was a deeply religious woman who died when Lincoln was young. His father’s second wife adored Lincoln and is said to have stoked his love of learning. Lincoln would go on to marry Mary Todd and have four boys with her, only one of whom survived into adulthood.

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Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville , Kentucky, U.S.—died April 15, 1865, Washington, D.C.) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–65), who preserved the Union during the American Civil War and brought about the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States.

Among American heroes, Lincoln continues to have a unique appeal for his fellow compatriots and also for people of other lands. This charm derives from his remarkable life story—the rise from humble origins, the dramatic death—and from his distinctively human and humane personality as well as from his historical role as savior of the Union and emancipator of enslaved people. His relevance endures and grows especially because of his eloquence as a spokesman for democracy . In his view, the Union was worth saving not only for its own sake but because it embodied an ideal, the ideal of self- government . In recent years, the political side to Lincoln’s character, and his racial views in particular, have come under close scrutiny, as scholars continue to find him a rich subject for research. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. , was dedicated to him on May 30, 1922.

Read about assassination and attempts involving U.S. presidents and presidential candidates.

Lincoln was born in a backwoods cabin 3 miles (5 km) south of Hodgenville, Kentucky, and was taken to a farm in the neighboring valley of Knob Creek when he was two years old. His earliest memories were of this home and, in particular, of a flash flood that once washed away the corn and pumpkin seeds he had helped his father plant. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was the descendant of a weaver’s apprentice who had migrated from England to Massachusetts in 1637. Though much less prosperous than some of his Lincoln forebears, Thomas was a sturdy pioneer. On June 12, 1806, he married Nancy Hanks. The Hanks genealogy is difficult to trace, but Nancy appears to have been of illegitimate birth. She has been described as “stoop-shouldered, thin-breasted, sad,” and fervently religious. Thomas and Nancy Lincoln had three children: Sarah, Abraham, and Thomas, who died in infancy.

In December 1816, faced with a lawsuit challenging the title to his Kentucky farm, Thomas Lincoln moved with his family to southwestern Indiana . There, as a squatter on public land, he hastily put up a “half-faced camp”—a crude structure of logs and boughs with one side open to the weather—in which the family took shelter behind a blazing fire. Soon he built a permanent cabin, and later he bought the land on which it stood. Abraham helped to clear the fields and to take care of the crops but early acquired a dislike for hunting and fishing. In afteryears he recalled the “panther’s scream,” the bears that “preyed on the swine,” and the poverty of Indiana frontier life, which was “pretty pinching at times.” The unhappiest period of his boyhood followed the death of his mother in the autumn of 1818. As a ragged nine-year-old, he saw her buried in the forest, then faced a winter without the warmth of a mother’s love. Fortunately, before the onset of a second winter, Thomas Lincoln married Sarah Bush Johnston, who moved from Kentucky to Indiana to make a family with Thomas Lincoln. A widow with two girls and a boy of her own, she had energy and affection to spare and ran the household with an even hand, treating both sets of children as if she had borne them all, but she became especially fond of Abraham, and he of her. He afterward referred to his stepmother as his “angel mother.”

His stepmother doubtless encouraged Lincoln’s taste for reading, yet the original source of his desire to learn remains something of a mystery. Both his parents were almost completely illiterate, and he himself received little formal education. He once said that, as a boy, he had gone to school “by littles”—a little now and a little then—and his entire schooling amounted to no more than one year’s attendance. His neighbors later recalled how he used to trudge for miles to borrow a book. According to his own statement, however, his early surroundings provided “absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three; but that was all.” Apparently the young Lincoln did not read a large number of books but thoroughly absorbed the few that he did read. These included Parson Weems’s Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington (with its story of the little hatchet and the cherry tree), Daniel Defoe ’s Robinson Crusoe , John Bunyan ’s Pilgrim’s Progress , and Aesop ’s Fables . From his earliest days he must have had some familiarity with the Bible , for it doubtless was the only book his family owned.

In March 1830 the Lincoln family undertook a second migration, this time to Illinois , with Lincoln himself driving the team of oxen. Having just reached the age of 21, he was about to begin life on his own. Six feet four inches tall, he was rawboned and lanky but muscular and physically powerful. He was especially noted for the skill and strength with which he could wield an ax. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked in the long-striding, flat-footed, cautious manner of a plowman. Good-natured though somewhat moody, talented as a mimic and storyteller, he readily attracted friends. But he was yet to demonstrate whatever other abilities he possessed.

After his arrival in Illinois, having no desire to be a farmer, Lincoln tried his hand at a variety of occupations. As a rail-splitter, he helped to clear and fence his father’s new farm. As a flatboatman, he made a voyage down the Mississippi River to New Orleans , Louisiana . (This was his second visit to that city, his first having been made in 1828, while he still lived in Indiana.) Upon his return to Illinois he settled in New Salem, a village of about 25 families on the Sangamon River . There he worked from time to time as storekeeper, postmaster, and surveyor. With the coming of the Black Hawk War (1832), he enlisted as a volunteer and was elected captain of his company. Afterward he joked that he had seen no “live, fighting Indians” during the war but had had “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes .” Meanwhile, aspiring to be a legislator, he was defeated in his first try and then repeatedly reelected to the state assembly. He considered blacksmithing as a trade but finally decided in favor of the law . Already having taught himself grammar and mathematics, he began to study law books. In 1836, having passed the bar examination, he began to practice law.

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, 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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Abraham Lincoln

February 12, 1809–April 15, 1865

Abraham Lincoln was an American political leader during the 19th century. Rising from humble beginnings, Lincoln was elected as the 16th president of the United States in 1860. Lincoln's election prompted the secession of several Southern states and eventually the beginning of the American Civil War. Lincoln served as president and commander-in-chief throughout most of the conflict before an assassin's bullet tragically cut his life short on April 15, 1865.

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States. Elected to a second term in 1864, Lincoln died in office on April 15, 1865, from a gunshot delivered by assassin John Wilkes Booth the night before. Image Source: Wikimedia.

Abraham Lincoln Biography

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He is widely considered one of the greatest American presidents and is revered for his leadership during the Civil War and his efforts to abolish slavery. Lincoln was a member of the Republican Party and was known for his strong moral character, his eloquence, and his determination to preserve the Union. During his presidency, Lincoln faced many challenges, including the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the Civil War, but he remained committed to preserving the Union and ending slavery. He delivered some of the most famous speeches in American history, including the Gettysburg Address, in which he redefined the Civil War as a struggle for the preservation of the principles of liberty and equality.

Quick Facts about Abraham Lincoln

• Date of Birth: Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin on his family’s farm, named “Sinking Spring,” in Hardin County, Kentucky.
• Parents: Lincoln’s parents were Thomas and Nancy (Hanks) Lincoln.
• Date of Death: Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, at age 56, in Washington, DC.
• Buried: Lincoln is buried in Lincoln’s Tomb, in Oak Ridge Cemetery, in Springfield, Illinois.
• Nickname: Lincoln’s nicknames were “Honest Abe,” “The Great Emancipator,” and “The Rail Splitter.”

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin on his family’s farm, named Sinking Spring, in Hardin County, Kentucky. Lincoln was the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Early in Lincoln’s life, his family enjoyed considerable prosperity, but legal problems involving land ownership prompted his family to move to Indiana in December 1816. Less than two years after being uprooted, Lincoln’s mother died on October 5, 1818. A little over one year later, Lincoln’s father married Sarah Bush Johnston on December 2, 1819. Lincoln received little formal education during his youth, but his stepmother taught him how to read and encouraged him to learn on his own. The two remained close until the end of Lincoln’s life.

In March 1830, when Lincoln was a young man, his family moved to a new farm in Illinois. Not wishing to become a farmer, Lincoln moved to New Salem, Illinois, in July 1831. While living there, he engaged in several occupations, including ownership of a general store, which eventually led him into bankruptcy.

Early Career

In 1832, Lincoln served briefly as a captain in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War , but he never engaged in combat. During the same year, he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Illinois General Assembly. Following his loss, Lincoln served as New Salem’s postmaster and as a county surveyor. During that time, he also began studying law independently. Still active in politics, voters elected Lincoln to serve in the Illinois General Assembly in 1834, and they re-elected him in 1836. As a member of the Whig Party, Lincoln supported a free-soil position, opposing both slavery and abolitionism.

Lawyer and Marriage

In 1836, Lincoln joined the Illinois bar. A year later, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and began practicing law. Voters re-elected Lincoln to the Illinois General Assembly in 1838 and 1840. While living in Springfield, Lincoln met Mary Todd, the daughter of a wealthy slave-holder from Lexington, Kentucky. In 1840, the couple became engaged, but they canceled the wedding, set for January 1, 1841, when both parties became apprehensive. They later resumed their romance and wed on November 4, 1842.

National Politics

Lincoln’s career in national politics began in 1842 when Illinois voters elected him to the United States House of Representatives. While serving in Washington, Lincoln introduced a plan to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. He also voted to censure President James K. Polk for usurpation of powers regarding the Mexican-American War in 1848—a vote that later seemed inconsistent with some of Lincoln’s own actions during the American Civil War.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

After completing his term in Congress, Lincoln returned to Springfield to practice law in 1849. Voters re-elected him to the Illinois General Assembly in 1854, but he declined to serve because he was pursuing a seat in the United States Senate. Lincoln’s Senate bid was unsuccessful, but he tried again in 1858, running against incumbent Stephen A. Douglas , author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act . When Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination for the Senate seat at the state convention on June 16, 1858, he addressed the sectional division plaguing the United States, asserting that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln and Douglas engaged in a series of seven debates across Illinois during the late summer and fall of 1858. Although Douglas won the election in November, the debates, which focused primarily on slavery, enhanced Lincoln’s national reputation and bolstered his reputation among Republicans.

President Lincoln

U.s. president-elect.

On May 18, 1860, delegates to Republican National Convention held in Chicago, selected Lincoln as their party’s candidate for President of the United States In November, Lincoln received only 39.8% of the popular vote, but his 180 electoral votes were enough to defeat three other candidates, including Stephen Douglas.

Southern Rebellion

The Southern response to Lincoln’s election was quick and electric. On December 20, 1860, delegates to a secession convention in South Carolina voted to secede from the Union because they viewed Lincoln’s hardline stance against the expansion of slavery as a threat to their way of life. By the time Lincoln became president on March 4, 1861, six other states had voted to secede. Despite attempts to resolve sectional differences—most notably the Crittenden Compromise —Lincoln faced a constitutional and military crisis the day he took office. Events rapidly spiraled toward war when South Carolina demanded that federal soldiers evacuate its military installation at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. After weighing several options, including abandoning the fort, Lincoln informed the governor of South Carolina of his intentions to resupply the fort. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, artillery units from the newly formed army of the Confederate States of America, commanded by General P. G. T. Beauregard , began shelling Fort Sumter , touching off the American Civil War.

Commander-in-Chief

Lincoln’s response was swift and somewhat autocratic, especially considering his earlier criticisms of Polk. On April 15, without authority from Congress, Lincoln called on all state governors to send troops for the formation of a temporary force of 75,000 soldiers. That action had the unfortunate result of forcing states to choose sides, causing Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee to join the Confederacy. Further, Lincoln proclaimed a blockade against Southern ports on April 19, 1861. In perhaps his most controversial move, Lincoln suspended the constitutionally guaranteed writ of habeas corpus on April 27, 1861 . When Chief Justice Roger Taney, sitting as a federal circuit judge in the case of Ex parte Merryman , ruled that Lincoln had no constitutional authority to do so, the president ignored the Chief Justice’s ruling. Over the course of the next two years, the Lincoln administration and the Army imprisoned nearly 18,000 American citizens without bringing charges against them. Congress finally ended the controversy, but not the practice, bypassing the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863, which temporarily legitimized the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

Controversy also plagued Lincoln’s record as commander-in-chief. Despite having far more men and materials at their disposal, Union armies had little success during the early part of the war. A seemingly endless parade of commanders including Winfield Scott , Irvin McDowell , George McClellan , Henry Halleck , John Pope , Ambrose Burnside , and Joseph Hooker , had limited success against their Southern counterparts. The performance of Union armies in the Eastern Theater was inferior to that of the Confederate armies. How much of the failure resulted from poor generalship as opposed to the poor choice of generals is debatable. However, that changed when Union forces under the command of George Meade won the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863.

Emancipation

Lincoln’s political performance as president during the war was stellar. When support for the war waned as battlefield casualties mounted, he gradually shifted the focus of the war to the abolition of slavery. On April 16, 1862, Lincoln signed an act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln used his war powers to issue an executive order abolishing slavery in the states at war with the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation galvanized and reinvigorated Lincoln’s abolitionist supporters, transforming the war from an effort to preserve the Union to a higher moral cause.

Re-election

Despite continually rising casualty totals, public unrest elicited by the practice of conscription, and mounting criticism from Copperheads and the Northern press, Lincoln sustained his political base and won re-election in 1864—no small political feat.

Reconstruction

Even before Lincoln won re-election, he began planning his reconstruction policy to heal the nation’s wounds when the war ended. It is perhaps in this arena where Lincoln’s star shone brightest. On December 8, 1863, Lincoln announced his plan for the reunification of the nation, known as the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction . The plan advocated a full pardon and the restoration of property to all engaged in the rebellion, except the highest Confederate officials and military leaders. It also enabled states to form new governments and be readmitted to the Union when ten percent of the eligible voters had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Finally, the plan encouraged re-admitted southern states to enact plans to ensure the freedom of former slaves.

Unlike others in his administration and in Congress, Lincoln believed that a lenient approach would best help heal the nation’s wounds once the fighting ended. When Congress tried to impose much harsher terms on the South through the enactment of the Wade-Davis Bill in July 1864, Lincoln used the pocket veto to thwart his opponents. During his second inaugural address, presented on March 4, 1865, Lincoln eloquently expressed his desire

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.

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Whether Lincoln could have consummated his vision of “malice toward none, with charity for all” will forever remain unknown. On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth fired a bullet into the back of Lincoln’s head as the president attended a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington. Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. the next morning.

National Mourning and Burial

Lincoln’s body lay in state in the White House for dignitaries on April 18. His funeral took place shortly after noon in the White House on April 19. The next day, the president’s casket lay in state at the Capitol, where roughly 25,000 visitors paid their last respects. On April 21, a train carrying Lincoln’s coffin, along with the body of his son Tad, who had died during Lincoln’s presidency, began the long trip back to Springfield, Illinois. The train’s route, which passed through hundreds of communities and seven states replicated, in reverse, Lincoln’s trip to Washington as the president-elect. Officials removed the coffin from the train to lie in state at ten locations along the trip.

Lincoln was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery, near Springfield, Illinois, on May 4, 1865. Since that time, Lincoln’s body has been exhumed and reburied several times. Lincoln’s Tomb, in Oak Ridge Cemetery, has been the final resting place for Lincoln since 1901.

Significance of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was an important historical figure because he served as the sixteenth President of the United States (1861-1865) and was the leader of the country during the American Civil War. Lincoln is widely regarded as one of the country’s greatest presidents and his legacy continues to shape American politics and culture. He is remembered for his efforts to preserve the Union, abolish slavery, and modernize the American economy. He is also remembered for his famous speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, in which he redefined the goals of the Civil War and transformed it into a struggle for the preservation of the American ideal of freedom and democracy. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, just as the Civil War was coming to an end and the country was beginning to heal from the wounds of war. Despite his brief presidency, Lincoln remains an important figure in American history and continues to be widely revered for his leadership, his courage, and his commitment to American ideals.

• Written by Harry Searles

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.

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Abraham Lincoln

U.S. PRESIDENTS (1809–1865); HODGENVILLE, KENTUCKY

Abraham Lincoln is often ranked as one of the United States’s most important presidents for his role in steering the country through the Civil War and his insistence on abolishing slavery, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation. Read on for some of his most famous quotes and facts about his family life, his iconic look (including that stovepipe hat), and his eventual assassination.

1. Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd, lost three of their four children early on.

The Lincolns had four sons:

Eddie died at age 3 of "chronic consumption" (likely tuberculosis), and Willie was born 10 months later. In 1862, while the family was in the White House, 11-year-old Willie died of typhoid fever. Little Tad, who eventually recovered from the typhoid fever he had at the same time as Willie, survived his father but died in 1871 at age 18, possibly from a heart condition. Oldest brother Robert was the only one to survive to adulthood, and, in his father’s footsteps, had a long career in politics, serving as both the Secretary of War and Ambassador to the UK.

2. LINCOLN’S HEIGHT WAS FORMIDABLE, EVEN BEFORE HE PUT ON HIS FAMOUS TOP HAT.

At 6 foot 4 inches, Lincoln remains the tallest president in U.S. history. And one of his iconic top hats—the one he wore (which was 7 to 8 inches tall) to Ford’s Theatre the night of his assassination—is a permanent piece of the Smithsonian collection.

3. Lincoln’s presidency truly marked the beginning of the Civil War.

Lincoln won the presidential election of 1860 without carrying any Southern states, and politicians from the region immediately became more open when discussing rebellion. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, seven states had seceded with more to follow after. The Confederacy ratified their own constitution within the week, and the first battle of the Civil War broke out at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, just weeks later.

4. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president.

When the Republican Party was formed in 1854, it was in response to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which opened the Kansas and Nebraska territories up as possible future slave states. By 1860, the Northern abolitionist-filled party won control of both the House and Senate and the White House. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day 1863, and the Republican Congress pushed the Thirteenth Amendment through in 1865, which effectively banned slavery.

5. Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated.

On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was shot by actor John Wilkes Booth while the president was watching a play at Ford’s Theatre. The president would be pronounced dead in the early hours of April 15. Lincoln was 56 years old when he was assassinated, but he wasn’t the only target that night—Booth had conspired with others to simultaneously attack Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward . Booth was the only one who succeeded in his mission that night.

6. It took more than 50 years for the Lincoln Memorial to be approved and completed.

It’s now the most visited monument in Washington D.C., but it took decades of squabbling before the Lincoln Memorial was built. Though Congress had formed the National Lincoln Monument Association to begin planning in 1867, construction wouldn’t actually begin until 1914. When the monument finally opened to the public in 1922, Robert Todd Lincoln was in attendance.

7. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address took about three minutes to deliver.

When Abraham Lincoln made his famous Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, his words weren’t supposed to live on in history. In fact, the 16th president wasn’t even the primary speaker that day; that honor went to a scholar and statesman named Edward Everett , who was touted as one of the country’s great orators at the time.

At just around 270 words, Lincoln’s speech took about three minutes to make, but it’s lived on ever since as a shining example of impactful brevity. Everett’s speech, on the other hand, came in at 13,000 words and took over two hours to deliver—and chances are, most Americans will never know it happened at all. Fittingly, when addressing the crowd that day, Lincoln said, "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here."

Turns out he was right—at least about one of the speeches.

Famous Abraham Lincoln Quotes:

• "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power."
• "Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves."
• "Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."
• "I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice."

Abraham Lincoln Biography

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was born in Hardin (now Larue) County, Ky., on Feb. 12, 1809. His family moved to Indiana and then to Illinois, and Lincoln gained what education he could along the way. While reading law, he worked in a store, managed a mill, surveyed, and split rails. In 1834, he went to the Illinois legislature as a Whig and became the party's floor leader. For the next 20 years he practiced law in Springfield, except for a single term (1847–49) in Congress, where he denounced the Mexican War. In 1855, he was a candidate for senator and the next year he joined the new Republican Party.

A leading but unsuccessful candidate for the vice-presidential nomination with Frémont, Lincoln gained national attention in 1858 when, as Republican candidate for senator from Illinois, he engaged in a series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic candidate. He lost the election, but continued to prepare the way for the 1860 Republican convention and was rewarded with the presidential nomination on the third ballot. He won the election over three opponents.

From the start, Lincoln made clear that, unlike Buchanan, he believed the national government had the power to crush the rebellion. Not an abolitionist, he held the slavery issue subordinate to that of preserving the Union, but soon perceived that the war could not be brought to a successful conclusion without freeing the slaves. His administration was hampered by the incompetence of many Union generals, the inexperience of the troops, and the harassing political tactics both of the Republican Radicals, who favored a hard policy toward the South, and the Democratic Copperheads, who desired a negotiated peace. The Gettysburg Address of Nov. 19, 1863, marks the high point in the record of American eloquence. Lincoln's long search for a winning combination finally brought generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman to the top; and their series of victories in 1864 dispelled the mutterings from both Radicals and Peace Democrats that at one time seemed to threaten Lincoln's reelection. He was reelected in 1864, defeating Gen. George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate. His inaugural address urged leniency toward the South: “With malice toward none, with charity for all . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds . . .” This policy aroused growing opposition on the part of the Republican Radicals, but before the matter could be put to the test, Lincoln was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater, Washington, on April 14, 1865. He died the next morning.

Lincoln's marriage to Mary Todd in 1842 was often unhappy and turbulent, in part because of his wife's pronounced instability.

Encyclopedia: .

4/15/1865

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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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Abraham Lincoln Biography

Born: February 12, 1809 Hodgenville, Kentucky Died: April 14, 1865 Washington, D.C. American president

The sixteenth president of the United States and president during the Civil War (1861–1865), Abraham Lincoln will forever be remembered by his inspirational rise to fame, his efforts to rid the country of slavery, and his ability to hold together a divided nation. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, and two outstanding inaugural addresses are widely regarded as some of the greatest speeches ever delivered by an American politician.

Starting life in a log cabin

Abraham Lincoln was born to Thomas and Nancy Lincoln on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin on a farm in Hardin County, Kentucky. Two years later the family moved to a farm on Knob Creek. There, when there was no immediate work to be done, Abraham walked two miles to the schoolhouse, where he learned the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

When Abraham was seven, his father sold his lands and moved the family into the rugged wilderness of Indiana across the Ohio River. After spending a winter in a crude shack, the Lincolns began building a better home and clearing the land for planting. They were making progress when, in the summer of 1818, a terrible disease known as milk sickness struck the region. First it took the lives of Mrs. Lincoln's uncle and aunt, and then Nancy Hanks Lincoln herself died. Without Mrs. Lincoln the household began to fall apart, and much of the workload fell to Abraham and his sister.

The next winter Abraham's father returned to Kentucky and brought back a second wife, Sarah Bush Johnson, a widow with three children. As time passed, the region where the Lincolns lived grew in population. Lincoln himself grew tall and strong, and his father often hired him out to work for neighbors. Meanwhile, Lincoln's father had again moved his family to a new home in Illinois, where he built a cabin on the Sangamon River. At the end of the first summer in Illinois, disease swept through the region and put the Lincolns on the move once again. This time it was to Coles County. Abraham, who was now a grown man, did not go along. Instead he moved to the growing town of New Salem, where he was placed in charge of a mill and store.

Entering public life

Life in New Salem was a turning point for Lincoln, and the great man of history began to emerge. To the store came people of all kinds to talk and trade and to enjoy the stories told by this unique and popular man. The members of the New Salem Debating Society welcomed him, and Lincoln began to develop his skills as a passionate and persuasive speaker. When the Black Hawk War (1832) erupted between the United States and hostile Native Americans, the volunteers of the region quickly elected Lincoln to be their captain.

Lincoln served four straight terms in the legislature and soon emerged as a party leader. Meanwhile, he mastered the law books he could buy or borrow. In September 1836 Lincoln began practicing law and played an important part in having the Illinois state capital moved from Vandalia to Springfield. In 1837 Lincoln himself moved to Springfield to become Stuart's law partner. He did not, however, forget politics. In 1846 Lincoln was elected to the U.S. Congress. During these years Lincoln had become engaged to Mary Todd (1818–1882), a cultured and well-educated Kentucky woman. They were married on November 2, 1842.

First failure

When Congress met in December 1847, Lincoln expressed his disapproval with the Mexican War (1846–48), in which American and Mexican forces clashed over land in the Southwest. These views, together with his wish to abolish, or end, slavery in the District of Columbia, brought sharp criticism from the people back in Illinois. They believed Lincoln was "not a patriot" and had not correctly represented his state in Congress.

Although the Whigs won the presidency in 1848, Lincoln could not even control the support in his own district. His political career seemed to be coming to a close just as it was beginning. His only reward for party service was an offer of the governorship of far-off Oregon, which he refused. Lincoln then returned to Illinois and resumed practicing law.

War on the horizon

During the next twelve years, while Lincoln rebuilt his legal career, the nation was becoming divided. While victory in the Mexican War added vast western territory to the United States, then came the issue of slavery in those new territories. To Southerners, the issue involved the security and rights of slavery everywhere. To Northerners, it was a matter of morals and justice. A national crisis soon developed. Only the efforts of Senators Henry Clay (1777–1852) and Daniel Webster (1782–1852) brought about the Compromise of 1850. With the compromise, a temporary truce was reached between the states favoring slavery and those opposed to it. The basic issues, however, were not eliminated. Four years later the struggle was reopened.

Lincoln's passionate opposition to slavery was enough to draw him back into the world of politics. He had always viewed slavery as a "moral, social and political wrong" and looked forward to its eventual abolition. Although willing to let it alone for the present in the states where it existed, he would not see it extended one inch.

At the same time, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) drafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would leave the decision of slavery up to the new territories. Lincoln thought the bill ignored the growing Northern determination to rid the nation of slavery. Soon, in opposition to the expansion of slavery, the Republican party was born. When Douglas returned to Illinois to defend his position, Lincoln seized every opportunity to point out the weakness in it.

Republican leader

Lincoln's failure to receive the nomination as senator in 1855 convinced him that the Whig party was dead. By summer 1856 he became a member of the new Republicans. Lincoln quickly emerged as the outstanding leader of the new party. At the party's first national convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received 110 votes for vice president on the first ballot. Although he was not chosen, he had been recognized as an important national figure.

National attention began turning toward the violence in Kansas and the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case, which debated the issue of slavery in the new territories. Meanwhile, Douglas had returned to Illinois to wage his fight for reelection to the Senate. But unlike in earlier elections, Illinois had grown rapidly and the population majority had shifted from the southern part of the state to the central and northern areas. In these growing areas the Republican party had gained a growing popularity—as had Abraham Lincoln.

As Lincoln challenged Douglas for his seat in the Senate, the two engaged in legendary debates. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln delivered his famous "house divided" speech, stating "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe the government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Lincoln proved his ability to hold his own against the man known as the "Little Giant." In the end Douglas was reelected as senator, but Lincoln had gained national attention and his name was soon mentioned for the presidency.

The sixteenth president

In 1860 the Republican National Convention met and chose Lincoln as their candidate for president of the United States. With a divided Democratic party and the recent formation of the Constitutional Union party, Lincoln's election was certain. After Lincoln's election victory, parts of the country reacted harshly against the new president's stand on slavery. Seven Southern states then seceded, or withdrew, from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.

In his inaugural address he clarified his position on the national situation. Secession, he said, was wrong, and the Union could not legally be broken apart. He would not interfere with slavery in the states, but he would "hold, occupy, and possess" all property and places owned by the federal government. By now there was no avoiding the outbreak of the Civil War.

The Civil War

From this time on, Lincoln's life was shaped by the problems and fortunes of civil war. As president, he was the head of all agencies in government and also acted as commander in chief, or supreme commander, of the armies. Lincoln was heavily criticized for early failures. Radicals in Congress were soon demanding a reorganization of his cabinet, or official advisors, and a new set of generals to lead his armies. To combat this, Lincoln himself studied military books. He correctly evaluated General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) and General William T. Sherman (1820–1891) and the importance of the western campaign. Thanks, in part, to Lincoln's reshuffling of his military leaders, the Union forces would soon capture victory over the Confederates.

Afterward, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation called for the freeing of all slaves in territories still at war with the Union. Later, during his Gettysburg Address, he gave the war its universal meaning as a struggle to preserve a nation based on freedoms and dedicated to the idea "that all men are created equal."

Lincoln was reelected in 1864. As the end of the Civil War appeared close, Lincoln urged his people "to bind up the nation's wounds" and create a just and lasting peace. But Lincoln would never be able enjoy the nation he had reunited. Five days after the Confederate army surrendered and ended the Civil War, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1965. The president died the next day.

Although the reasons for Lincoln's assassination would be debated, his prominent place in American history has never been in doubt. His work to free the slaves earned him the honorable reputation as the Great Emancipator. His ability to hold together a country torn apart by civil war would forever secure his place as one of America's greatest presidents.

For More Information

Bruns, Roger. Abraham Lincoln. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Jacobs, William Jay. Lincoln. New York: Scribner's, 1991.

Judson, Karen. Abraham Lincoln. New York: Enslow, 1998.

Miller, William Lee. Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Oates, Stephen B. With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.

Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954. Reprint, San Diego: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1982.

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The 15 Best Books on President Abraham Lincoln

Essential books on abraham lincoln.

There are countless books on Abraham Lincoln, and it comes with good reason, aside from being elected America’s sixteenth President (1861-1865), he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy and preserved the Union while serving as Commander-in-Chief amidst a brutal Civil War.

“Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth,” Lincoln remarked. “In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.”

In order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of history’s most consequential figures to the heights of societal contribution, we’ve compiled a list of the 15 best books on Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald

Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln’s gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided by civil war. Donald goes beyond biography, illuminating the gradual development of Lincoln’s character, chronicling his tremendous capacity for evolution and growth, thus illustrating what made it possible for a man so inexperienced and so unprepared for the presidency to become a great moral leader. In the most troubled of times, here was a man who led the country out of slavery and preserved a shattered Union – in short, one of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.

Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.

It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln’s mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation’s history.

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Gary Wills

The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead he gave the whole nation “a new birth of freedom” in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece.

By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln came to change the world and to effect an intellectual revolution, how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns, and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.

Lincoln’s Sword by Douglas L. Wilson

Widely considered in his own time as a genial but provincial lightweight who was out of place in the presidency, Abraham Lincoln astonished his allies and confounded his adversaries by producing a series of speeches and public letters so provocative that they helped revolutionize public opinion on such critical issues as civil liberties, the use of black soldiers, and the emancipation of slaves. This is a brilliant and unprecedented examination of how Lincoln used the power of words to not only build his political career but to keep the country united during the Civil War.

The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner

Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the  New York Times Book Review , this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln’s lifelong engagement with the nation’s critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln’s greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.

Lincoln on the Verge by Ted Widmer

As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration – an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent. Lincoln on the Verge  charts these pivotal thirteen days of travel, as Lincoln discovers his power, speaks directly to the public, and sees his country up close.

Drawing on new research, this riveting account reveals the president-elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, as he foils an assassination attempt, forges an unbreakable bond with the American people, and overcomes formidable obstacles in order to take his oath of office.

A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White

Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution.

White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiers and sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederate shore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with the immorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw it forever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, for his own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War that would become the basis of his finest address.

Most enlightening, the man who comes into focus in this gem among books on Abraham Lincoln is a person of intellectual curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity, and unafraid to “think anew and act anew.”

Tried by War by James M. McPherson

As we celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, this study by preeminent, bestselling Civil War historian James M. McPherson provides a rare, fresh take on one of the most enigmatic figures in American history.  Tried by War offers a revelatory (and timely) portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. Suspenseful and inspiring, this is the story of how Lincoln, with almost no previous military experience before entering the White House, assumed the powers associated with the role of Commander in Chief, and through his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union.

Honor’s Voice by Douglas L. Wilson

Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable emergence from the rural Midwest and his rise to the presidency have been the stuff of romance and legend. But as Douglas L. Wilson shows us in Honor’s Voice, Lincoln’s transformation was not one long triumphal march, but a process that was more than once seriously derailed. There were times, in his journey from storekeeper and mill operator to lawyer and member of the Illinois state legislature, when Lincoln lost his nerve and self-confidence – on at least two occasions he became so despondent as to appear suicidal – and when his acute emotional vulnerabilities were exposed.

Focusing on the crucial years between 1831 and 1842, Wilson’s skillful analysis of the testimonies and writings of Lincoln’s contemporaries reveals the individual behind the legends. We see Lincoln as a boy: not the dutiful son studying by firelight, but the stubborn rebel determined to make something of himself. We see him as a young man: not the ascendant statesman, but the canny local politician who was renowned for his talents in wrestling and storytelling (as well as for his extensive store of off-color jokes).

Wilson also reconstructs Lincoln’s frequently anguished personal life: his religious skepticism, recurrent bouts of depression, and difficult relationships with women – from Ann Rutledge to Mary Owens to Mary Todd.

Abraham Lincoln by Lord Charnwood

No other narrative account of Abraham Lincoln’s life has inspired such widespread and lasting acclaim as Charnwood’s  Abraham Lincoln: A Biography . Written by a native of England and originally published in 1916, the biography is a rare blend of beautiful prose and profound historical insight. Charnwood’s study of Lincoln’s statesmanship introduced generations of Americans to the life and politics of Lincoln and the author’s observations are so comprehensive and well-supported that any serious study of Lincoln must respond to his conclusions.

Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk

Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln’s adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the president’s character and his leadership. Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health from the time he was a young man. Shenk draws from historical records, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of his unhappiness. In the process, he discovers that the President’s coping strategies; among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection; ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil.

Lincoln at Cooper Union by Harold Holzer

This favorite among books on Abraham Lincoln explores his most influential and widely reported pre-presidential address – an extraordinary appeal by the western politician to the eastern elite that propelled him toward the Republican nomination for president. Delivered in New York in February 1860, the Cooper Union speech dispelled doubts about Lincoln’s suitability for the presidency and reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition to slavery to Republican progressives.

Award-winning Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer places Lincoln and his speech in the context of the times – an era of racism, politicized journalism, and public oratory as entertainment – and shows how the candidate framed the speech as an opportunity to continue his famous “debates” with his archrival Democrat Stephen A. Douglas on the question of slavery.

Holzer describes the enormous risk Lincoln took by appearing in New York, where he exposed himself to the country’s most critical audience and took on Republican Senator William Henry Seward of New York, the front runner, in his own backyard. Then he recounts a brilliant and innovative public relations campaign, as Lincoln took the speech “on the road” in his successful quest for the presidency.

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years by Carl Sandberg

Originally published in six volumes, Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln was called “the greatest historical biography of our generation.” Sandburg distilled this work into one volume that became one of the definitive books on Abraham Lincoln.

We Are Lincoln Men by David Herbert Donald

Though Abraham Lincoln had hundreds of acquaintances and dozens of admirers, he had almost no intimate friends. Behind his mask of affability and endless stream of humorous anecdotes, he maintained an inviolate reserve that only a few were ever able to penetrate.

Professor Donald’s remarkable book offers a fresh way of looking at Abraham Lincoln, both as a man who needed friendship and as a leader who understood the importance of friendship in the management of men. Donald penetrates Lincoln’s mysterious reserve to offer a new picture of the president’s inner life and to explain his unsurpassed political skills.

The Lincolns: Portraits of a Marriage by Daniel Mark

Although the private lives of political couples have in our era become front-page news, the true story of this extraordinary and tragic first family has never been fully told.  The Lincolns  eclipses earlier accounts with riveting new information that makes husband and wife, president and first lady, come alive in all their proud accomplishments and earthy humanity.

Award-winning biographer and poet Daniel Mark Epstein gives a fresh close-up view of the couple’s life in Springfield, Illinois (of their twenty-two years of marriage, all but six were spent there), and dramatizes with stunning immediacy how the Lincolns’ ascent to the White House brought both dazzling power and the slow, secret unraveling of the couple’s unique bond.

If you enjoyed this guide to essential books on Abraham Lincoln, be sure to check out our list of The 10 Best Books on President George Washington !

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 >>>>>>

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FREE Ebook! Reading for the Common Good by ERB Editor Chris Smith

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.

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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President Abraham Lincoln

• Honest Abe was the tallest president at 6 feet 4 inches tall.
• He set up a national banking system while he was president. He also established the Department of Agriculture.
• He was known as a gifted storyteller and liked to tell jokes.
• On the day he was shot, Lincoln told his bodyguard that he had dreamt he would be assassinated.
• He was the first president who had a full beard.
• He often stored things like letters and documents in his tall stove-piped hat.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:
• Listen to a recorded reading of the Gettysburg Address:

The Final Days of Abraham Lincoln

The Great Emancipator was basking in the triumph of a Civil War victory and the promise of rekindled dreams when he met his shocking end.

The following morning, after Stanton jolted the region awake with a 500-gun salute at dawn, the populace of Washington, D.C. took to the streets in celebration. A crowd of several thousand gathered outside the White House, clamoring for the President before he finally appeared in the second-story window to acknowledge their presence.

Revealing that he planned to formally address the occasion in due time, Lincoln noted that he was particularly fond of the song "Dixie," the anthem of the South, and asked the band assembled to strike up a version of the "lawful prize" acquired with the Union victory.

The three-night documentary event Abraham Lincoln premieres Sunday, February 20 at 8/7c on The HISTORY ® Channel

Lincoln addressed Reconstruction in his final speech

Just one day later, on April 11, Lincoln returned to that second-story window to deliver what would be his final prepared words to the public. After celebrating the success at hand, he pivoted to the crucial topic of Reconstruction, citing Louisiana as a state that had made good-faith efforts to offer freed enslaved people the opportunity for a public education.

Although he was disappointed that voting rights were not part of the package, the President stressed that it was better to build on a flawed plan than to start from scratch, rhetorically asking whether a party "shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it?”

In the audience, actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth seethed as he listened to ideas to reconfigure the fallen Confederacy. Having already launched a failed attempt to kidnap the President, he swore to colleagues that this time Lincoln would pay with his life.

The President spent his last day with his family

Grant's return to Washington brought more festivities and the chance for Lincoln to catch up with his oldest son, Robert , a captain on the general's staff. They enjoyed a relaxed breakfast on the Good Friday morning of April 14, the elder imparting fatherly advice about the importance of finishing up law school. The President then attended his weekly cabinet meeting, which touched on the installation of a temporary military government in Virginia and North Carolina.

But Lincoln seemed most eager to go out on a private carriage ride with his wife, Mary . Following a rough period in which they endured an all-encompassing war and the death of an 11-year-old son, the quiet excursion seemingly sparked an awakening from a winter's discontent, as they revisited dormant memories and mused on the places they could visit together. Mary later told friends that she had never seen her husband so "cheerful."

READ MORE: What Abraham Lincoln Was Carrying in His Pockets the Night He Was Killed

Against advice, Lincoln decided to attend the theater

Following an early supper, the Lincolns prepared to attend a production of the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. The Grants, initially scheduled to join them, wound up declining the invitation, as did Secretary Stanton, who chided the President on the dangers of appearing in such a public space. The President and First Lady were eventually accompanied by a younger couple, Clara Harris and Major Henry Rathbone.

The play was already underway when the orchestra launched into "Hail to the Chief," and Lincoln bowed to the applauding audience before settling into the presidential box with his party. Onlookers noted that Mary seemed quite cozy with her husband, often drawing his attention to something that caught her fancy on stage.

Shortly after 10 p.m., Booth was allowed entry to the presidential box by an usher. With the policeman assigned to guard Lincoln nowhere in sight (accounts suggest he may have been in a neighboring tavern) the assassin had a clear path to his target. Waiting for a line that drew laughter, he quietly approached Lincoln and shot him in the back of the head.

After Booth stabbed Rathbone and leaped from the box to the stage, igniting a pandemonium that many believed to be part of the production, attention turned to the President's dire straits. The first to reach him was a recent medical school graduate named Charles Leale, who located the "perfectly smooth opening" of the bullet entry point and cleared out the mess of coagulated blood and matted hair to relieve pressure on Lincoln's brain. Joined by two other doctors, they elected to move the mortally wounded patient from the crowded box.

A testament to his strength, Lincoln didn't die immediately

Carried to the Petersen boardinghouse across the street, Lincoln was laid diagonally on a bed to accommodate his 6'4" frame. Although the doctors seemed impressed by his superhuman ability to withstand a point-blank shot that would have killed most men immediately, they recognized the increasing futility of their attempts to remove the bullet.

By midnight, the President's cabinet had congregated around their leader, the somber mood further dampened by the (erroneous) report that Secretary of State Seward had also been assassinated. Robert attempted to console his distraught mother, even as he struggled to keep his own emotions in check.

President Lincoln somehow hung on through dawn, but by then the onlookers were checking their watches against the faint breathing that occasionally broke the long spells of silence. When the inevitable arrived, at 7:22 a.m., Secretary Stanton aptly captured the moment before their grief spread from the room to the far territories of a war-torn country, remarking, "Now, he belongs to the ages."

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Abraham Lincoln Facts, Biography, and More (Free Google Slides)

Learn about the 16th president’s legacy.

Our country has had many presidents, all with their own trials and contributions. Some of them stand out more than others, and our nation’s 16th leader is one of them. It’s been more than 150 years since Lincoln held office, but his legacy continues to be felt today. From his biography and facts about his life to videos and books, here’s everything you need to know about Abraham Lincoln.

Don’t miss our free downloadable. Grab your full set of ready-to-go Abraham Lincoln Google Slides with all of the information below, including kid-friendly explanations, a timeline, and more.

Abraham Lincoln Biography

Abraham lincoln timeline, facts about abraham lincoln.

• Abraham Lincoln Speeches

Abraham Lincoln Pictures

Videos about abraham lincoln, abraham lincoln quotes.

• Abraham Lincoln Books

More Abraham Lincoln Teaching Resources

When and where was abraham lincoln born.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in LaRue County, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809 .

Where did Abraham Lincoln grow up?

Lincoln’s family moved from Kentucky to Indiana and later to Illinois . He grew up in poverty. Lincoln only went to school for about 18 months because he had to work to provide money for his family instead. He loved to read, and he read while working at jobs including farmhand and store clerk.

How tall was Abraham Lincoln?

Abraham Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall , making him the tallest U.S. president in history.

Who was Abraham Lincoln’s wife?

In 1842, Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd, the daughter of a prominent Kentucky slave-owning family. They lived in Springfield, Illinois, and had four sons.

What was Abraham Lincoln’s job before he was president?

Lincoln was a captain in the Black Hawk War , spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and was a practicing attorney before becoming president.

Did Abraham Lincoln have slaves?

In the White House, Lincoln had many servants . All his servants were free men and women, although many had previously been enslaved or were descended from slave families.

What did Abraham Lincoln think about slavery?

Abraham Lincoln believed that slavery was wrong. But he was not an abolitionist or someone who wanted to immediately abolish slavery and make enslaved people equal with white people. Lincoln argued that the idea that “all men are created equal” did apply to white and Black people, but that did not mean that he thought Black and white people should have the same rights. ADVERTISEMENT

When did Abraham Lincoln become president?

Abraham Lincoln became the 16th president of the United States in 1861.

What did Abraham Lincoln accomplish as president?

When he was president, Abraham Lincoln built the Republican party into a national organization. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation , which freed the slaves in the Confederate states (but not states along the border between the North and South ). In 1864, he won reelection and started a plan for peace as the Civil War came to an end.

What was the Emancipation Proclamation?

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the United States was starting the third year of the Civil War. The proclamation declared “all persons held as slaves” within the Confederate states as “free.” It did not give Black people the same rights as white people, however. The Emancipation Proclamation is now on display in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

When did Abraham Lincoln die?

Abraham Lincoln died on the morning of April 15, 1865, in Washington, D.C.

How did Abraham Lincoln die?

Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. Booth thought he was helping the South by killing Lincoln.

Watch this video above about the impact Lincoln’s assassination had on the United States .

How did Abraham Lincoln change the world?

Abraham Lincoln is one of the best-known and most respected U.S. presidents . The Civil War started when the South seceded from the Union. Lincoln was committed to preserving the Union and kept the United States together while maintaining democracy. He ended slavery and kept the Southern states from seceding, or separating, from the country. This meant that, after Lincoln’s presidency, the United States could be a “more perfect Union” that was free.

Where is the Lincoln Memorial?

The Lincoln Memorial is in Washington, D.C. It features a statue of Abraham Lincoln inside the monument, and written behind the statue are the words: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

Where is Lincoln buried?

Lincoln is not buried at the Lincoln Memorial. His final resting place is the Lincoln Tomb in Illinois .

Here is a timeline of major events in Abraham Lincoln’s life:

• February 12, 1809: Abraham Lincoln is born in Kentucky.
• 1816: Lincoln’s family moves to Indiana, where they live in a cabin.
• 1818-1819: Lincoln’s mother dies, and his father remarries.
• 1830: Lincoln’s family moves to Illinois. He works splitting rails (cutting logs), as a postmaster, and as a member of a boat crew.
• 1832: Lincoln runs for political office in the Illinois State Legislature and loses.
• 1834: Lincoln runs again and wins a seat in the Illinois State Legislature.
• 1836: Lincoln becomes a lawyer.
• 1842: Lincoln marries Mary Todd.
• 1846: Lincoln is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
• 1858: Lincoln runs for U.S. Senate. He becomes well known for his speeches and beliefs.
• November 6, 1860: Lincoln wins the presidency. This upsets the Southern states who believe Lincoln will abolish slavery.
• December 20, 1860: South Carolina is the first state to secede from the Union.
• 1861-1864: The American Civil War continues. As many as 850,000 people die.
• 1863: Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.
• 1864: Lincoln wins reelection.
• April 14, 1865: John Wilkes Booth, a pro-slavery advocate, shoots Lincoln during a theater performance.
• April 15, 1865: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, dies.

Abraham Lincoln was born poor.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin. Although Lincoln’s parents could not read , his stepmother noticed that he was very smart and encouraged his reading and studying.

Abraham Lincoln lost his mother when he was a child.

Lincoln’s mother died when he was just 9 years old . Just a year later, his father married Sarah Bush Johnston . Fortunately, he had a very good relationship with his new stepmother. 

Abraham Lincoln only received 18 months of formal education.

Lincoln forwent his education to spend his time working to help support his family .

Abraham Lincoln is in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Over 12 years, he  appeared in 300 matches . He only lost once !

Abraham Lincoln was a self-taught lawyer.

Just as he taught himself to read, Lincoln also taught himself law . Incredibly, he passed the bar exam in 1936 and went on to practice law. 

Abraham Lincoln had four kids.

While Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln welcomed four children —Robert, Tad, Edward, and Willie—only Robert survived to adulthood. 

Abraham Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846.

He served a term as a U.S. congressman for a year in 1846 but was very unpopular during that time because he strongly opposed the Mexican-American War.

Abraham Lincoln hated the nickname “Abe.”

This might be one of the most surprising facts about Abraham Lincoln. While our 16th president is often referred to as “Abe” Lincoln, or even “Honest Abe,” the truth is that he didn’t like the moniker .

Abraham Lincoln established the Secret Service.

Lincoln created the Secret Service to stop widespread counterfeiting of money in the United States.

Abraham Lincoln was the only U.S. president to hold a patent.

While his invention (No. 6469) was registered as a device for “buoying vessels over shoals” in 1849, it was never actually used on boats or made commercially available.

Abraham Lincoln launched the National Banking System.

While president, Lincoln set up the first National Banking System , leading to the implementation of the standard U.S. currency.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore.

The massive sculpture carved into the Black Hills region of South Dakota, which has been  protested by Native Americans  for years, features the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans enlisted in the war.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation allowed African American men to officially serve in the U.S. armed forces for the first time. By the end of the Civil War, 190,000 African Americans enlisted in the Union army.

Lincoln wanted African Americans to be able to vote.

He was the first president to advocate for giving African American veterans the right to vote .

Lincoln is the most written-about figure in American history.

Abraham Lincoln is the most written-about figure in American history. More than 18,000 books have been written about him.

Lincoln was an animal lover.

He had many pets including dogs, cats, horses, and goats.

Lincoln was not born in one of the 13 original colonies.

He was the first president not born in one of the 13 original states.

Lincoln was the first president to be photographed at his inauguration.

Lincoln was photographed at his inauguration , and his murderer, John Wilkes Booth, can be seen in the photo as well.

Abraham Lincoln’s Speeches

Lincoln made many speeches , but the most famous are the House Divided speech and the Gettysburg Address.

House Divided Speech

The House Divided speech was given at the Republican Convention in 1858, before the Civil War.

Listen to the House Divided speech .

The Gettysburg Address

Lincoln gave the speech to dedicate a portion of the Gettysburg battlefield to memorialize Civil War soldiers.

Watch this video about the Gettysburg Address .

Photography was invented in the 1820s and first used in the 1830s , so we have some photos of Abraham Lincoln, as well as sketches and drawings.

Abraham Lincoln as a young man

Abraham Lincoln sitting with the men in his cabinet

Photo taken in 1863 and printed in 1901

Famous photo taken in 1863, eight days before the Gettysburg Address

Lincoln wearing his famous top hat, with generals at a Civil War site

The 2nd inauguration of Abraham Lincoln

These videos help us understand more about the life, experiences, and impact of President Abraham Lincoln.

Video Biography: Abraham Lincoln

Video Biography: Abraham Lincoln for Kids

Video: Every Known Photograph of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was a master of statements about freedom, democracy, and philosophy. Here are a few of our favorite quotes.

You may burn my body to ashes, and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong. —Abraham Lincoln

It is not the qualified voters , but the qualified voters who choose to vote, that constitute political power. —Abraham Lincoln

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . —abraham lincoln.

It’s my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues. —Abraham Lincoln

A house divided against itself cannot stand. —abraham lincoln.

Get more quotes: 110+ Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Books about abraham lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln has inspired books about his presidency, honesty, and top hat. Engage kids in learning more about his life with books from these lists.

Abe Lincoln’s Hat by Martha Brenner

Buy it: Abe Lincoln’s Hat at Amazon

Who Was Abraham Lincoln? by Janet Pascal

Buy it: Who Was Abraham Lincoln? at Amazon

Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books by Kay Winters

Buy it: Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books at Amazon

I Am Abraham Lincoln by Brad Meltzer

Buy it: I Am Abraham Lincoln at Amazon

Abe Lincoln’s Dream by Lane Smith

Buy it: Abe Lincoln’s Dream at Amazon

Use these teaching resources for even more information and ideas on how to teach about the 16th president:

• Collection of papers at the Library of Congress
• Herndon-Weik Collection of documents and artifacts at the Library of Congress
• Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum resources and lesson plans
• PBS History Detective Resources about Abraham Lincoln
• Ford’s Theatre resources
• The Face of a War resources from the Smithsonian Learning Lab

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Just click the button below to fill out the form and get instant access to free downloadable Google Slides with all the information included above, including Abraham Lincoln facts, a kid-friendly biography, a timeline, and more.

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5 Things You May Not Know About Abraham Lincoln, Slavery and Emancipation

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: June 23, 2020 | Original: September 21, 2012

1. Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist.

Abraham Lincoln did believe that slavery was morally wrong, but there was one big problem: It was sanctioned by the highest law in the land, the Constitution . The nation’s founding fathers , who also struggled with how to address slavery, did not explicitly write the word “slavery” in the Constitution, but they did include key clauses protecting the institution, including a fugitive slave clause and the three-fifths clause, which allowed Southern states to count enslaved people for the purposes of representation in the federal government. 

In a three-hour speech in Peoria, Illinois, in the fall of 1854, Lincoln presented more clearly than ever his moral, legal and economic opposition to slavery—and then admitted he didn’t know exactly what should be done about it within the current political system.

Abolitionists , by contrast, knew exactly what should be done about it: Slavery should be immediately abolished, and freed enslaved people should be incorporated as equal members of society. They didn’t care about working within the existing political system, or under the Constitution, which they saw as unjustly protecting slavery and enslavers. Leading abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell,” and went so far as to burn a copy at a Massachusetts rally in 1854. 

Though Lincoln saw himself as working alongside the abolitionists on behalf of a common anti-slavery cause, he did not count himself among them. Only with emancipation , and with his support of the eventual 13th Amendment , would Lincoln finally win over the most committed abolitionists.

2. Lincoln didn’t believe Black people should have the same rights as white people.

Though Lincoln argued that the founding fathers’ phrase “All men are created equal” applied to Black and white people alike, this did not mean he thought they should have the same social and political rights. His views became clear during an 1858 series of debates with his opponent in the Illinois race for U.S. Senate, Stephen Douglas , who had accused him of supporting “negro equality.” 

In their fourth debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed Black people having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites. 

What he did believe was that, like all men, Black men had the right to improve their condition in society and to enjoy the fruits of their labor. In this way they were equal to white men, and for this reason slavery was inherently unjust.

Like his views on emancipation, Lincoln’s position on social and political equality for African Americans would evolve over the course of his presidency. In the last speech of his life, delivered on April 11, 1865, he argued for limited Black suffrage, saying that any Black man who had served the Union during the Civil War should have the right to vote.

3. Lincoln thought colonization could resolve the issue of slavery.

For much of his career, Lincoln believed that colonization—or the idea that a majority of the African American population should leave the United States and settle in Africa or Central America—was the best way to confront the problem of slavery. His two great political heroes, Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson , had both favored colonization; both were enslavers who took issue with aspects of slavery but saw no way that Black and white people could live together peaceably. 

Lincoln first publicly advocated for colonization in 1852, and in 1854 said that his first instinct would be “to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia” (the African state founded by the American Colonization Society in 1821).

Nearly a decade later, even as he edited the draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in August of 1862, Lincoln hosted a delegation of freed Black men and women at the White House in the hopes of getting their support on a plan for colonization in Central America. Given the “differences” between the two races and the hostile attitudes of white people towards Black people, Lincoln argued, it would be “better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” 

Lincoln’s support of colonization provoked great anger among Black leaders and abolitionists, who argued that African Americans were as much natives of the country as white people, and thus deserved the same rights. After he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln never again publicly mentioned colonization, and a mention of it in an earlier draft was deleted by the time the final proclamation was issued in January 1863.

4. Emancipation was a military policy.

The Civil War was fundamentally a conflict over slavery. However, the way Lincoln saw it, emancipation, when it came, would have to be gradual, as the most important thing was to prevent the Southern rebellion from severing the Union permanently in two. But as the Civil War entered its second summer in 1862, thousands of enslaved people had fled Southern plantations to Union lines, and the federal government didn’t have a clear policy on how to deal with them. Emancipation, Lincoln saw, would further undermine the Confederacy while providing the Union with a new source of manpower to crush the rebellion.

In July 1862 the president presented his draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Secretary of State William Seward urged him to wait until things were going better for the Union on the field of battle, or emancipation might look like the last gasp of a nation on the brink of defeat. Lincoln agreed and returned to edit the draft over the summer. 

On September 17 the bloody Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the opportunity he needed. He issued the preliminary proclamation to his cabinet on September 22, and it was published the following day. As a cheering crowd gathered at the White House, Lincoln addressed them from a balcony: “I can only trust in God I have made no mistake … It is now for the country and the world to pass judgment on it.”

5. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free all enslaved people.

Since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military measure, it didn’t apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which were loyal to the Union. (Missouri actually had two competing governments; one loyal to, and recognized by the Union, and one loyal to the Confederacy). Lincoln also exempted selected areas of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining the loyalty of white people in those states. In practice, then, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t immediately free a single enslaved person, as the only places it applied were places where the federal government had no control—the Southern states currently fighting against the Union.

Despite its limitations, Lincoln’s proclamation marked a crucial turning point in the evolution of Lincoln’s views of slavery, as well as a turning point in the Civil War itself. By war’s end, some 200,000 Black men would serve in the Union Army and Navy, striking a mortal blow against the institution of slavery and paving the way for its eventual abolition by the 13th Amendment .

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• What Is Cinema?

Was Abraham Lincoln a Lover of Men ?

On New Year’s Day of 1841, Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois state legislator, read a notice in the newspaper saying that his roommate of several years, Joshua Speed, was selling his Springfield general store and returning to his family home. Lincoln had not been previously informed of this. He would later refer to this day as “the fatal first of January,” one that sent him spiraling into a depression so profound he was put on a form of suicide watch. “I am now the most miserable man living,” he wrote in a letter. “If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.”

The previous month, Lincoln had broken off his engagement to Mary Todd (whom he did eventually marry). This wasn’t his first documented expression of severe depression either. While the events surrounding “the fatal first” have long been contested, in the new documentary Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln (in select theaters September 6), experts argue that—despite these other factors—the source of Lincoln’s turmoil can be traced to his impending separation from Speed. Why? As historian Dr. Jean H. Baker ( Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography ) puts it, “His great love…was moving back to Kentucky.”

Over the last two decades, Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality has been feverishly debated in academic circles. Widely considered the greatest president in American history, Lincoln left behind a trove of detailed letters written to Speed that have met varying interpretations. His law partner and eventual biographer, William H. Herndon, collected letters about Lincoln, written by various acquaintances, that have also been reexamined as Lincoln’s potential queerness has come into focus.

Lover of Men, directed by Shaun Peterson ( Living in Missouri ) and produced by entrepreneur Robert Rosenheck, synthesizes these developments while making some contributions of its own, grouping more than a dozen prestigious scholars and historians to outline the case that Lincoln had sexual relationships with multiple men. “We are not trying to damage or besmirch or do anything harmful to Lincoln’s reputation—quite the opposite,” says historian Dr. Thomas Balcerski (author of Oxford University Press’s Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King ). “We are broadening. We’re being more inclusive, and we’re taking a scholarly interpretation that has been bubbling up for generations—and that, finally in 2024, has found its moment to be expressed.”

Peterson became fascinated by the topic years ago, when he came across a provocative Gore Vidal essay in Vanity Fair titled, “Was Lincoln Bisexual?” Vidal assessed a groundbreaking book grappling with that theory: sex psychologist C.A. Tripp’s The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (2005). He also contemplated Lincoln’s bond with Speed as sexual—thereby setting off what Peterson calls a “domino effect” in the academic world. One particular line in Carl Sandburg’s seminal 1926 Lincoln biography, The Prairie Years, seemed to take on an especially bold new meaning: The author described Speed and Lincoln’s friendship as containing a “streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets.”

Harvard professor John Stauffer, a doctor of literary history, wrote the best-selling 2008 book Giants about the parallels between Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. “It suggested that Speed and Lincoln had carnal relations,” Dr. Stauffer tells me of his research.

Following the book’s publication, Stauffer was sharply criticized by many of his peers for his argument. “Virtually everyone sees Lincoln as an American icon, a great American figure—so if someone who is deeply prejudiced against gay or bisexual [people] sees someone writing a book saying that Lincoln is gay, that really ruffles their feathers,” he says. “Melville and Whitman had long been accepted as gay—and they’re major figures as well. But they’re not Lincoln.”

Lover of Men pinpoints Lincoln’s relationship with four men, from his early 20s to his presidency later in life: Billy Greene, a coworker in a general store; Elmer Ellsworth, an army officer and close friend; David Derickson, Lincoln’s bodyguard during the Civil War; and, most centrally, Joshua Speed. Peterson and the film’s featured scholars have not acquired any explicit evidence of sexual activity. But by exploring these bonds from a range of sociohistorical angles, they present their cases with conviction. The implicit question posed by the documentary, taking its evidence in totality: Why would you assume that Lincoln didn’t sleep with men?

Skeptics point to the customs surrounding living arrangements in the 19th century. Men of that era frequently, publicly slept in the same bed together as a means of convenience or money-saving. Yet as a new wave of historians argue, the knowledge of this practice has stood in the way of exploring that dynamic’s more multifaceted implications. “What’s been problematic is the gate-keeping that’s surrounded Lincoln historiography by august generations of Lincoln scholars,” Dr. Balcerski says. The sexual mores of the period weren’t so simple: While public romances between men were forbidden, the private realm wasn’t quite so surveilled. “When people say, ‘Oh, it’s impossible that the words homosexual and heterosexual were not widely used back then, that doesn’t make any sense,’ I’m like, ‘Well, just look at what’s changed in the past 20 years,’” says Dr. Lisa Diamond, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah. “In many ways, Western culture has defined being a man as being not homosexual. It’s really Lincoln’s image as a man that people feel is threatened by this intimacy.”

When Lincoln was in his early 20s, he and Greene slept together each night in a very small cot. Around this time in his life, family members and other acquaintances had, in writing, noted Lincoln’s particular disinterest in women—observations that Peterson saw for himself at the Library of Congress as he compiled research for the movie. Based on the record of the dynamic between Lincoln and Greene, “There almost certainly was the option to not share the cot,” Dr. Balcerski argues in Lover of Men. “Lincoln chose to sleep in this way.” Tripp had also plucked out a particular comment that Greene wrote of Lincoln that raised some eyebrows: “His thighs were as perfect as a human being could be.”

“A white, heterosexual, older scholar might just be like, ‘That’s kind of weird,’ and move on,” Peterson says. “But a sex researcher trained by Kinsey would say, ‘Oh, there’s something there.’”

Lincoln’s subsequent arrangement with Speed was similar. The future president had arrived in Springfield essentially penniless; the conventional wisdom is that he roomed with Speed because it was all he could afford. But Lincoln lived with Speed for far longer than a financial mandate would dictate, given his professional rise in politics and law during that period. “They slept in the same bed for four years, long after both men could have gone on their own—and they didn’t,” Stauffer says. Lover of Men presents several examples of their unusual closeness, including a letter to Lincoln written by his friend William Butler, offering the future president his own room and board. Lincoln chose to stay with Speed instead.

The film also focuses on the quality of Lincoln’s letters to Speed—which are far more intimate and raw than what he’d write to others. Lincoln signed some of his notes to Speed, “Yours forever.” He did not do the same for Mary Todd. “You feel the emotion on the page,” historian Dr. Michael Chesson says in the film. “Lincoln bares his heart with Speed in a way he doesn’t with other people.”

They stayed in touch following their aforementioned separation, as Lincoln reignited his engagement to Mary Todd and Speed himself got married. Immediately after his wedding, Speed wrote to Lincoln. “He consummated his marriage, and the first thing he wanted to do was to tell Abraham Lincoln that the sky didn’t fall,” psychoanalyst Dr. Charles Strozier says in the movie. In his reply to Speed, Lincoln described himself as utterly shaken by the news, unable to calm down. “For 10 hours after he reads of Speed’s successful consummation of his marriage, he’s shaking,” Strozier continues. “10 hours! This is a 33-year-old man.”

In his 2016 book Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln: The Enduring Friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed, Dr. Strozier came to the conclusion that the relationship between Lincoln and Speed was loving but not sexual. “I can assure you I have not changed my mind,” he tells me now. “I was also impressed by Shaun’s determined effort to get on top of the literature, his questions of me during his research, and his several hours of interviewing me on camera. He disagreed with me, but made a serious effort to understand my argument.”

Scenes between Lincoln and his alleged sexual partners play out in Lover of Men as silent reenactments. The structure is maintained through the documentary’s final act, when President Lincoln begins an affair with his bodyguard. “I didn’t want to make the recreations over-the-top, where they were making out and stuff—I wanted them to be loving,” Peterson says. “It’s a powerful image to see President Lincoln, with the beard, in bed with his bodyguard.” Dr. Diamond finds the approach appropriately affectionate: “We want our leaders to be capable of depth and love and warmth and intimacy and friendship,” she says. “The idea that that could take someone’s standing down [reflects] the upside-down world that we live in.”

Before depicting Lincoln and Derickson’s affair during the Civil War, Peterson had a particularly juicy visual aide ready to go, one documented in the historical record: Derickson wore Lincoln’s clothes. As his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Chamberlain, wrote in the regimental history, “Captain Derickson advanced so far in the president’s confidence and esteem that, in Mrs. Lincoln’s absence, he frequently spent the night in his cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him, and, it is said, making use of his Excellency’s night-shirts!” Dr. Chesson highlights this moment in the film as becoming “the talk of Washington DC.” No kidding.

As Peterson began assembling Lover of Men during the pandemic, he realized the timeliness of the project. For young adults today, strict sexual categories are going back out of style. “These concepts, ideas, behaviors, and categories did not exist in Lincoln’s time…. People were very fluid in the past. Lincoln was very fluid, certainly,” he says. “I feel like Gen Z might just take the baton back from the old days and continue the way humans always were.” Stauffer has his Harvard students read letters between Lincoln and Speed without telling them what to think. “When they do, it doesn’t matter whether that student is a conservative or a radical liberal—it’s profoundly illuminating for them,” he says. “It’s empowering.”

Since the release of its trailer, Lover of Men has been thrust into the social-media culture wars. The likes of Ben Shapiro and Alex Jones have reacted mockingly, leading some of their followers to do the same. Several scholars remain firm that the evidence does not suggest Lincoln engaged in sexual activity with men, and will likely counter the documentary’s claims once more when it’s out in the world. But a narratively driven argument of this scale, backed by so much research and interwoven scholarship, marks new territory for the subject. “I would ask those guys to watch the film, give it a chance, look at the evidence—because it’s pretty compelling,” Peterson says. “I’m still learning this as I go along too.”

Dr. Balcerski first started investigating this topic in graduate school, where he studied larger patterns of male friendships and relationships in the 19th century. He arrived at the notion of a “gay Lincoln” highly skeptical, like so many before him. But the material, he believes, speaks for itself. He read folks like Tripp and Stauffer to inform his own pioneering work in the space.

“I’m in some ways late to the game to understand this, but I also might’ve been among the first group of people who finally had a rich body of literature they could pick up on their library shelf or in a database that actually makes this argument about Lincoln’s sexuality in a way legitimized by our fields,” he says. “I think now we will see it accepted as a legitimate argument, one that deserves further research attention.”

“There’s never been a movie, ever, on this topic,” Peterson adds. “You would hope that a young person out there is going to see the visuals of this and be inspired to take the torch and get deeper into Lincoln’s letters and Lincoln’s history.” If there’s one takeaway from Lover of Men , it’s that when it comes to Lincoln’s love life, there’s a whole lot more to know.

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The Key to Abraham Lincoln’s Leadership

A conversation with Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn on the power of Lincoln’s emotional discipline.

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In 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln wrote a scathing letter to his top Union general, who had squandered an opportunity to end the American Civil War. Then Lincoln folded it up and tucked it away in his desk.

The letter was never signed and sent—just one example of how Lincoln’s legendary emotional discipline enabled him to rise above mundane arguments and focus on a larger mission.

In this episode, Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn analyzes Lincoln’s leadership both before and during America’s greatest crisis.

You’ll learn how emotional self-control can impact your day-to-day leadership as well as your long-term legacy.

Key episode topics include: leadership, crisis management, decision making and problem solving, government, American history, emotional discipline, communication.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Real Leaders: Abraham Lincoln and the Power of Emotional Discipline (2020)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

He never sent the letter—just one example of how Lincoln’s legendary emotional discipline enabled him to rise above mundane arguments and focus on a larger mission.

Using Lincoln as a model, you’ll learn how to communicate values to those you lead. You’ll also learn how emotional self-control can impact your day-to-day leadership, as well as your long-term legacy.

This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in March 2020. Here it is.

ADI IGNATIUS: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Adi Ignatius. This is “Real Leaders,” a special series examining the lives of some of the world’s most compelling and effective leaders, past and present, and the lessons they offer today. In our first two episodes we profiled the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton and then writer and environmentalist Rachel Carson. This week, Abraham Lincoln.

NANCY KOEHN: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”

NANCY KOEHN: “The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land will yet swell the course of the Union when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature.”

NANCY KOEHN: “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.”

ADI IGNATIUS: The words of Abraham Lincoln have endured. He gave those three iconic speeches in the prelude to the Civil War and during the war itself. At that time Lincoln was struggling to lead the U.S. through its greatest crisis, and he was widely hated. Now, of course, he’s revered as the leader who saved the Nation. Today we’ll explore Lincoln’s life and how he made himself into such an effective and enduring leader. I’m Adi Ignatius, Editor in Chief of Harvard Business Review. And I’m here with Nancy Koehn, the great historian at Harvard Business School, who has researched Lincoln’s life and work. Hello, Nancy.

NANCY KOEHN: Hello, there.

ADI IGNATIUS: Nancy, thank you for reading those speeches. We had them printed out for you, but it looked like you were actually reciting most of those from memory.

NANCY KOEHN: I have learned most of Lincoln’s most famous speeches from memory, mostly on long dog walks with my spaniels. And it’s been just a wonderful thing for me. It’s like a library I carry around in my head that I can refer to.

ADI IGNATIUS: S,o you can assume that these speeches were part of his efforts at political persuasion. Is that accurate? Is that fair? Or, was there more going on than that?

NANCY KOEHN: Lincoln used the English language as a really critical tool of his leadership. He was using it to inform people. He was using it to help people understand the larger frame of the moment, what was at stake. He was using it to help inspire people, particularly in moments like the Second Inaugural at the end of the war and the Gettysburg Address, in the middle at the critical moment in the war. He was using it to help lead.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, I find rereading Lincoln’s speeches, it’s like reading Shakespeare. You’re reading a play and you’re suddenly, “Oh my god, that’s where that amazing line came from.” And there are so many, you know: “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” “the better angels of our nature,” “four score and seven years…” I mean all these things. And at the same time he had a blue streak. I mean he —

NANCY KOEHN: — He was a master storyteller. He could tell very funny, very dirty, very bawdy jokes. He went high and he went low.

ADI IGNATIUS: Is there a Lincoln joke you’ve got in your back pocket?

NANCY KOEHN: When Lincoln was debating Stephen Douglas for the Senate seat from Illinois, they were outside of Galesburg, Illinois, at a college and a huge windstorm came up and they had to move the dais over to the edge of a building. So, to get to the dais, he and Douglas had to clamber through a window onto the platform and Lincoln clambered through and said, “Well, now I can say I’ve been through college.”

ADI IGNATIUS: What I also like from the Lincoln-Douglas debate is when Douglas made one of his arguments, and Lincoln said Douglas’s argument, and I’m going to read this: “was as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.” That’s pretty good.

NANCY KOEHN: That is really good, and I can’t believe you picked that out because it’s one of my favorite Lincoln quotes.

ADI IGNATIUS: All right, so let’s do some quick context setting. Lincoln was born into fairly modest circumstances, suffered some tough blows as a child including the death of his mother. How did these early experiences shape his values and create the resilience that we would see throughout his life?

NANCY KOEHN: The death of his mother is just an incredibly traumatic event for him. They were living in Indiana. His father goes back to Kentucky to find a wife, and the two kids are left alone. He and his sister just kind of fend for themselves. They’re eating nuts. They’re trying to kill squirrels. That’s an important moment because he has to somehow figure out, “How do I keep going?” He doesn’t turn inward and into victimhood. He doesn’t say, “I’m going to let this get the better of me.” He finds a way to move forward, and that’s really a huge part the story of a lot of Lincoln’s life. I mean he failed so many more times than he succeeded. He suffered so much disappointment. And I just really believe that all those experiences, including the bouts with depression, were moments in which he developed muscles of resilience and grit that were critical to his ability to hold the line during the Civil War and continue to lead and really almost insurmountable circumstances.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, Lincoln made his career as a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. He and his partner tried something like 4,000 cases which, I mean that’s really the essence of who he was as a professional. Then Lincoln was tempted by political office. What’s interesting to me is he lost a lot of elections, including a lot of critical ones. It’s easy in hindsight to say, “OK, those loses motivated him.” But my question, I guess for you, is what’s going on in Lincoln’s head? Those victories, those losses, his constant return to the political battle after these losses. What’s going on here?

NANCY KOEHN: So, he loses a number of really critical elections. He loses his first election for State Legislature when he was a young man in his early 20s. He loses a party battle in Central Illinois to get nominated for Congress. Eventually he would get to Congress for a term of two years in the 1840s, in which he will do anything but distinguish himself and he will come back depressed and sure that his political fortunes have fallen, which they had. He will then try and run for Senate a couple of times and get nowhere and lose the nominating battle. At each of these points, he’s discouraged. It’s not that the losses motivated him. It’s quite the opposite. He gets depressed. He says at one point, “I don’t expect anyone to ever remember me for anything.” And I think each loss and the corresponding time in the canyon of self-flagellation and depression — it’s both, in his case. Not all depression is self-flagellating, but his is. Gives him time to think and refine himself and he was always a great student of “what could I do better next time?” He was self-aware and he was a fabulous steward of his self-awareness to make himself better.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, Lincoln has this amazing reservoir of resilience and capacity for growth and self-improvement. Where does this drive come from?

NANCY KOEHN: One of the most interesting aspects of Lincoln’s making as a leader, and it’s a lesson of leadership as well, is Lincoln’s ability to teach himself all along his life’s journey. He has less than a year of formal schooling. And yet, he is constantly involved in a series of surgical strike, self-teaching adventures, or self-teaching missions. When he’s young it’s about reading and writing and arithmetic. When he gets to New Salem, which is the first place he goes after he leaves his father’s home, a small village outside of Springfield which is becoming the capital of Illinois, he teaches himself surveying to earn a living. He teaches himself geometry because he thinks it will help him think and reason better. He teaches himself the law. He teaches himself how to do public speaking by reading Shakespeare and reciting passages of Shakespeare out loud. He teaches himself the laws of debate because he joins the New Salem Debating Society. He keeps taking these issues or these aspects that he thinks will help him do something and teaches himself that. And that’s a lesson of leadership. So, when you don’t know something and you believe it’s critical to your mission, or critical to the next place you need to reach on your journey, you can teach yourself those things.

ADI IGNATIUS: I think one of the reasons people like reading about Lincoln so much is it’s partly his greatness and partly just the story, but partly the humanity. To what extent does depression define Abraham Lincoln?

NANCY KOEHN: Lincoln was a person and he is no more easily defined by one aspect of our particular preoccupations than he is by anything else. He was a very complicated person, like most of us. But depression was very important particularly in his young adult life because he didn’t just sort of slip into a dark place. I mean his early depressions, people were so worried about him, friends were so worried, that they’d take his razors away. They’d go on vigils watching him.

ADI IGNATIUS: The treatment then was, I was reading, was —

NANCY KOEHN: Leeches.

ADI IGNATIUS: Leeches, mustard —

NANCY KOEHN: Mustard. Plasters, yup —

ADI IGNATIUS: And cold baths –-

NANCY KOEHN: And cold baths. When he was President his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton his second Secretary of War, with whom he formed a very close working relationship and Stanton thought of Lincoln as a good friend, was worried about Lincoln’s kind of self-image at certain moments, when he grew dark. He was like, “We gotta keep the President safe. We can’t risk that he’s going to jump into the Potomac or do something harmful.” That was a real conversation at a couple of junctures. Not a lot and not for very long. So, this was real. I think what’s important about it is not that it defines Lincoln in some sense more than any other particular aspect, it’s how he used it. A reporter who’s written about this, a journalist, Joshua Shenk, who’s written about this in a book called Lincoln’s Melancholy, I think makes a very good case. I agree with it completely. That because of his own experience and particularly the suffering, he develops great powers of empathy. And I think that’s exactly right. He was a sensitive person to begin with, always — as a young boy, as a young adult, as President. But he then develops a sense of empathy that we can see, say in these last paragraph of the Second Inaugural [speech] – “with malice towards none, with charity toward all.” And that becomes very, very important — not only in connecting people, not only in reaching out to individuals, but also in his political life of trying to influence others. That was, I think, very much related to his depression.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, Lincoln’s big opening politically came in 1858 when he was running against Stephen Douglas for Senator in Illinois. They had a series of debates where Lincoln became a national figure, and he was essentially arguing against slavery, I think more forcefully than he had. But I want to sort of talk about Lincoln and slavery now because his views evolved over time, they were nuanced, they were complicated. Help us understand Lincoln’s views on African-Americans and slavery.

NANCY KOEHN: Lincoln’s position on slavery, which evolved throughout his life, was all the way to the time he won the White House, including his first Inaugural, was what today we would consider tepid at best and immoral at worse because his public position was we can’t interfere with the law of the United States which says that slavery is legal in these places, and it should not be enlarged to other places. It should not be made legal in new territories that become States. It should not be expanded, but we cannot legally abolish it. That is the position Lincoln made his name on. That is the position the Republican Party was born on. Not that we’re going to eliminate slavery, but we’re going to restrict its territorial enlargement because we don’t believe it’s right and we can’t allow it to expand. And it’s protected in the Constitution.

ADI IGNATIUS: Lincoln also said things about Blacks that really identified Blacks as inferior to Whites.

NANCY KOEHN: I think Lincoln probably thought African-Americans, I think his views changed, but I think for most of Lincoln’s life he had no reason to think differently than most White Americans that he was exposed to, which were African-Americans were inferior. And he says at one point, “I would never marry an African-American woman and just because I don’t want slavery to expand doesn’t mean I think Blacks and Whites should intermarry.” So again, from our sensibilities today, this seems egregious. But it wouldn’t have seemed similarly egregious if we parachuted back into political debates of people that had office or had reasonable chances of assuming elected office locally at the state level or the national level, in America in the 1850s. Now, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, lots of other folks, Charles Sumner, the Senator from Massachusetts, were saying something very different and much more radical – that African-Americans are exactly equal in all ways to White Americans and we can’t possibly tolerate the morally reprehensible practice of enslaving Americans by other Americans.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, for all the nuance and equivocation on Lincoln’s part, by the time he’s elected President in 1860, the slave-holding South views that as a sign that the economy that is built on slave owning.

NANCY KOEHN: The social structure.

ADI IGNATIUS: The social structure that is built on slave owning, suddenly is a great risk.

NANCY KOEHN: Absolutely.

ADI IGNATIUS: And boom. What happens?

NANCY KOEHN: As soon as he’s elected President, states start seceding from the Union, saying we’re not playing on this tennis court anymore. We’re out.

ADI IGNATIUS: Coming up after the break, the American Civil War begins. We’ll analyze Lincoln’s leadership during that momentous political crisis.

ADI IGNATIUS: Welcome back to “Real Leaders,” a special series of the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Adi Ignatius with Nancy Koehn. Hello again, Nancy.

NANCY KOEHN: Hey, there.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, the Civil War begins in April of 1961. No one at that time could imagine that this will continue for another four Aprils. So, talk about what’s happening broadly and, in particularly for Lincoln, as the war starts.

NANCY KOEHN: Really quickly it’s clear that this war’s not going to be over anytime soon, and the casualty counts start growing. But you can chart the process of Lincoln’s growing capacity to think, to see the big picture, to consult lots and lots of people — not unlike JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis. And then make his decisions with that kind of consultative material.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, let’s break down a little bit. So, Lincoln’s handling of the Civil War — to what extent does that look like other presidential crisis we’ve seen, like, say, JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis?

NANCY KOEHN: So, one of the really important aspects that both John Kennedy and Lincoln shared in the moments of crisis leadership was what today we would call forbearance or emotional discipline. Even though my emotions and a lot of influence around me says I need to do something right now. So, what Kennedy does is to just slow everything down and say, “Wait a minute. Let’s not get too hot under the collar because if we do that, we’ll lose control of events and the repercussions of that are not fully well understand and they may be very, very dangerous.”

ADI IGNATIUS: So, what about Lincoln? Did he manage similarly to maintain his patience and self-control as he is conducting the Civil War?

NANCY KOEHN: With Lincoln, he learned this in his adult life. I’m not exactly sure when. But we see it in his presidency at lots and lots of junctures. The most striking one, or the most telling one is one that happens right around the Battle of Gettysburg, which occurs in the first three days of July 1863 in this Pennsylvania town. And it’s this crucial battle, so they knew it was crucial. Lee — Robert E. Lee, who led the Army of Northern Virginia, the biggest Confederate fighting force — had invaded the North. On the opposing side, in this small town in Pennsylvania, is George Meade, who’s the commander of the largest Northern fighting force, the Army of the Potomac. The two armies duke it out over two and a half extraordinary days of fighting. Lee loses, turns his army around, and immediately begins moving his men and a wagon train of Confederate wounded that was 17 miles long back South, heading South. Meade makes a critical decision that afternoon and confirms it the next day — that he’s not going to pursue Lee. So, the Northern General decides, “My soldiers are too exhausted. We can’t have another big military clash right now.” And Lincoln gets this news from Meade and he is absolutely enraged. He thinks that if Meade can pursue and squash Lee’s army the war will effectively be over — and there was good reason to think that. But [Lincoln is] furious. And he begins to write a letter. All of us can just imagine how we feel when we get a particular piece of news and we need to react by getting on our computer, or our phone and start tapping out a text or an email in response. And Lincoln starts writing this letter saying things like, “Your decision not to pursue General Lee’s army has extended the war immeasurably. Thousands more will die. You have made a huge mistake and I am immeasurably distressed and disappointed.” And then, here’s the kicker. He folds the letter up. He puts it in an envelope and he writes on the envelope: “To George Meade, from Abraham Lincoln, July 5th, 1863. Never signed, never sent.” And he puts in in a cubbyhole in his desk, where it’s found after he died. And that’s Lincoln. Lincoln used that power to discipline himself to think ahead, to just take a breath and let his emotions cool over and over and over again. And it’s such an important lesson for our time.

ADI IGNATIUS: Alright, but for a long time, and especially around the Battle of Gettysburg, the War is not going very well for Lincoln.

NANCY KOEHN: Right. This is being photographed for the first time in history. It’s being talked about. The casualty counts are telegraphed. The carnage and the outrage and the incredible criticism coming at Lincoln because the North can’t win, seemed to move the pendulum of military advantage decidedly to its own side, is extraordinary. The pressures on him.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, this one is fair to say Lincoln is proving to be an unsuccessful President, unsuccessful war leader.

NANCY KOEHN: Unsuccessful decision maker. Unsuccessful politician. I mean it’s not really until the summer of 1864 at the beginning of August that it looks like the Union will truly win the war. Because that happens Lincoln is constantly under a barrage of attack, not to mention all these other pressures he’s dealing with. I mean he is, during his presidency, the most hated person in American history. No question. Hated by friends, hated by foes, hated by everyone in the South — hated by every White person in the South.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, all right. Let’s look for a lesson here. I mean this is leading a country, in this case. But leading an enterprise in an extended, dark, often hopeless seeming moment. How do you prevail? How do you continue? How do you lead in a situation like that?

NANCY KOEHN: So, it’s like a great change leader in an organization — where you’re not just trying to make the changes, restructure the business, reorganize your workforce, transform your organization while keeping it alive. You’ve also got to tell people what you’re doing and why because if you don’t do that, no one will keep fighting because it’s just too hard. No one will keep changing. The Gettysburg Address is the greatest change leadership speech ever given in English.

ADI IGNATIUS: How so?

NANCY KOEHN: So, what’s he doing in those 200, depending on which draft, 200 and 74 words. He’s framing the stakes of the change and he’s convincing people why it’s worth to doing. So, the first paragraph is, who are we and where did we come from and why do we exist? The second paragraph is just a brilliant kind of movement of the camera, the narrative camera, to say now we are engaged — we’re engaged in a great civil war and we’re testing whether we really believe that and we can continue to exist based on that. Then he takes the lens and he clicks it down closer to the ground and he says, we’ve met on a great battlefield, to dedicate a portion of the field for the men who died fighting for that. We’re doing that because it’s fitting and proper, but the most important thing is not that we consecrate this land — they’ve already done that. The most important thing is that we try to understand what this struggle has been about. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. So, these men died. They died for a big deal. It’s an important deal. It’s who we are. And by the way, even though they died, it is up to us to commit ourselves to continue that fight because it’s so important. That’s what that critical fourth paragraph really is. That this nation, we commit ourselves, we dedicate ourselves to the proposition that these men will not have died in vain and that this nation under God will have a new birth of freedom. He doesn’t say we’ll return to where we were. He doesn’t say, we’ll rediscover the power of the original proposition. He says, “This nation under God will have a new birth of freedom.” And that democracy, government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish. So, he’s framing the stakes. He’s saying this is terrible this change process, but we have to, in spite of the obstacles, in spite of the tradeoffs, we all have to carry on.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, he’s basically changing the definition of the struggle, what’s at stake. In hindsight it seems brilliant. There’s no guarantee that anyone is going to be listening and is going to allow the debate to be reframed because of his oratorical skills.

NANCY KOEHN: Well Lincoln was a master calculator, politically. He’s always calculating, calculating, calculating. He would never have made that speech if he didn’t think the political capital was growing and viable in the North. He has enough capital to say, this war is about slavery, and we’re going to end slavery. So, that was incredibly important. It was incredibly important. The war stopped being a war solely to save the Union on the basis in which it entered the war with the territorial, with the legal —

ADI IGNATIUS: With the South, North —

NANCY KOEHN: With the South, North, and the legalization of slavery in certain places. And now became a war to fundamentally change the terms of the American experiment and to restore what Lincoln believed to be its true defining principle, as codified in the Declaration of Independence — that all men are created equal and all men are free.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, it meant compromise was probably impossible, or —

NANCY KOEHN: It meant that there could never be a brokered peace. Slavery would be over and the war would be over, or the Southerners would win and they would have their own country.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, that’s an interesting question about leadership because there were also articulate voices saying, “Too many people are dying.” The final total I think was 600,000 killed. Insane number and people saying, “We have to stop the fighting.” And in essence Lincoln had come up with this position that was tactical, that was principled — but was sort of absolute. What does that say about leadership? I mean you could say he won so it was a good thing. But you could say he also kind of limited his flexibility at that point.

NANCY KOEHN: He certainly did. He thought that’s where the nation had arrived — that it was that stark. And by the way lots and lots of other people did it on both sides of the issue. So, there were people in 1863, lots of folks in the North that thought we got to end the bloodshed. But there were just as many people and, I think perhaps more, who thought this war’s got to be about more than saving the Union. It’s got to be about transforming the Union and ending the moral cancer, which was a common term for slavery.

ADI IGNATIUS: So, when thinking about the deepest leadership lessons we can all draw from Lincoln, part of it is holding firm. But part of it seems in his life is that he evolved. He evolved as a thinker, as a human, as a leader, as a tactician. We don’t all do that.

NANCY KOEHN: But we all have the opportunity to do it. It’s given to us by our free will. A powerful leadership lesson from Lincoln is how he moves from “my life is about Abraham Lincoln’s political career” to “Abraham Lincoln is about saving and transforming the nation.” That’s why his death is so truly tragic because if he had lived — a man who saw the big picture, who himself had been transformed and chastened and irrevocably changed in the experience of leading the nation through the Civil War — I think he was absolutely trying to knit the nation together with “malice toward none, with charity for all.” These words don’t come from just a skilled wordsmith, just a man who became a master of rhetoric. They come from a person whose soul had been truly tormented and transformed in the extraordinary crucible of what he experienced at the center of the perfect storm.

ADI IGNATIUS: Next time on “Real Leaders,” Nancy Koehn and I will be talking about Oprah Winfrey. She’s not just a tremendously successful businesswoman, she’s probably one of the most influential people on the planet. And Nancy, you actually know her.

NANCY KOEHN: Yes. I met her by surprise when she paid an unexpected visit to my class many years ago — the first time I taught the Harvard Business School case that I’d written about her. My students, and many students who heard about it from outside my classroom, who just poured into the classroom to see her, were incredibly impressed with her — her warmth, her intelligence, and a piece of the extraordinary story of her life.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn – in conversation with HBR editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius on HBR IdeaCast . Koehn is the author of the book, Forged in Crisis: The Making of Five Courageous Leaders .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Curt Nickisch, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Rob Eckhardt, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Nicole Smith, Ramsey Khabbaz, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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Trending topics, carrier uss abraham lincoln arrives in u.s. central command.

Aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) arrived in the Middle East Wednesday, according to U.S. Central Command.

The San Diego, Calif., based carrier, Carrier Air Wing 9 and its escorts are headed to join the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian effort to protect merchant shipping in the region on orders from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Last week, Austin ordered Lincoln to accelerate its transit last week as part of U.S. moves to move more assets to the CENTCOM area of response following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month. The U.S. and its allies are on alert for Iranian retaliation.

Lincoln is set to relieve USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), which has been operating in the Middle East supporting Prosperity Guardian since June.

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), equipped with F-35C and F/A-18 Block III fighters, entered the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) area of responsibility. The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 3, is accompanied by Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 21 and… pic.twitter.com/RKoJQshigR — U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) August 21, 2024

The carrier left the South China Sea via the Strait of Malacca near Singapore on Friday for the Indian Ocean and U.S. 5th Fleet. Lincoln deployed in June with Carrier Air Wing 9 embarked. Pentagon officials singled out the “Black Knights” of Marine Fighter Squadron (VMFA) 314 equipped with F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighters.

In addition to Lincoln , the Pentagon highlighted the presence of guided-missile nuclear submarine USS Georgia (SSGN-728) armed with 154 long-range Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles. As of Tuesday, Georgia was in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Pentagon spokesperson Mag. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters.

“The department’s recent adjustment to the U.S. military posture in the region have enabled us to bolster U.S. force protection, increase support for the defense of Israel and to ensure the United States is prepared to respond to various contingencies,” he said.

It’s unclear how long Lincoln and Roosevelt will both be operating in 5th Fleet together.

Roosevelt and the embarked Carrier Air Wing 11 left San Diego in January and has been deployed for more than seven months.

Sam LaGrone

Sam LaGrone is the editor of USNI News. He has covered legislation, acquisition and operations for the Sea Services since 2009 and spent time underway with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and the Canadian Navy. Follow @samlagrone

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