Lincoln, Abraham

Lincoln, Abraham (lĭng`kən), 1809–65, 16th President of the United States (1861–65).

Early Life

Born on Feb. 12, 1809, in a log cabin in backwoods Hardin co., Ky. (now Larue co.), he grew up on newly broken pioneer farms of the frontier. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a migratory carpenter and farmer, nearly always poverty-stricken. Little is known of his mother, Nancy Hanks, who died in 1818, not long after the family had settled in the wilds of what is now Spencer co., Ind. Thomas Lincoln soon afterward married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow; she was a kind and affectionate stepmother to the boy. Abraham had almost no formal schooling—the scattered weeks of school attendance in Kentucky and Indiana amounted to less than a year; but he taught himself, reading and rereading a small stock of books. His first glimpse of the wider world came in a voyage downriver to New Orleans on a flatboat in 1828, but little is known of that journey. In 1830 the Lincolns moved once more, this time to Macon co., Ill.

After another visit to New Orleans, the young Lincoln settled in 1831 in the village of New Salem, Ill., not far from Springfield. There he began by working in a store and managing a mill. By this time a tall (6 ft 4 in./190 cm), rawboned young man, he won much popularity among the inhabitants of the frontier town by his great strength and his flair for storytelling, but most of all by his strength of character. His sincerity and capability won respect that was strengthened by his ability to hold his own in the roughest society. He was chosen captain of a volunteer company gathered for the Black Hawk War (1832), but the company did not see battle.

Returning to New Salem, Lincoln was a partner in a grocery store that failed, leaving him with a heavy burden of debt. He became a surveyor for a time, was village postmaster, and did various odd jobs, including rail splitting. All the while he sought to improve his education and studied law. The story of a brief love affair with Ann Rutledge, which supposedly occurred at this time, is now discredited.

Early Political Career

In 1834, Lincoln was elected to the state legislature, in which he served four successive terms (until 1841) and achieved prominence as a Whig. In 1836 he obtained his license as an attorney, and the next year he moved to Springfield, where he became a law partner of John T. Stuart. Lincoln's practice steadily increased. That first partnership was succeeded by others, with Stephen T. Logan and then with William H. Herndon, who was later to be Lincoln's biographer. Lincoln displayed great ability in law, a ready grasp of argument, and sincerity, color, and lucidity of speech.

In 1842 he married Mary Todd (see Lincoln, Mary Todd) after a troubled courtship. He continued his interest in politics and entered on the national scene by serving one term in Congress (1847–49). He remained obscure, however, and his attacks as a Whig on the motives behind the Mexican War (though he voted for war supplies) seemed unpatriotic to his constituents, so he lost popularity at home. Lincoln worked hard for the election of the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor, in 1848, but when he was not rewarded with the office he desired—Commissioner of the General Land Office—he decided to retire from politics and return to the practice of law.

Slavery and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates

The prairie lawyer emerged again into politics in 1854, when he was caught up in the rising quarrel over slavery. He stoutly opposed the policy of Stephen A. Douglas

Senatorial Career

He was admitted to the bar at Jacksonville, Ill., in 1834. After holding various state and local offices he became a U.S.
.....  and particularly the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In a speech at Springfield, repeated at Peoria, he attacked the compromises concerning the question of slavery in the territories and invoked the democratic ideals contained in the Declaration of Independence. In 1855 he sought to become a Senator but failed.

He had already realized that his sentiments were leading him away from the Whigs and toward the new Republican party, and in 1856 he became a Republican. He quickly came to the fore in the party as a moderate opponent of slavery who could win both the abolitionists and the conservative free-staters, and at the Republican national convention of 1856 he was prominent as a possible vice presidential candidate. Two years later he was nominated by the Republican party to oppose Douglas in the Illinois senatorial race.

Accepting the nomination (in a speech delivered at Springfield on June 16), Lincoln gave a ringing declaration in support of the Union: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." The campaign that followed was impressive. Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates (seven were held), in which he delivered masterful addresses for the Union and for the democratic idea. He was not an abolitionist, but he regarded slavery as an injustice and an evil, and uncompromisingly opposed its extension.

Presidency

Though Douglas won the senatorial election, Lincoln had made his mark by the debates; he was now a potential presidential candidate. His first appearance in the East was in Feb., 1860, when he spoke at Cooper Union in New York City. He gained a large following in the antislavery states, but his nomination for President by the Republican convention in Chicago (May, 1860) was as much due to the opposition to William H. Seward

Early Career

A graduate (1820) of Union College, he was admitted to the bar in 1822 and established himself as a lawyer in Auburn, N.Y.
..... , the leading contender, as to Lincoln's own appeal. He was nominated on the third ballot. In the election the Democratic party split; Lincoln was opposed by Douglas (Northern Democrat), John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), and John Bell (Constitutional Unionist). Lincoln was elected with a minority of the popular vote.

To the South, Lincoln's election was the signal for secession. All compromise plans, such as that proposed by John J. Crittenden, failed, and by the time of Lincoln's inauguration seven states had seceded. The new President, determined to preserve the Union at all costs, condemned secession but promised that he would not initiate the use of force. After a slight delay, however, he did order the provisioning of Fort Sumter, and the South chose to regard this as an act of war. On Apr. 12, 1861, Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the Civil War began.

Although various criticisms have been leveled against him, it is generally agreed that Lincoln attacked the vast problems of the war with vigor and surpassing skill. He immediately issued a summons to the militia (an act that precipitated the secession of four more Southern states), ordered a blockade of Confederate ports, and suspended habeas corpus. The last action provoked much criticism, but Lincoln adhered to it, ignoring a circuit court ruling against him in the Merryman Case (see Merryman, ex parte). In the course of the war, Lincoln further extended his executive powers, but in general he exercised those powers with restraint. He was beset not only by the difficulties of the war, but by opposition from men on his own side. His cabinet was rent by internal jealousies and hatred; radical abolitionists condemned him as too mild; conservatives were gloomy over the prospects of success in the war.

In the midst of all this strife, Lincoln continued his course, sometimes almost alone, with wisdom and patience. The progress of battle went against the North at first. Lincoln himself made some bad military decisions (e.g., in ordering the direct advance into Virginia that resulted in the Union defeat at the first battle of Bull Run), and he ran through a succession of commanders in chief before he found Ulysses S. Grant. In the early stages of the war Lincoln revoked orders by John C. Frémont and David Hunter freeing the slaves in their military departments. However, the Union victory at Antietam gave him a position of strength from which to issue his own Emancipation Proclamation

Desire for Such a Proclamation

..... .

The restoration and preservation of the Union were still the main tenets of Lincoln's war aims. The sorrows of war and its rigorous necessity afflicted him; he expressed both in one of the noblest public speeches ever made, the Gettysburg Address, made at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863. For a time Lincoln was threatened by the desertion of the Republican leaders as well as by a strong opposition party in the presidential election that loomed ahead in the dark days of 1864; but a turn for the better took place before the election, a turn brought about to some extent by a change of military fortune after Grant became commander and particularly after William T. Sherman took Atlanta.

Lincoln was reelected over George B. McClellan by a great majority. His second inaugural address, delivered when the war was drawing to its close, was a plea for the new country that would arise from the ashes of the South. His own view was one of forgiveness, as shown in his memorable phrase "With malice toward none; with charity for all." He lived to see the end of the war, but he was to have no chance to implement his plans for Reconstruction. On the night of Apr. 14, 1865, when attending a performance at Ford's Theater, he was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth. The next morning Lincoln died. His death was an occasion for grief even among those who had been his opponents, and many considered him a martyr.

The Lincoln Legend

As time passed Lincoln became more and more the object of adulation; a full-blown "Lincoln legend" appeared. Yet, even if his faults and mistakes are acknowledged, he stands out as a statesman of noble vision, great humanity, and remarkable political skill. It is not surprising that the Illinois "rail-splitter" is regarded as a foremost symbol of American democracy. Paintings, sculptures, and architectural works memorializing Lincoln are legion; the most famous shrines are his home and tomb in Springfield, Ill., and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Bibliography

Innumerable biographies, novels, poems, plays, and essays have been devoted to Lincoln. His collected works have been edited by R. P. Basler (9 vol., 1953). See also D. C. Mearns, ed., The Lincoln Papers (1948). The standard older bibliography is J. Monaghan, Lincoln Bibliography, 1839–1939 (2 vol., 1943–45); others are P. M. Angle, A Shelf of Lincoln Books (1946); V. Searcher, Lincoln Today (1969); E. W. Matthews, Lincoln as a Lawyer (1991).

One of the most important early biographies was W. H. Herndon and J. W. Weid, Herndon's Life of Lincoln (3 vol., 1889; ed. by P. M. Angle, 1930, repr. 1965). J. G. Nicolay and J. Hay wrote the 10-volume Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890, abbr. ed. 1966). Probably the most popular biographies are C. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (4 vol., 1939); a one-volume condensation was first published in 1954. See also The Lincoln Reader (1947, repr. 1964; ed. by P. M. Angle) and biographies by A. J. Beveridge (2 vol., 1928; repr. 1971), B. P. Thomas (1952, repr. 1968), S. Lorant (1954, repr. 1961), R. H. Luthin (1960), P. B. Kunhardt, Jr., et al. (1992), D. H. Donald (1995), A. C. Guelzo (2000), and R. Carwardine (2006). Almost the only work portraying Lincoln in a completely unfavorable light is E. L. Masters, Lincoln the Man (1931).

Preeminent among the special studies on Lincoln are those of J. G. Randall. See also T. H. Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (1941, repr. 1965); H. J. Carman and R. H. Luthin, Lincoln and the Patronage (1943, repr. 1964); F. H. Meserve and C. Sandburg, The Photographs of Abraham Lincoln (1944); J. Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers (1945, repr. 1962); B. J. Hendrick, Lincoln's War Cabinet (1946, repr. 1965); B. P. Thomas, Portrait for Posterity: Lincoln and His Biographers (1947); W. B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors (1948); The Living Lincoln (ed. by P. M. Angle and E. S. Miers, 1955); D. Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (2d ed. 1961, repr. 1989); D. E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness (1962, repr. 1970) and The Leadership of Abraham Lincoln (1970); W. H. Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass (1989); G. Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (1992); J. T. Glatthaar, Partners in Command (1994); M. E. Neely, Jr., The Last Best Hope of Earth (1994); P. S. Paludan, The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1994); M. D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (1994); D. L. Wilson, Honor's Voice (1998) and Lincoln's Sword (2006); J. Morris, Lincoln (2000); W. L. Miller, Lincoln's Virtues (2002); R. C. White, Jr., Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (2002); D. H. Donald, "We Are Lincoln Men" (2003); M. Lind, What Lincoln Believed (2005); D. K. Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005).

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Lincoln, Abraham

Abraham Lincoln, 1863.

(credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born Feb. 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Ky., U.S.—died April 15, 1865, Washington, D.C.) 16th president of the U.S. (1861–65). Born in a Kentucky log cabin, he moved to Indiana in 1816 and to Illinois in 1830. After working as a storekeeper, a rail-splitter, a postmaster, and a surveyor, he enlisted as a volunteer in the Black Hawk War (1832) and was elected captain of his company. He taught himself law and, having passed the bar examination, began practicing in Springfield, Ill., in 1836. As a successful circuit-riding lawyer from 1837, he was noted for his shrewdness, common sense, and honesty (earning the nickname “Honest Abe”). From 1834 to 1840 he served in the Illinois state legislature, and in 1847 he was elected as a Whig to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1856 he joined the Republican Party, which nominated him as its candidate in the 1858 Senate election. In a series of seven debates with Stephen A. Douglas (the Lincoln-Douglas Debates), he argued against the extension of slavery into the territories. Though morally opposed to slavery, he was not an abolitionist; indeed, he attempted to rebut Douglas's charge that he was a dangerous radical, by reassuring audiences that he did not favour political equality for blacks. Despite his loss in the election, the debates brought him national attention. In the 1860 presidential election, he ran against Douglas again and won by a large margin in the electoral college, though he received only two-fifths of the popular vote. The South opposed his position on slavery in the territories, and before his inauguration seven Southern states had seceeded from the Union. The ensuing American Civil War completely consumed Lincoln's administration. He excelled as a wartime leader, creating a high command for directing all the country's energies and resources toward the war effort and combining statecraft and overall command of the armies with what some have called military genius. However, his abrogation of some civil liberties, especially the writ of habeas corpus, and the closing of several newspapers by his generals disturbed both Democrats and Republicans, including some members of his own cabinet. To unite the North and influence foreign opinion, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1863); his Gettysburg Address (1863) further ennobled the war's purpose. The continuing war affected some Northerners' resolve and his reelection was not assured, but strategic battle victories turned the tide, and he easily defeated George B. McClellan in 1864. His platform included passage of the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery (ratified 1865). At his second inaugural, with victory in sight, he spoke of moderation in reconstructing the South and building a harmonious Union. On April 14, five days after the war ended, he was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth.

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Lincoln, Abraham (1809–65) sixteenth U.S. president; born near Hodgenville, Ky. Born in a log cabin to a modest farm family, he moved early with his family to Indiana. His mother died in 1818 and his stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston, provided a fine model who inspired the ambitious but unschooled boy to discipline and educate himself. The Lincolns moved to Illinois in 1830, and, after twice sailing a flatboat to New Orleans, he settled in New Salem, Ill., where he pursued workaday jobs while studying law on his own. In the 1832 Black Hawk War he served as a volunteer but saw no action. In 1835 he entered the Illinois state legislature as a Whig; after unremarkable service, Lincoln left the legislature in 1841. In 1837 he had begun what would become a successful law practice in Springfield, the capital of Illinois; in 1842 he married Mary Todd, of a prominent Springfield family. His position as a prominent Whig in Illinois took him to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1847–49, where he again had a lackluster record despite his opposition to the war in Mexico. Back in Springfield he gradually began to prosper as a lawyer, often representing business interests, but his eloquently-stated if moderate antislavery views gained him increasing attention. This came to a head during his unsuccessful race (1858) for the U.S. Senate against Stephen A. Douglas, who led the Democratic accommodation to slave interests; the historic debates between the two men secured Lincoln a national following, which led to his becoming the presidential nominee of the new antislavery Republican Party in 1860. Although he received only 40% of the popular vote, due to a split in the Democratic party Lincoln won a majority of the Electoral College votes. Although he had stated his willingness to tolerate slavery where it currently existed, his election precipitated the secession of Southern states and the formation of the Confederacy. In the years of civil war that followed, the inexperienced Lincoln proved to be one of the most extraordinary leaders, both political and moral, the U.S.A. has ever seen. First defining the war as being fought over secession rather than slavery, he oversaw the creation of the Union army. When the political time was right, Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, thereby interpreting the war as a crusade against slavery; he later oversaw the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), which legally ended slavery. With his immortal Gettysburg Address (November 1863), Lincoln further defined the war as the struggle for preservation of the democratic idea, which he called "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Meanwhile, he took a direct interest in the conduct of the war, hiring and firing generals, getting daily reports from the battlefields, and visiting the troops in the front lines. All this time, too, he had to mediate between the pressures of radical and conservative elements of the North, using an astute combination of suppression and conciliation, and barely surviving the election in 1864. Having seen the victory of the Union forces in April 1865, Lincoln was beginning to plan a generous reconstruction policy when he was assassinated by Southern fanatic John Wilkes Booth. His body was taken by train from Washington to be buried in Springfield, Ill., as the nation he had refounded mourned their "Father Abraham." Master of both a Biblical eloquence and a homespun vernacular, a natural at combining practical politics with moral principles, in only four years as president he had established why he is one of the few Americans who truly "belong to the ages."

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Lincoln, Abraham

(1809–1865) sixteenth U.S. president; issued Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves. [Am. Hist.: Jameson, 286–287]

See : Antislavery

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Lincoln, Abraham

(1809–1865) 16th U.S. president; the Great Emancipator. [Am. Hist.: Jameson, 286–287]

See : Deliverance

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Lincoln, Abraham

(1809–1865) 16th U.S. president; nicknamed “Honest Abe.” [Am. Hist.: Kane, 525]

See : Honesty