Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S was the 16th President of the United States (1861–65), who preserved the American Union during the civil war and brought about the liberation of confined people in the US. Among other American heroes, Abraham Lincoln continues to have a unique appeal for his fellow nationals and also for oppressed people of other lands.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a backwoods cabin 5 km south of, Kentucky. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was the successor of a weaver’s apprentice who had migrated from England and his mother was Nancy Hanks who was house wife. Lincoln had two siblings -Sarah and Thomas, who died in infancy. The calamitous period of his childhood followed the death of his mother in the autumn of 1818. Lincoln saw her buried in the forest, survived a winter without the warmth of a mother’s love. Fortunately, before the beginning of a next winter, his father married Sarah Bush Johnston, who moved from Kentucky to Indiana to marry Thomas Lincoln. In March 1830 the Lincoln’s family migrated to Illinois, with Lincoln himself driving the team of oxen. At the age of 21, Lincoln was about to begin life on his own. Lincoln was well behaved, even though moody sometimes, talented to mimic others and a wonderful storyteller, he readily attracted friends. But he was yet to demonstrate whatever other abilities he possessed.

After his arrival in Illinois, Lincoln tried his luck at a variety of occupations. Lincoln settled in New Salem, a village of about 25 families on the Sangamon River. With the beginning of the Black Hawk War in the year 1832, he was selected as a volunteer and was later elected as captain of his company. Meanwhile, aspiring to be a legislator, Lincoln was defeated in his first attempt and later he was repeatedly reelected to the state assembly. Lincoln learned grammar and mathematics himself and he began to study law books. In 1836, Lincoln began to practise law after passing the bar examination. In the year 1837, Lincoln relocated to Springfield, Illinois, the new state capital, where he found lot of opportunities as a lawyer. In 1844, he partnered with William H. Herndon who was 10 years younger than him. The partnership worked well as neither Lincoln nor Herndon kept records of their business, and they split the cash between them whenever either of them was paid.

Andrew Jackson was the President when Lincoln entered politics. Among the prominent politicians of that time, he most respected Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. Clay and Webster advocated using the powers of the federal government to encourage business and develop the country’s resources. Lincoln associated himself with the party of Clay and Webster, the Whigs. During his single term in the US Congress (1847–49), Lincoln, as the lone Whig from Illinois, who gave little attention to legislative matters. He proposed a bill for the gradual and compensated liberation of enslaved people in the District of Columbia. Lincoln devoted much of his time to presidential politics—to unmaking one president, a Democrat, and making another, a Whig. For about five years Lincoln took little part in politics, and then a new sectional crisis gave him a chance to re-emerge and rise to statesmanship. In 1854 Lincoln’s political arch-rival Stephen A. Douglas conspired through Congress a bill for reopening the entire Louisiana Purchase to slavery and allowing the immigrants of Kansas and Nebraska (with “popular sovereignty”) to decide for themselves whether to permit slaveholding in those territories.

Lincoln focused on his all-embracing law practice in the early 1850s after one term in Congress from 1847 to 1849. In 1856, Lincoln joined the new Republican party and involved in a series of hot debates over slavery and its place in the United States made Lincoln a prominent figure in national politics. Lincoln’s anti-slavery platform made him extremely unpopular with Southerners and his candidature for Presidential elections in 1860 infuriated them. Lincoln won the presidential election on November 6, 1860 without the backing of a single Southern state. Lincoln’s judgment to fight rather than to let the Southern states disaffiliate was not based on his feelings towards slavery. Fairly, he felt it was his duty as US President to preserve the Union at all costs. His first inaugural address was an appeal to the rebellious states, seven of which had already rejected the appeal to rejoin the nation. His first speech ended with an warning message: "Shall it be peace, or the sword?" A brutal civil war then engulfed the nation as Lincoln vowed to preserve the Union, enforce the laws of the United States, and end the separation. The war lasted for about five years with a shocking loss of more than 600,000 Americans dead. Midway through the war, Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves within the Confederacy and changed the war from a battle to preserve the Union into a battle for freedom. Killed by an assassin's bullet less than a week after the surrender of Confederate forces, Lincoln left the nation a more perfect Union and thereby earned the admiration of most Americans as the country's greatest President.