Abraham Lincoln 1861 - 1865

Born: 1809, Hardin County, KY
Died: 1865

Abraham Lincoln grew up in poverty on the Indiana frontier. Hard-working and self-educated, he was a farmhand, boatman, store manager, postman and surveyor before entering Illinois politics and becoming a successful trial lawyer. Passionately opposed to slavery, "Honest Abe" joined the Republican Party in 1856, and ran against Democrat Stephen Douglas for the U.S. Senate two years later. He lost, but his brilliant campaign oratory secured him the Republican Presidential nomination in 1860.

Between Lincoln's election and inauguration, seven Southern states seceded. On April 12, 1861, the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter. Nearly two years later, the Civil War still raging, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (slavery was later banned by the 13th Amendment). In November 1863, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, vowing "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." The bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, the Civil War cost more American lives than the two World Wars and Vietnam combined. Re-elected in 1864, Lincoln lived to see the south surrender on April 9, 1865. Five days later, he was assassinated, before he could fulfill his pledge to "bind up the nation's wounds."

Sixteenth President
Republican