Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) was the sixteenth president of the United States. He led the Union through the Civil War, proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves in the rebel states and pressed for the amendment that abolished slavery. His speeches, above all the Gettysburg Address, are classics of American prose.
Genres
letters and other genres
Works
The Gettysburg Address
The frontier
Lincoln was born on 12 February 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky. His family moved to Indiana, then to Illinois. He had less than a year of formal schooling and educated himself by reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Aesop and law books borrowed from neighbours.
He worked as a rail-splitter, boatman, storekeeper and postmaster in New Salem, Illinois, served as a captain in the Black Hawk War, then taught himself law and became a lawyer in Springfield in 1837.
The road to the presidency
Lincoln sat in the Illinois legislature and served one term in Congress (1847–1849). The extension of slavery into the western territories brought him back to politics in the new Republican Party.
In 1858 his debates with Stephen Douglas for a Senate seat in Illinois made him known across the country, though he lost the election. In November 1860 he was elected president; before he took office, seven Southern states had seceded.
War, emancipation, death
The Civil War began in April 1861. On 1 January 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation declared free the slaves in the states in rebellion, and in November 1863, at the dedication of a soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg, Lincoln gave a speech of under three hundred words.
Re-elected in 1864, he saw the House pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in January 1865. Five days after the surrender of General Lee, on 14 April 1865, he was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington and died the next morning.
Anecdotes
Two minutes at Gettysburg
The main speaker at Gettysburg, the orator Edward Everett, spoke for about two hours. Lincoln spoke for about two minutes. The next day Everett wrote to him that he wished he had come as close to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as Lincoln had in two minutes.
Five copies of one speech
Five manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's hand are known, each slightly different. The one known as the Bliss copy, written for a charity sale in 1864, is the only one he signed and dated, and it hangs in the White House.
Frequently asked questions
When did Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address?
On 19 November 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Did the Emancipation Proclamation end slavery?
It freed the slaves in the states in rebellion. Slavery was abolished throughout the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865.
Who killed Abraham Lincoln?
The actor and Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth, at Ford's Theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865.