Biography:

Abraham Lincoln was elected sixteenth present of the United States in 1860, leading to the secession of the Southern states and the American Civil War. Lincoln was born to poor parents in Kentucky in 1809, spent some of his childhood in Indiana, then moved with his family to Illinois in the 1830s. As a young man, Lincoln earned some money splitting rails for other farmers, earning him the nickname the “Rail Splitter” later in life. In 1831 he settled in New Salem, Illinois, where he worked several jobs, joined a debating society, and became interested in politics. In 1834 he won election to the Illinois legislature as a Whig. While in the legislature, Lincoln studied law and obtained his license and began his legal practice. He retired from the legislature in 1841 and continued his legal practice. In 1842, he married Mary Todd, with whom he had four sons. In 1846, Lincoln achieved his ambition to serve in Congress, and he served in Congress from 1847 to 1849. He then returned to his legal practice in Springfield, Illinois. In 1854, passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act propelled Lincoln back into politics. Lincoln strongly opposed of the extension of slavery into the western territories and he ran for the state legislature on a platform that opposed the act. In February 1855, however, he resigned from the legislature to become the Whig candidate for the US Senate but he failed to secure that seat. In 1858, the Republican Party nominated Lincoln its candidate for US Senate against Democrat Stephen Douglas. The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates over the extension of slavery brought Lincoln to national attention—though the state legislature reappointed Douglas to the Senate.
 
When it came time to nominate a candidate for president in 1860, Lincoln emerged from the Republican National Convention in Chicago as the Republican nominee, beating out leading candidate William H. Seward of New York. The four-way election, with the Democrats split between northern and southern wings and a remnant of the Whig Party reorganizing as the Constitutional Union Party, allowed Lincoln to win the presidency with only 40 percent of the popular vote. Lincoln’s election precipitated the secession of the Southern states in the winter of 1860-61. Within weeks of Lincoln’s open rebellion began with the firing on Fort Sumter by Confederate soldiers. Originally a war to preserve the Union, by 1862, Lincoln was under pressure make the abolition of slavery a war aim. Instead, Lincoln moved to end slavery in those Confederate states still in rebellion as a military tactic. After issuing a draft proclamation in September 1862, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.
 
While waging war against the Southern states, Lincoln also faced a tough battle within his party and his administration. Disagreements over prosecution of the war and its aftermath led to a contentious Republican nominating convention in 1864. Lincoln won the nomination, and the election, defeating his former general, George McClellan, who ran on the Democratic ticket. Lincoln lived to see the end of the war, but not the enactment of his Reconstruction policies. He was shot at while watching a comedy at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, on April 14, 1865, and he died the following morning.