Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth U.S. president, was born in a log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. Lincoln's parents, Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, were illiterate farmers, and Lincoln had only a year or two of schooling during his childhood. When Lincoln was seven years old, the family moved to southern Indiana. In 1818, Lincoln's mother died of milk sickness, and his father married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow, a year later. As a youngster and young man, Lincoln worked on his family's farm and neighboring farms and later as a boatman on the Ohio River. In his spare time, Lincoln devoured the few books available in his rural community.

In 1830, the Lincolns moved to Illinois, where Lincoln worked as a boatman, store clerk, postmaster, and surveyor. He also served for several months in the Illinois state militia. In 1832, Lincoln ran for the Illinois House of Representatives and lost, but he won the seat two years later and held it until 1842. During his tenure in the state legislature, Lincoln began to study law. He received his license to practice law in 1836.

In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd. They lived in Springfield, eventually purchasing a home on Eighth and Jackson Streets. The marriage produced four sons, two of whom died during childhood. Through the 1840s, Lincoln worked as an attorney in Springfield and rode the Illinois Eighth Circuit, handling cases throughout central and eastern Illinois. In 1846, he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and served a single term, distinguished mainly by his opposition to the Mexican War. Weary of politics, Lincoln returned to his law practice in 1848.

During Lincoln’s sabbatical from office-holding, the nation was dividing over slavery, as Congressional compromises failed to resolve the slavery question. In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed the introduction of slavery into U.S. territories. Passage of the act aroused Lincoln, who opposed any extension of slavery, and he traveled around Illinois speaking against the act and its author, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois. Lincoln joined the newly formed Republican Party, which opposed slavery’s extension. In 1858, Lincoln challenged Douglas for his senate seat, kicking off the campaign with his "House Divided" Speech in Springfield. Quoting Matthew's gospel, Lincoln asserted that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” Lincoln lost the election to Douglas, but the race attracted national attention, putting Lincoln in the nation's political spotlight.

In 1860, Lincoln gained the Republican Party's nomination for president. In the November election, Lincoln bested three other candidates to win the presidency. In the wake of Lincoln’s election, southern states began voting to secede from the Union. In his First Inaugural Address, delivered on March 4, 1861, Lincoln promised not to interfere with slavery where it already existed, only to oppose its extension. Nonetheless, eleven southern slave states ultimately seceded from the Union, forming the Confederate States of America.

The Civil War began in April 1861 when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter, a federal garrison in Charleston harbor. Early Confederate victories made certain that the southern insurrection would not be quickly extinguished. But Lincoln persevered, raising troops and steadfastly refusing to grant the South independence. The tide of the war began to change with decisive Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

Shortly after the Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, announcing that he would free the slaves in the rebellious southern states if they did not return to the Union by January 1, 1863. No southern state complied, and Lincoln, on that date, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the states that had seceded from the Union. Unsure of the legality of his proclamation, Lincoln supported passage of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which, when passed, would abolish slavery in the U.S. and its territories.

Lincoln defended his Emancipation Proclamation with stirring public rhetoric. In the Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863, he defined the U.S. as a nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and he promised for the nation "a new birth of freedom." In the Second Inaugural Address, delivered on March 4, 1865, Lincoln identified slavery as an offence against God, "who gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came."

With victory in the war in sight, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. His body is buried in Springfield, Illinois.

Source of quotations: Roy P. Basler, ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 8 vols. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953.