Abraham Lincoln is often hailed as the greatest president of all times, he was a strong leader during one of the worst crisis in American history. Abraham Lincoln never liked to talk much about his early life. He was born on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky in a log cabin with one window, one door, a chimney, and a hard packed dirty floor. His parents were Thomas and Nancy Lincoln; they named Abraham after his pioneer grandfather who was shot dead by hostile Indians in 1786, while planting a field of corn in the Kentucky wilderness. His family moved to southern Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal schooling was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he had to work constantly to support his family. In 1830, his family moved to Macon County in southern Illinois’, and Lincoln got a job working on a river flatboat hauling freight down the Mississippi river to New Orleans. After setting in the town of New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a shopkeeper and a postmaster, Lincoln became involved in local politics as a supporter of the Whig party, winning election to the Illinois state legislature in 1834, like his Whig heroes Henry clay and Daniel Webster, Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery to territories and had a grand vision of the expanding united states, with a focus on commerce and cities rather than agriculture. Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar examination in 1836. The following year he moved to the newly names state capital of Springfield. For the next