Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was extremely important to the past history of our country. He helped to abolish slavery in this country and prevented the American Union from splitting apart during the Civil War. Born in 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky, Lincoln spent most of his childhood working on and around the family farm. He had less than a year of school but managed to educate himself by reading and studying books on his own. At 22, he moved to New Salem, Illinois. By exchanging stories and his gift of making friends, he became very popular and was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1834. During his spare time, he taught himself law and became a lawyer. In 1847, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, but returned to his law practice until 1858, it was then, when his concern about the spread of slavery prompted him to return to politics and run for the U.S. Senate. His campaign for senate was unsuccessful, but during the debates with opponent Stephen Douglas, he became well known for his opposition to slavery. The southern states, which believed they depended upon slavery to remain successful in the cotton, tobacco, and rice industries, threatened to secede from the nation if Lincoln won the election. Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, and by April 12, the southern states had formed the Confederate States of America. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun. It was during the Civil War that Lincoln pronounced the slaves free in the Confederate states. This was his famous Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863. Lincoln knew that something else had to be done to insure liberty for the slaves after the war. So he passed an antislavery amendment to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment passed by