Abraham Lincoln United States 16th President Biography

Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February, 1809 in Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky.  He was 16^th president of the United States during the civil war and brought about the abolition of slavery. He was one of the American greatest heroes due to his role as savior of the union and emancipator of the slaves. On November 1, 1863, he gave a powerful speech called the Gettysburg Address, which is considered one of the great speeches in American history.

Early Life of Abraham Lincoln:

Abraham Lincoln was born to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln in a log cabin on a farm in Hardin County, Kentucky. Abraham Lincoln had older sister Sarah and younger brother Thomas, who died in infancy. The family moved to a farm on Knob Creek. When Abraham was seven years old, his father sold his lands and moved the family into the rugged wilderness of Indiana across the Ohio River. When he was nine years old, his mother died of tremetol. Thomas Lincoln married a widow, Sarah Bush Johnston. His stepmother encouraged him to read. As Reading books were not available in the Indiana Wilderness, he would walk for miles to borrow a book. The family again moved to Macon County, Illinois where Lincoln would set out on his own. He worked variety of jobs including surveyor, postmaster, and shopkeeper and sometimes he split firewood with an axe for a living. Working with public, he gained social skills and honed up storytelling talent that made him popular with the skills. In 1832, when Black Hawk war broke out between the United States and Native Americans, the volunteers elected Lincoln to be their captain in that area.

Lincoln’s Military and Lawyer Career:

In 1832, at the age of 23, Abraham Lincoln bought a small general stores along with a partner in New Salem but due to the difficulties in the business he sold his share. That march Lincoln started his career with his first campaign for the Illinois General Assembly. Before the election, Lincoln served as a Capitan in the Illinois Militia during the Black hawk War.  He had done as New Salem’s Postmaster and later as country surveyor. He wanted to become a lawyer and he started reading several law books.In 1834, he was elected to the Illinois state legislature as a member of the Whig Party.  In 1836, Abraham Lincoln moved to Springfield, Illinois and began to practise law under John T. Stuart.  He became a successful lawyer. From 1841 until 1844 Lincoln partnered with Stephen T. Logan. Abraham Lincoln served as U.S Representative from 1847 to 1849. In 1854 he was elected to the state legislature but resigned to run for the US Senate. He wrote a bill to abolish slavery in Columbia.

Abraham Lincoln Presidency:

Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16^th president of the United States on November 6, 1860. He was the first president from the Republican Party. The southern states did not want Lincoln to be president. Seven Southern states began to secede. South Carolina was the first state to leave, six more states followed and together they formed a new country called the Confederacy.

The Civil War:

On April 12, 1861 The Civil War began at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. He was resolute to maintain the Union of the states. Abraham Lincoln called for an army from the northern states to defeat the south. The civil war ended on April 9, 1865.

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln:

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by an actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.  Abraham Lincoln died on April 15^th, 1865.

Personal Life:

Abraham Lincoln’s first love was with Ann Rutledge but she died early due to typhoid and he became infatuated to Mary Todd and married her on November 4th, 1842.  Robert Todd Lincoln was their first son born in 1843 and the Edward Baker Lincoln was the second child born in 1846 but died in 1850 of tuberculosis. Son Willie Lincoln, the third child was born in 1850 and died in 1862. The fourth child, Thomas Tad Lincoln was born in 1853 and died of heart failure in 1871.

Abraham Lincoln Inspirational Quotes:

• "Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be."

• "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."

• "It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."

• "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

• "I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."

• "It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."

• "A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me

• "I am not concerned that you have fallen / I am concerned that you arise."

• “I walk slowly, but I never walk backward"

• "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

• "Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward."

• "I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be

• "If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the great high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause."

• "I can make a General in five minutes but a good horse is hard to replace."

• "I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause that we believe to be just; it shall not deter me."

• "What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried"

• "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"

• "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

• "A statesman is he who thinks in the future generations, and a politician is he who thinks in the upcoming elections."

• "I am satisfied that when the Almighty wants me to do or not do any particular thing, He finds a way of letting me know it"

• "Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest"

• "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

• "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day."

• "In the end it is not the years in your life that count. It is the life in your years"

• "Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good."

• "I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it"

• "Whatever you are, be a good one."

• "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing."

• "That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well."

• "The Almighty has His own purposes."

• "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other thing."

• "I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me."

• "Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality."

• "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."

• "Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged."

• "We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read."

• "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world."

• "The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle"

• "For people who like that kind of a book that is the kind of book they will like"

• "The United States government must not undertake to run the Churches. When an individual, in the Church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked."

• "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."

• "I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits that strict justice."

• "Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all"

• "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

• "I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down..."

• "If the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers."

• "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."

• "Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything."

• "I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."

• "Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men"

• "Suspicions which may be unjust need not be stated"

• "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

• "Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."

• "The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him."

• "Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling"

• "Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

• "With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die"

• "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds. . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting pea"

• "Public opinion, though often formed upon a wrong basis, yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice"

• "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history"

• "Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people"