Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln led the United States through the Civil War, ended slavery in it, and was killed five days after the surrender that secured both. Born in a Kentucky log cabin in 1809 and raised in Indiana and Illinois, he had roughly a year of formal schooling and taught himself law, passing the bar in 1836. He served four terms in the Illinois legislature and a single term in Congress from 1847, where his opposition to the Mexican-American War cost him local support. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 drew him back into politics. His debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858 lost him the Senate race but made him nationally known, and he won the presidency in 1860 with under forty per cent of the popular vote and no support in the South. Seven states seceded before his inauguration. He held that secession was legally void and fought the war on that basis, suspending habeas corpus, expanding executive power, and cycling through commanders until he found Ulysses Grant. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, freeing slaves in the rebelling states — a measure justified as a war power, which converted the conflict into a war against slavery and blocked British and French recognition of the Confederacy. It freed no one in the loyal border states, and Lincoln pushed the Thirteenth Amendment through Congress in January 1865 to abolish slavery outright. The Gettysburg Address that November redefined the war's purpose in 272 words. His views on racial equality had been conventional for his time and shifted late; he endorsed limited black suffrage only in his final speech. John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford's Theatre on 14 April 1865, and he died the next morning.
- Lived: 1809 CE – 1865 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: president, statesman
