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Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865)

16th president of the USA 1861–65, a Republican. During the American Civil War, his chief concern was the preservation of the Union from which the Confederate (southern) slave states had seceded on his election. Lincoln strove to reunite the nation, preserve the federal government, and end slavery. In 1863 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which announced the freedom of Confederate slaves. In 1864, when the Union was close to winning the Civil War, he was re-elected. The Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln the following year.

Early career

Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky on 12 February 1809. Self-educated, he practised law from 1837 in Springfield, Illinois. He was a member of the state legislature from 1832 to 1842. During that time he was known as Honest Abe.

In 1846 Lincoln was elected to the US House of Representatives, although his law practice remained his priority. In 1854 the repeal of the Missouri Compromise (1820) and the reopening of the debate on the extension of slavery in the new territories of the USA drew Lincoln back into politics. He joined the new Republican Party in 1856. Two years later the Republican Party chose Lincoln as their candidate for senator of Illinois. Lincoln ran against the incumbent Stephen Douglas, who had been largely responsible for the repeal of the Compromise. In the ensuing Lincoln–Douglas debates, Lincoln revealed his power as an orator. Although Lincoln lost the senate seat to Douglas, he had established a national reputation.

In 1860 the Republicans, who now pledged to oppose the extension of slavery, chose Lincoln as their presidential candidate. Lincoln was elected president on a minority vote, defeating candidates Stephen Douglas (Northern Democratic Party), John C Breckinridge (Southern Democratic Party), and John Bell (Constitutional Unionist Party).

Presidency

Prior to Lincoln's inauguration, seven southern states proclaimed their formal secession from the Union and formed their own government (the Confederacy). In his March 1861 inaugural address, Lincoln, attempting to appease the South, said he would not interfere with slavery where it already existed. He also declared the Union indissoluble and said that no state had the right to secede from it. The next month, the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina marked the beginning of the Civil War.

In 1862, following an important Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln proclaimed the emancipation of all slaves in states engaged in rebellion against the Union, thereby surpassing the limits of the constitution he had gone to war to maintain. In the Gettysburg Address (1863), he called upon Americans to preserve a ‘nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’.

With the war turning in favour of the North, Lincoln was re-elected in 1864 with a large majority on a National Union ticket. During his campaign, Lincoln advocated a reconciliatory policy towards the South ‘with malice towards none, with charity for all’.

Five days after Confederate commander Robert E Lee's surrender to the Union, which marked the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was shot in a theatre by actor and Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth. He died the following morning on 15 April 1865.

In a Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network survey of 58 historians, the results of which were released in 2000, Lincoln was voted the USA's best president.

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