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This article traces the life, political career, and presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), sixteenth president of the United States. For an overview of Lincoln's significance and legacy, see Abraham Lincoln. For interpretive disputes about his record, see Abraham Lincoln - Debate.

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm in Hardin County, Kentucky, to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. The family was of modest means; Thomas Lincoln worked as a farmer and carpenter. Nancy Lincoln died in 1818 from milk sickness, a condition caused by drinking milk from cattle that had consumed white snakeroot. Thomas Lincoln remarried in 1819, taking Sarah Bush Johnston as his wife. Abraham Lincoln later credited his stepmother with encouraging his education.

The Lincoln family moved to Indiana in 1816, partly to escape land-title disputes in Kentucky, and settled in Pigeon Creek, Perry County. In 1830 the family relocated again to Macon County, Illinois. Lincoln had little formal schooling - he later estimated his total classroom instruction at under a year - but read widely and was largely self-educated. He was known in his youth for physical strength and skill at manual labor, including splitting fence rails, which later became a campaign emblem.

Lincoln left his father's household in 1831 and settled in New Salem, Illinois, where he worked a series of jobs: store clerk, mill hand, postmaster, and surveyor. He served as a captain in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War of 1832, though he saw no combat. He ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois state legislature in 1832, then won a seat in 1834 as a member of the Whig Party. He was reelected three times, serving until 1842.

During his time in the legislature, Lincoln read law on his own and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836. He relocated to Springfield in 1837 to practice law, partnering eventually with William Herndon in 1844. His legal practice covered a wide range of civil and criminal matters, including cases before the Illinois Supreme Court and, later, the federal courts. He traveled the Eighth Judicial Circuit for a significant portion of each year.

Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd in 1840. The engagement was broken off in January 1841 under disputed circumstances and resumed; the two married on November 4, 1842. They had four sons: Robert Todd (1843), Edward Baker (1846, died 1850), William Wallace (1850, died 1862), and Thomas “Tad” (1853, died 1871).

Lincoln sought but failed to secure the Whig nomination for Congress in 1843. He succeeded in 1846, winning election to the United States House of Representatives. He served one term (1847-1849) and did not seek reelection, partly due to his unpopular opposition to the Mexican-American War. In a series of resolutions known as the “Spot Resolutions,” introduced in December 1847, Lincoln challenged President James K. Polk to identify the exact spot on American soil where Mexican forces had allegedly shed American blood - the pretext for the war declaration. The resolutions attracted little support and invited political criticism in Illinois.

Lincoln returned to law in Springfield after his congressional term and largely withdrew from active politics until the mid-1850s. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened western territories to the possible expansion of slavery through popular sovereignty, prompted his return. Lincoln delivered an extended speech at Peoria on October 16, 1854, denouncing the act on moral and political grounds. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1855, losing to Lyman Trumbull.

As the Whig Party collapsed over the slavery question, Lincoln affiliated with the newly formed Republican Party by 1856. He gave speeches on behalf of the Republican presidential candidate John C. Fremont, and his political profile in Illinois grew. In 1858 the Illinois Republican Party designated Lincoln as its candidate for U.S. Senate against the incumbent Democrat Stephen A. Douglas.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 - seven joint appearances held between August 21 and October 15 across Illinois - drew wide national attention. The central dispute was the future of slavery in the territories. Douglas defended popular sovereignty; Lincoln argued that slavery was a moral wrong that the founders had expected to be placed on a path to ultimate extinction, and that popular sovereignty threatened to nationalize it indefinitely. At Freeport, Lincoln pressed Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Supreme Court's 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. Douglas's answer - that settlers could effectively exclude slavery through local legislation regardless of the Court's ruling - became known as the Freeport Doctrine and is credited with damaging his standing in the South. Lincoln lost the Senate seat because the Illinois legislature, which then chose senators, remained under Democratic control, but the debates brought him to national prominence.

Lincoln built his national reputation through speaking engagements, most notably the Cooper Union Address delivered in New York City on February 27, 1860. In the address he argued at length from historical evidence that the founding generation had understood Congress to have authority over slavery in the territories, directly rebutting the constitutional claims of southern leaders and the Dred Scott ruling. The speech was widely reprinted and distributed.

At the Republican National Convention in Chicago in May 1860, Lincoln won the presidential nomination on the third ballot, edging out Senator William H. Seward of New York. His nomination was aided by his relative moderation on slavery compared to Seward and by Illinois's status as a critical swing state. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was nominated for vice president.

The 1860 election was a four-way race. The Democratic Party had split: northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas; southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. The Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln won the election with 180 electoral votes and approximately 39.8 percent of the popular vote - entirely from the northern states, as he was not on the ballot in most of the South. His election, which was constitutionally legitimate under the rules then in force, triggered secession proceedings in the lower South.

South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, before Lincoln took office. By February 1, 1861, six more states - Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas - had also seceded. Representatives of these states formed the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861, and elected Jefferson Davis as provisional president.

Lincoln's inaugural address on March 4, 1861, denied the constitutional legitimacy of secession, affirmed his intention to enforce federal law in all states, and pledged not to interfere with slavery where it already existed. He appealed to shared history and identity: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.”

The immediate crisis centered on the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Lincoln chose to resupply the fort rather than reinforce it militarily, notifying South Carolina's governor of his intention. Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on the fort on April 12, 1861. The garrison surrendered on April 14. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion on April 15. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas then seceded. The war began.

Lincoln entered office with limited military experience and initially deferred substantially to his generals. The Union Army suffered a sharp defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, dispelling expectations of a short war. Lincoln appointed General George B. McClellan to command the Army of the Potomac in July 1861.

Lincoln's use of executive authority in the war's opening months was extensive. Before Congress convened in special session, he called for volunteer troops, expanded the regular Army and Navy beyond statutory limits, authorized expenditures without appropriation, blockaded southern ports, and suspended the writ of habeas corpus in parts of Maryland. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, in Ex parte Merryman (1861), held that Lincoln had no authority to suspend habeas corpus unilaterally; Lincoln did not comply with the ruling.

Congress, when it convened, retroactively approved most of Lincoln's emergency measures. The legal and constitutional dimensions of these actions became subjects of sustained debate. See Abraham Lincoln - Executive Overreach Viewpoint and Abraham Lincoln - Constitutional Savior Viewpoint.

McClellan's Peninsula Campaign of spring and summer 1862 aimed to capture Richmond by moving up the Virginia Peninsula but stalled before the Confederate capital. A series of engagements known as the Seven Days Battles (June 25-July 1, 1862) drove Union forces back. Lincoln grew increasingly frustrated with McClellan's caution and slowness to follow up advantages. A second Union defeat at Bull Run on August 28-30, 1862, further damaged northern morale.

McClellan checked Confederate General Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862 - the bloodiest single day of the war - but failed to pursue the retreating Confederate army aggressively. Lincoln used the tactical outcome at Antietam as the occasion to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, announcing that as of January 1, 1863, enslaved persons in states still in rebellion would be declared free. He relieved McClellan of command in November 1862.

Lincoln had publicly framed the war's purpose in its early phases primarily as preservation of the Union rather than abolition of slavery. His August 22, 1862, letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, stated this explicitly: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” He added that his “personal wish” was for all men to be free. Whether this letter represented Lincoln's genuine priorities or a political framing of a decision already made is disputed among historians. See Abraham Lincoln - Reluctant Emancipator Viewpoint and Abraham Lincoln - Great Emancipator Viewpoint.

The Emancipation Proclamation took effect January 1, 1863. As a war measure under the commander-in-chief clause, it applied only to Confederate-held territory - areas where the federal government then lacked practical enforcement power. It exempted border states and Union-occupied Confederate regions. It did not immediately free any enslaved persons in territory under Union control. It authorized the enlistment of black men into Union forces.

The recruitment of African-American soldiers proceeded through 1863 under the Bureau of Colored Troops. By the war's end, approximately 180,000 black men had served in the Union Army, comprising about ten percent of its total strength. The 54th Massachusetts Infantry, composed of free black men from the North and commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, gained particular attention for its assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863.

Military fortunes shifted more decisively in July 1863. General Ulysses S. Grant completed the capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River and splitting the Confederacy. Simultaneously, Lee's second northern invasion was repulsed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (July 1-3), in three days of fighting that produced approximately 50,000 combined casualties. Lincoln's brief remarks at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863 - the Gettysburg Address - reframed the war's stakes in terms of national founding principles and equality.

By mid-1864 the war had not ended, casualties were mounting, and Lincoln privately doubted his chances for reelection. The Democratic Party nominated McClellan on a platform that called for a negotiated peace. Radical Republicans considered replacing Lincoln with a candidate more committed to full emancipation and reconstruction. General William T. Sherman's capture of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, dramatically improved northern morale and strengthened Lincoln's political position. Lincoln won reelection on November 8, 1864, carrying 22 states and 212 electoral votes to McClellan's 3 states and 21 electoral votes.

Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered March 4, 1865, is notable for its brevity and its theological framing of the war as a national ordeal. He offered no declaration of triumph and expressed neither vindictiveness toward the South nor exculpation of the North: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.”

Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. Other Confederate forces surrendered in subsequent weeks.

On the evening of April 14, 1865, Lincoln attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot Lincoln once in the back of the head with a derringer pistol at approximately 10:15 p.m. Lincoln was carried unconscious to the Petersen House across the street. He died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, without regaining consciousness. He was 56 years old.

Booth had organized a coordinated attack: simultaneously, Lewis Powell stabbed Secretary of State William H. Seward at his home, wounding him severely, and George Atzerodt was assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson but failed to act. Booth escaped the theater and was tracked down and shot on April 26, 1865, at a farm in Virginia. Eight conspirators were tried by a military tribunal; four were hanged, including Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the federal government.

Lincoln's body lay in state in the Capitol rotunda and was then transported by funeral train across the North to Springfield, Illinois, where he was interred at Oak Ridge Cemetery on May 4, 1865.

Vice President Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency and pursued a reconstruction policy significantly more lenient toward the former Confederate states than the Radical Republican Congress was prepared to accept, producing a prolonged and bitter conflict over the terms of reunion.

Historians disagree about the depth and consistency of Lincoln's personal opposition to racial inequality; some argue his views evolved significantly between the 1850s and 1865, while others contend his public statements reflected strategic calculation more than moral transformation - see Abraham Lincoln - Racial Attitudes Evolution Viewpoint, Abraham Lincoln - Static Racial Attitudes Viewpoint, and Abraham Lincoln - Racial Attitudes Viewpoint.

The extent to which Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, military tribunals, and suppression of opposition press constituted legitimate emergency executive authority or unconstitutional overreach remains contested - see Abraham Lincoln - Executive Overreach Viewpoint and Abraham Lincoln - Constitutional Savior Viewpoint.

Whether Lincoln's delay in moving toward emancipation reflected genuine uncertainty, political constraint, or a deliberate rhetorical strategy is disputed - see Abraham Lincoln - Reluctant Emancipator Viewpoint and Abraham Lincoln - Great Emancipator Viewpoint.

The causal relationship between Lincoln's specific policies and the outcome of the war, as distinct from structural factors such as the Union's industrial and population advantages, is a subject of ongoing historical argument - see Abraham Lincoln - Debate.

[1] Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

[2] McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

[3] Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.

[4] White, Ronald C., Jr. A. Lincoln: A Biography. New York: Random House, 2009.

[5] Basler, Roy P., ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 9 vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953-1955.

[6] Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

[7] Neely, Mark E., Jr. The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

[8] Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

[9] Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

[10] Burlingame, Michael. Abraham Lincoln: A Life. 2 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.