170 Facts About Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865.

Abraham Lincoln led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederate States of America, playing a major role in the abolition of slavery, expanding the power of the federal government, and modernizing the US economy.

Abraham Lincoln was self-educated and became a lawyer, Illinois state legislator, and US representative.

Abraham Lincoln reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A Douglas.

Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, but the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding to form the Confederate States of America.

Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in April 1861, leading to Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion in Ex parte Merryman, and he averted war with Britain by defusing the Trent Affair.

Abraham Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of Southern ports.

Abraham Lincoln promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which, in 1865, abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime.

Abraham Lincoln sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation, calling for "malice toward none; with charity for all" in his second inaugural address.

Abraham Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for his wartime leadership and for his efforts to preserve the Union and abolish slavery.

Abraham Lincoln is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history.

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12,1809, in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Abraham Lincoln was a descendant of the Harrison family of Virginia.

Thomas Abraham Lincoln bought multiple farms in Kentucky but could not get clear property titles to any, losing hundreds of acres in legal disputes.

On October 5,1818, Nancy Lincoln died from milk sickness, leaving 11-year-old Sarah in charge of a household including her father, nine-year-old Abraham, and Nancy's 19-year-old orphan cousin, Dennis Hanks.

Abraham Lincoln became close to his stepmother and called her "Mother".

Abraham Lincoln was tall, strong, and athletic, and became adept at using an ax.

In March 1830, fearing another milk sickness outbreak, several members of the extended Lincoln family, including Abraham, moved west to Illinois and settled in Macon County.

Abraham Lincoln became increasingly distant from Thomas, in part due to his father's lack of interest in education; he would later refuse to attend his father's deathbed or funeral.

Abraham Lincoln took the death very hard, sinking into a serious depression and contemplating suicide.

Late in 1836, Abraham Lincoln agreed to a match with Owens if she returned to New Salem.

In 1839, Abraham Lincoln met Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois, and the following year they became engaged.

Abraham Lincoln was the daughter of Robert Smith Todd, a wealthy lawyer and businessman in Lexington, Kentucky.

Abraham Lincoln initially broke off the engagement in early 1841, but the two were reconciled and married on November 4,1842.

The eldest, Robert Todd Abraham Lincoln, was born in 1843, and was the only child to live to maturity.

Edward Baker Abraham Lincoln, born in 1846, died February 1,1850, probably of tuberculosis.

Abraham Lincoln's third son, "Willie" Abraham Lincoln, was born on December 21,1850, and died of a fever at the White House on February 20,1862.

The youngest, Thomas "Tad" Abraham Lincoln, was born on April 4,1853, and died of edema at age 18 on July 16,1871.

Abraham Lincoln suffered from "melancholy", a condition now thought to be clinical depression.

In 1831, Thomas moved the family to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, after which Abraham Lincoln struck out on his own.

Abraham Lincoln made his home in New Salem, Illinois, for six years.

Abraham Lincoln gained a reputation for strength and courage after winning a wrestling match with the leader of ruffians known as the Clary's Grove boys.

Abraham Lincoln was elected the captain of his militia company but did not see combat.

Abraham Lincoln could draw crowds as a raconteur, but lacked name recognition, powerful friends, and money, and lost the election.

Abraham Lincoln served as New Salem's postmaster and later as county surveyor, but he continued his voracious reading and decided to become a lawyer.

Rather than studying in the office of an established attorney, as was the custom, Abraham Lincoln borrowed legal texts from attorneys John Todd Stuart and Thomas Drummond, purchased books including Blackstone's Commentaries and Chitty's Pleadings, and read law on his own.

Abraham Lincoln's second state house campaign in 1834, this time as a Whig, was a success over a powerful Whig opponent.

Abraham Lincoln voted to expand suffrage beyond white landowners to all white males, but opposed both slavery and abolition.

Abraham Lincoln was admitted to the Illinois bar on September 9,1836.

Abraham Lincoln moved to Springfield and began to practice law under John T Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin.

Abraham Lincoln emerged as a formidable trial combatant during cross-examinations and closing arguments.

Abraham Lincoln partnered several years with Stephen T Logan and, in 1844, began his practice with William Herndon, "a studious young man".

On January 27,1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered a major speech at the Lyceum in Springfield, after the murder of anti-slavery newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy.

Abraham Lincoln was criticized in the press for a planned duel with James Shields, whom he had ridiculed in letters published under the name "Aunt Rebecca"; though the duel ultimately did not take place, "the affair embarrassed Lincoln terribly".

Abraham Lincoln professed to friends in 1861 to be "an old line Whig, a disciple of Henry Clay".

In 1843, Lincoln sought the Whig nomination for Illinois's 7th district seat in the US House of Representatives; John J Hardin was the successful candidate, though Lincoln prevailed with the party in limiting Hardin to one term.

Abraham Lincoln supported the Wilmot Proviso, a failed proposal to ban slavery in any US territory won from Mexico.

Abraham Lincoln emphasized his opposition to Polk by drafting and introducing his Spot Resolutions.

Abraham Lincoln later regretted some of his statements, especially his attack on presidential war-making powers.

Abraham Lincoln had pledged in 1846 to serve only one term in the House.

Taylor won and Abraham Lincoln hoped in vain to be appointed Commissioner of the United States General Land Office.

Abraham Lincoln handled transportation cases in the midst of the nation's western expansion, particularly river barge conflicts under the many new railroad bridges.

Abraham Lincoln represented a bridge company against a riverboat company in Hurd v Rock Island Bridge Company, a landmark case involving a canal boat that sank after hitting a bridge.

Abraham Lincoln appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court in 411 cases.

Abraham Lincoln represented William "Duff" Armstrong in his 1858 trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker.

Abraham Lincoln angrily protested the judge's initial decision to exclude Cartwright's claim as hearsay.

Abraham Lincoln argued that the testimony involved a dying declaration and was not subject to the hearsay rule.

Abraham Lincoln held out hope for rejuvenating the Whigs, though he lamented his party's growing closeness with the nativist Know Nothing movement.

In 1854, Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Illinois legislature, but before the term began he declined to take his seat so that he would be eligible to run in the upcoming US Senate election.

Abraham Lincoln instructed his backers to vote for Lyman Trumbull, an antislavery Democrat who had received few votes in the earlier ballots.

Abraham Lincoln gave the final speech of the convention, calling for the preservation of the Union.

At the June 1856 Republican National Convention, though Lincoln received support to run as vice president, John C Fremont and William Dayton were on the ticket, which Lincoln supported throughout Illinois.

Buchanan prevailed, while Republican William Henry Bissell won election as Governor of Illinois, and Abraham Lincoln became a leading Republican in Illinois.

Abraham Lincoln's petition was denied in Dred Scott v Sandford.

Abraham Lincoln denounced it as the product of a conspiracy of Democrats to support the Slave Power.

In 1858, Douglas was up for re-election in the US Senate, and Abraham Lincoln hoped to defeat him.

Many in the party felt that a former Whig should be nominated in 1858, and Abraham Lincoln's 1856 campaigning and support of Trumbull had earned him a favor.

Abraham Lincoln warned that the Slave Power was threatening the values of republicanism, and he accused Douglas of distorting Jefferson's premise that all men are created equal.

Abraham Lincoln's argument assumed a moral tone, as he claimed that Douglas represented a conspiracy to promote slavery.

Douglas's argument was more legal in nature, claiming that Abraham Lincoln was defying the authority of the US Supreme Court as exercised in the Dred Scott decision.

In May 1859, Abraham Lincoln purchased the Illinois Staats-Anzeiger, a German-language newspaper that was consistently supportive; most of the state's 130,000 German Americans voted for Democrats, but the German-language paper mobilized Republican support.

On February 27,1860, powerful New York Republicans invited Abraham Lincoln to give a speech at Cooper Union, in which he argued that the Founding Fathers had little use for popular sovereignty and had repeatedly sought to restrict slavery.

Abraham Lincoln insisted that morality required opposition to slavery and rejected any "groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong".

People of the Northern states knew the Southern states would vote against Abraham Lincoln and rallied supporters for him.

Abraham Lincoln hired John George Nicolay as his personal secretary, who would remain in that role during the presidency.

On November 6,1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president.

Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president and his victory was entirely due to his support in the North and West.

Abraham Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes, or 39.8 percent of the total in a four-way race, carrying the free Northern states, as well as California and Oregon, and winning the Electoral vote decisively.

President Buchanan and President-elect Abraham Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy, declaring secession illegal.

On February 11,1861, Abraham Lincoln gave a particularly emotional farewell address upon leaving Springfield for Washington.

Abraham Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment to the US Constitution, which passed Congress and was awaiting ratification by the required three-fourths of the states when Abraham Lincoln took office, whereupon Southern states began to secede.

On March 4,1861, in his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln said that, because he holds "such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable".

En route to his inauguration, Abraham Lincoln addressed crowds and legislatures across the North.

Abraham Lincoln traveled in disguise, wearing a soft felt hat instead of his customary stovepipe hat and draping an overcoat over his shoulders while hunching slightly to conceal his height.

Abraham Lincoln directed his inaugural address to the South, proclaiming that he had no inclination to abolish slavery in the Southern states:.

However, Abraham Lincoln quickly appointed some top diplomats "to counteract Confederate efforts at gaining recognition from European nations".

Finally, Lincoln appointed his Treasury Secretary, Salmon P Chase, as Chief Justice.

Abraham Lincoln believed Chase was an able jurist, would support Reconstruction legislation, and that his appointment would unite the Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln's repeated efforts to avoid collision in the months between inauguration and the firing on Fort Sumter showed he adhered to his vow not to be the first to shed fraternal blood.

Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, allowing arrests without charges.

Abraham Lincoln took executive control of the war and shaped the Union military strategy.

Abraham Lincoln responded to the unprecedented political and military crisis as commander-in-chief by exercising unprecedented authority.

Abraham Lincoln expanded his war powers, imposed a blockade on Confederate ports, disbursed funds before appropriation by Congress, suspended habeas corpus, and arrested and imprisoned thousands of suspected Confederate sympathizers.

Abraham Lincoln gained the support of Congress and the northern public for these actions.

Abraham Lincoln had to reinforce Union sympathies in the border slave states and keep the war from becoming an international conflict.

Abraham Lincoln selected civilian generals from varied political and ethnic backgrounds "to secure their and their constituents' support for the war effort and ensure that the war became a national struggle".

In January 1862, after complaints of inefficiency and profiteering in the War Department, Abraham Lincoln replaced War Secretary Simon Cameron with Edwin Stanton.

Stanton worked more often and more closely with Abraham Lincoln than did any other senior official.

Abraham Lincoln began to appreciate the critical need to control strategic points, such as the Mississippi River.

Abraham Lincoln saw the importance of Vicksburg and understood the necessity of defeating the enemy's army, rather than merely capturing territory.

In directing the Union's war strategy, Abraham Lincoln valued the advice of Winfield Scott, even after his retirement as Commanding General of the United States Army.

In June 1862, Abraham Lincoln made an unannounced visit to West Point, where he spent five hours consulting with Scott regarding the handling of the war.

Internationally, Abraham Lincoln wanted to forestall foreign military aid to the Confederacy.

Abraham Lincoln relied on his combative Secretary of State William Seward while working closely with Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Charles Sumner.

McClellan's slow progress frustrated Abraham Lincoln, as did his position that no troops were needed to defend Washington.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln removed McClellan as general-in-chief for the general's continued inaction.

Abraham Lincoln elevated Henry Halleck to the post and appointed John Pope as head of the new Army of Virginia.

Abraham Lincoln replaced Buell with William Rosecrans and McClellan with Ambrose Burnside.

On July 22,1862, Abraham Lincoln reviewed a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet.

On January 1,1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in 10 states not then under Union control, with exemptions specified for areas under such control.

In 272 words, taking only three minutes, Abraham Lincoln asserted that the nation was "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal".

Abraham Lincoln defined the war as dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality for all.

Abraham Lincoln declared that the deaths of so many soldiers would not be in vain, that the future of democracy would be assured, and that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

Amid the turmoil of military actions, on June 30,1864, Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Yosemite Grant enacted by Congress, which provided unprecedented federal protection for the area now known as Yosemite National Park.

Abraham Lincoln emphasized defeat of the Confederate armies over destruction for its own sake.

Abraham Lincoln refused to negotiate with the Confederacy as a coequal.

In early April, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond and Abraham Lincoln visited the conquered capital, whereupon on April 9,1865, Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox.

Abraham Lincoln signed the second and third Morrill Tariffs, the first having become law in the final months of Buchanan's tenure.

Abraham Lincoln took action against rampant fraud during the war, enacting the False Claims Act of 1863.

Abraham Lincoln had "limited familiarity with diplomatic practices" but had a "substantial influence on US diplomacy" as the Union attempted to avoid war with Britain and France.

Abraham Lincoln's policy succeeded: all foreign nations were officially neutral throughout the Civil War, with none recognizing the Confederacy.

The Abraham Lincoln administration faced difficulties guarding Western settlers, railroads, and telegraph from Native American attacks.

Abraham Lincoln ordered thousands of Confederate prisoners of war be sent to put down the uprising.

Abraham Lincoln sent General John Pope as commander of the new Department of the Northwest.

Abraham Lincoln pardoned all but 39, and, with one getting a reprieve, the remaining 38 were executed in the largest mass execution in US history.

Less than four months later, Abraham Lincoln issued the Lieber Code, which governed wartime conduct of the Union Army, by defining command responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Abraham Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864; the Republican Party selected Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat, as his running mate.

Abraham Lincoln prepared a confidential memorandum pledging that, if he should lose the election, he would "co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward".

At the next cabinet meeting, Abraham Lincoln "asked each member to sign his name on the back of the document", but he did not allow them to read it.

On March 4,1865, Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address.

Abraham Lincoln led the moderates in Reconstruction policy and was opposed by the Radicals, under Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and Benjamin Wade, who otherwise remained Abraham Lincoln's allies.

In Tennessee and Arkansas, Abraham Lincoln respectively appointed Johnson and Frederick Steele as military governors.

In Louisiana, Lincoln ordered General Nathaniel P Banks to promote a plan that would reestablish statehood when 10 percent of the voters agreed, and only if the reconstructed states abolished slavery.

Democratic opponents accused Abraham Lincoln of using the military to ensure his and the Republicans' political aspirations.

Abraham Lincoln believed the federal government had limited responsibility to the millions of freedmen.

Abraham Lincoln signed Senator Charles Sumner's Freedmen's Bureau bill that set up a temporary federal agency designed to meet the immediate needs of former slaves.

Abraham Lincoln announced a Reconstruction plan that involved short-term military control, pending readmission under the control of southern Unionists.

Unlike Sumner and other Radicals, Abraham Lincoln did not see Reconstruction as an opportunity for a sweeping political and social revolution beyond emancipation.

Abraham Lincoln had long made clear his opposition to the confiscation and redistribution of land.

Abraham Lincoln believed, as most Republicans did in April 1865, that voting requirements should be determined by the states.

Abraham Lincoln assumed that political control in the South would pass to white Unionists, reluctant secessionists, and forward-looking former Confederates.

Abraham Lincoln vetoed only four bills during his presidency, including the Wade-Davis Bill with its harsh Reconstruction program.

Abraham Lincoln's body was wrapped in a flag and placed in a coffin, which was loaded into a hearse and escorted to the White House by Union soldiers.

Historians emphasized the widespread shock and sorrow, but noted that some Abraham Lincoln haters celebrated his death.

Abraham Lincoln's body was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield and now lies within the Abraham Lincoln Tomb.

Abraham Lincoln redefined the political philosophy of republicanism in the United States.

John Patrick Diggins notes, "Abraham Lincoln presented Americans a theory of history that offers a profound contribution to the theory and destiny of republicanism itself" in the 1860 Cooper Union speech.

Nevertheless, Abraham Lincoln admired Andrew Jackson's steeliness and patriotism, and adopted the Jacksonian "belief in the common man".

Abraham Lincoln never made a clear profession of Christian beliefs.

Abraham Lincoln never joined a church, although he frequently attended First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois, with his wife beginning in 1852.

Abraham Lincoln believed in an all-powerful God who shaped events and by 1865 was expressing that belief in major speeches.

Abraham Lincoln was described as "ungainly" and "gawky" as a youth.

Tall for his age, Abraham Lincoln was strong and athletic as a teenager.

Abraham Lincoln dressed as a typical boy from a poor, backwoods family, with a gap between his shoes, socks, and pants that often exposed six or more inches of his shin.

Abraham Lincoln generally continued to enjoy good health throughout his life.

In 1831, Abraham Lincoln was described as six feet three or four inches tall, weighing 210 pounds, and having a ruddy complexion.

Abraham Lincoln described himself as having a "dark complexion, with coarse black hair".

Abraham Lincoln took blue mass pills, which contained mercury, to treat melancholy or hypochondriasis.

Several claims have been made that Abraham Lincoln's health was declining before the assassination, as photographs of Abraham Lincoln appear to show weight loss and muscle wasting.

Abraham Lincoln was viewed by abolitionists as a champion of human liberty.

Frederick Douglass stated that in "his company, I was never reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color", and Abraham Lincoln has long been known as the Great Emancipator.

Abraham Lincoln noted that Lincoln used ethnic slurs and argued that Lincoln opposed social equality and proposed that freed slaves voluntarily move to another country.

Defenders of Abraham Lincoln retorted that he was a "moral visionary" who deftly advanced the abolitionist cause, as fast as politically possible.

David Herbert Donald opined in his 1996 biography that Abraham Lincoln was distinctly endowed with the personality trait of negative capability, defined by the poet John Keats and attributed to extraordinary leaders who were "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason".

Abraham Lincoln has often been portrayed by Hollywood, almost always in a flattering light.

Abraham Lincoln has been admired by political figures outside the US, including German political theorist Karl Marx, Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, and leader of the Italian Risorgimento, Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Abraham Lincoln's portrait appears on two denominations of United States currency, the penny and the $5 bill.

Abraham Lincoln has been memorialized in many town, city, and county names, including the capital of Nebraska.

The Abraham Lincoln Memorial is one of the most visited National Park Service sites in the country.

Abraham Lincoln Portrait is a 1942 classical orchestral work written by the American composer Aaron Copland based on speeches and writings of Abraham Lincoln.