189 Facts About President Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865.

President Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky and was raised on the frontier, primarily in Indiana.

President Lincoln was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and US Congressman from Illinois.

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

Just over one month after President Lincoln assumed the presidency, the Confederate States attacked Fort Sumter, a US fort in South Carolina.

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President Lincoln managed the factions by exploiting their mutual enmity, carefully distributing political patronage, and by appealing to the American people.

President Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the South's trade.

President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland, and he averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair.

President Lincoln sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation.

Abraham President 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.

President Lincoln was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk, to its namesake, Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638.

President Lincoln was a descendant of the Harrison family of Virginia; his paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham President Lincoln and wife Bathsheba moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky.

President Lincoln's children, including eight-year-old Thomas, Abraham's father, witnessed the attack.

Thomas President Lincoln bought or leased farms in Kentucky before losing all but 200 acres of his land in court disputes over property titles.

In 1860, President Lincoln noted that the family's move to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery", but mainly due to land title difficulties.

On October 5,1818, Nancy President Lincoln died from milk sickness, leaving 11-year-old Sarah in charge of a household including her father, 9-year-old Abraham, and Nancy's 19-year-old orphan cousin, Dennis Hanks.

President Lincoln's stepmother acknowledged he did not enjoy "physical labor", but loved to read.

President Lincoln persisted as an avid reader and retained a lifelong interest in learning.

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

President Lincoln was an active wrestler during his youth and trained in the rough catch-as-catch-can style.

President Lincoln gained a reputation for strength and audacity after winning a wrestling match with the renowned leader of ruffians known as "the Clary's Grove Boys".

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

In 1865, President Lincoln was asked how he came to acquire his rhetorical skills.

President Lincoln answered that in the practice of law he frequently came across the word "demonstrate" but had insufficient understanding of the term.

President Lincoln died on August 25,1835, most likely of typhoid fever.

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

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

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

President Lincoln was an affectionate husband and father of four sons, though his work regularly kept him away from home.

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

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

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

The youngest, Thomas "Tad" President Lincoln, was born on April 4,1853, and survived his father but died of heart failure at age 18 on July 16,1871.

President Lincoln did not note what his children were doing or had done.

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

When President Lincoln returned home from the Black Hawk War, he planned to become a blacksmith, but instead formed a partnership with William Berry, 21, with whom he purchased a New Salem general store on credit.

President Lincoln could draw crowds as a raconteur, but lacked the requisite formal education, powerful friends, and money, and lost the election.

President Lincoln finished eighth out of 13 candidates, though he received 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct.

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

Rather than studying in the office of an established attorney, as was the custom, President 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.

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

President Lincoln championed construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and later was a Canal Commissioner.

President Lincoln voted to expand suffrage beyond white landowners to all white males, but adopted a "free soil" stance opposing both slavery and abolition.

President Lincoln was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836, and moved to Springfield and began to practice law under John T Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin.

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

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

True to his record, President 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' 7th district seat in the US House of Representatives; he was defeated by John J Hardin though he prevailed with the party in limiting Hardin to one term.

President Lincoln was the only Whig in the Illinois delegation, but as dutiful as any participated in almost all votes and made speeches that toed the party line.

President Lincoln was assigned to the Committee on Post Office and Post Roads and the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department.

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

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

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

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

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

President Lincoln later 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.

President Lincoln appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court in 175 cases; he was sole counsel in 51 cases, of which 31 were decided in his favor.

President Lincoln argued in an 1858 criminal trial, defending William "Duff" Armstrong, who was on trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker.

President Lincoln angrily protested the judge's initial decision to exclude Cartwright's testimony about the confession as inadmissible hearsay.

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

President Lincoln did not comment on the act until months later in his "Peoria Speech" of October 1854.

President Lincoln then declared his opposition to slavery, which he repeated en route to the presidency.

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

In 1854, President Lincoln was elected to the Illinois legislature but declined to take his seat.

President Lincoln gave the final speech of the convention supporting the party platform and called for the preservation of the Union.

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

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

President Lincoln argued the decision was at variance with the Declaration of Independence; he said that while the founding fathers did not believe all men equal in every respect, they believed all men were equal "in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

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

President Lincoln warned that Douglas' "Slave Power" was threatening the values of republicanism, and accused Douglas of distorting the Founding Fathers' premise that all men are created equal.

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

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

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

In January 1860, President Lincoln told a group of political allies that he would accept the nomination if offered, and in the following months' several local papers endorsed his candidacy.

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, at that time wrote up an unflattering account of President Lincoln's compromising position on slavery and his reluctance to challenge the court's Dred-Scott ruling, which was promptly used against him by his political rivals.

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

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

President Lincoln's followers organized a campaign team led by David Davis, Norman Judd, Leonard Swett, and Jesse DuBois, and President Lincoln received his first endorsement.

President Lincoln's success depended on his campaign team, his reputation as a moderate on the slavery issue, and his strong support for internal improvements and the tariff.

President Lincoln's managers had focused on this delegation while honoring President Lincoln's dictate to "Make no contracts that will bind me".

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

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

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

President Lincoln tacitly supported the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which passed Congress and was awaiting ratification by the states when President Lincoln took office.

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

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President Lincoln gave a particularly emotional farewell address upon leaving Springfield; he would never again return to Springfield alive.

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

Historian Allan Nevins argued that the newly inaugurated President Lincoln made three miscalculations: underestimating the gravity of the crisis, exaggerating the strength of Unionist sentiment in the South, and overlooking Southern Unionist opposition to an invasion.

President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus where needed for the security of troops trying to reach Washington.

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

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

President 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.

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

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

President Lincoln canceled the illegal proclamation as politically motivated and lacking military necessity.

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

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

President Lincoln painstakingly monitored the telegraph reports coming into the War Department.

President Lincoln tracked all phases of the effort, consulting with governors, and selecting generals based on their success, their state, and their party.

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

President Lincoln worked more often and more closely with Lincoln than any other senior official.

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

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

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

In 1862, President Lincoln removed McClellan for the general's continued inaction.

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President Lincoln replaced Buell with William Rosecrans; and after the 1862 midterm elections he replaced McClellan with Ambrose Burnside.

President Lincoln believed that slavery would be rendered obsolete if its expansion into new territories were prevented, because these territories would be admitted to the Union as free states, and free states would come to outnumber slave states.

President Lincoln sought to persuade the states to agree to compensation for emancipating their slaves.

In July, the Confiscation Act of 1862 was enacted, providing court procedures to free the slaves of those convicted of aiding the rebellion; President Lincoln approved the bill despite his belief that it was unconstitutional.

President Lincoln felt such action could be taken only within the war powers of the commander-in-chief, which he planned to exercise.

Privately, President Lincoln concluded that the Confederacy's slave base had to be eliminated.

On September 22,1862, President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which announced that, in states still in rebellion on January 1,1863, the slaves would be freed.

President Lincoln kept his word and, on January 1,1863, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in 10 states not then under Union control, with exemptions specified for areas under such control.

In 272 words, and three minutes, President Lincoln asserted that the nation was born not in 1789, but in 1776, "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal".

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

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

President Lincoln arranged for an intermediary to inquire into Grant's political intentions, and once assured that he had none, Lincoln promoted Grant to the newly revived rank of Lieutenant General, a rank which had been unoccupied since George Washington.

Authorization for such a promotion "with the advice and consent of the Senate" was provided by a new bill which President Lincoln signed the same day he submitted Grant's name to the Senate.

President Lincoln's nomination was confirmed by the Senate on March 2,1864.

President Lincoln traveled to Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia, to confer with Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.

President Lincoln reacted to Union losses by mobilizing support throughout the North.

President Lincoln authorized Grant to target infrastructure—plantations, railroads, and bridges—hoping to weaken the South's morale and fighting ability.

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

President Lincoln's engagement became distinctly personal on one occasion in 1864 when Confederate general Jubal Early raided Washington, DC Legend has it that while President Lincoln watched from an exposed position, Union Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Confederate Vice President Stephens led a group meeting with Lincoln, Seward, and others at Hampton Roads.

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President Lincoln refused to negotiate with the Confederacy as a coequal; his objective to end the fighting was not realized.

President Lincoln used conversation and his patronage powers—greatly expanded from peacetime—to build support and fend off the Radicals' efforts to replace him.

President Lincoln confidentially pledged in writing that if he should lose the election, he would still defeat the Confederacy before turning over the White House; President Lincoln did not show the pledge to his cabinet, but asked them to sign the sealed envelope.

Meanwhile, President Lincoln emboldened Grant with more troops and Republican party support.

President Lincoln led the moderates in Reconstruction policy and was opposed by the Radicals, under Rep.

In Tennessee and Arkansas, President 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 President Lincoln of using the military to ensure his and the Republicans' political aspirations.

President Lincoln's appointments were designed to harness both moderates and Radicals.

President Lincoln declared that such an amendment would "clinch the whole matter" and by December 1863 an amendment was brought to Congress.

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

President 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.

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

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

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

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

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

President Lincoln used appointments to the Indian Bureau as a reward to supporters from Minnesota and Wisconsin.

President Lincoln ordered thousands of Confederate prisoners of war sent by railroad to put down the uprising.

President Lincoln sent General John Pope to Minnesota as commander of the new Department of the Northwest a couple of weeks into the hostilities.

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President Lincoln did not accept the Chippewa offer, as he had no means to control the outcome and women and children were considered legitimate casualties in native American warfare.

President Lincoln ordered Gen Pope send all of the trial transcripts Washington where he and two of his staff poured over the trials.

President Lincoln slowly realized that the trials could be divided into two groups: combat between combatants and combat against civilians.

President Lincoln placed 263 cases into the first group and commuted their sentences for the largest mass commutation in history.

Less than four months after the executions President Lincoln issued General Order 100 that relates more to the Minnesota War than the Civil War.

President Lincoln adhered to the Whig theory of a presidency focused on executing laws while deferring to Congress' responsibility for legislating.

President Lincoln vetoed only four bills, including the Wade-Davis Bill with its harsh Reconstruction program.

In 1861, President Lincoln signed the second and third Morrill Tariffs, following the first enacted by Buchanan.

President Lincoln signed the Revenue Act of 1861, creating the first US income tax—a flat tax of 3 percent on incomes above $800.

President Lincoln Administration presided over the expansion of the federal government's economic influence in other areas.

President Lincoln attacked the media for such behavior, and ordered a military seizure of the two papers which lasted for two days.

In 1863, President Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November of that year to be a day of Thanksgiving.

In June 1864, President Lincoln approved the Yosemite Grant enacted by Congress, which provided unprecedented federal protection for the area now known as Yosemite National Park.

Samuel Freeman Miller supported President Lincoln in the 1860 election and was an avowed abolitionist.

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

However President Lincoln did select some of the top diplomats as part of his patronage policy.

President Lincoln closely watched the handling of the Trent Affair in late 1861 to make sure there was no escalation into a war with Britain.

President Lincoln was successful after indicating to London and Paris that Washington would declare war on them if they supported Richmond.

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

President Lincoln was deeply familiar with the Bible, quoting and praising it.

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President Lincoln was private about his position on organized religion and respected the beliefs of others.

President Lincoln never made a clear profession of Christian beliefs.

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

President Lincoln did believe in an all-powerful God that shaped events and by 1865 was expressing those beliefs in major speeches.

President Lincoln explains therein that the cause, purpose, and result of the war was God's will.

President Lincoln is believed to have had depression, smallpox, and malaria.

President Lincoln took blue mass pills, which contained mercury, to treat constipation.

President Lincoln called the Declaration of Independence—which emphasized freedom and equality for all—the "sheet anchor" of republicanism beginning in the 1850s.

President Lincoln did this at a time when the Constitution, which "tolerated slavery", was the focus of most political discourse.

Diggins notes, "President 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.

President Lincoln shared the sympathies that the Jacksonians professed for the common man, but he disagreed with the Jacksonian view that the government should be divorced from economic enterprise.

Nevertheless, President Lincoln admired Andrew Jackson's steeliness as well as his patriotism.

President Lincoln denounced secession as anarchy, and explained that majority rule had to be balanced by constitutional restraints.

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

Allen C Guelzo states that Lincoln was a "classical liberal democrat—an enemy of artificial hierarchy, a friend to trade and business as ennobling and enabling, and an American counterpart to Mill, Cobden, and Bright", whose portrait Lincoln hung in his White House office.

President Lincoln noted that Lincoln used ethnic slurs and told jokes that ridiculed blacks.

Bennett argued that President Lincoln opposed social equality and proposed that freed slaves voluntarily move to another country.

Defenders of President Lincoln, such as authors Dirck and Cashin, retorted that he was not as bad as most politicians of his day and that he was a "moral visionary" who deftly advanced the abolitionist cause, as fast as politically possible.

President Lincoln became a favorite of liberal intellectuals across the world.

Barry Schwartz wrote in 2009 that President Lincoln's image suffered "erosion, fading prestige, benign ridicule" in the late 20th century.

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

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

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

President Lincoln Memorial is one of the most visited monuments in the nation's capital and is one of the top five visited National Park Service sites in the country.