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Read About Abraham Lincoln
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A Brief Biography of
Abraham Lincoln
Vocabulary Words and References are in bold. See additional handout
for definitions and explanations.
Abraham Lincoln was born to Tom and Nancy Lincoln on
February 12, 1809 in a one room log cabin in Kentucky.
He was named for his grandfather. His father was a
carpenter and farmer. The Lincolns lived off the land in
unsettled territory. They cut down trees to build their house, furniture, fences and fires.
They hunted game, tended animals and planted crops. They made their own cloth and
sewed their own clothes. Even their water came from a nearby creek.
Lincoln and his older sister Sarah attended school for only a brief time. In rural areas,
education cost money and took time away from farming. The schools were called “blab
schools” because they were so noisy, due to the fact that students recited their lessons out
loud. Lincoln never attended more than a year of formal schooling.
When Lincoln was seven, the family moved to Indiana to an area called Pigeon Creek.
Once again, they had to build their own home and all their furnishings; it was easier in
frontier life to leave behind belongings than to travel with them.
As a young boy, Lincoln often hunted with his father for food. In writings, Lincoln
recalled shooting a wild turkey and the remorse he felt for killing an animal. He never
hunted again.
In 1818, Lincoln’s mother died of “milk sickness,” an illness caused by drinking the milk
of a cow that has eaten poisonous plants. This was devastating for the family. A year
later, however, Tom Lincoln remarried a woman named Sarah, a widow with three
children. Lincoln’s stepmother encouraged Lincoln’s reading and personal enrichment.
Lincoln loved to read and would travel miles to borrow books. His favorite subjects were
law and history, but he enjoyed Robinson Crusoe and Aesop’s Fables. Later in life, he
would become a lawyer, educating himself by studying books and in training with
practicing lawyers.
Lincoln grew to be 6’4 inches tall, at a time when the average man was 5’4. He was said
to be incredibly thin and have a very high-pitched and squeaky voice.
At 19 years old, Lincoln took his first job operating a flatboat loaded with farm goods
being shipped to New Orleans. He repeated this journey a few years later. At 22, he
relocated to New Salem, Illinois and took a job as a general store clerk. It was in New
Salem that he showed his first interest in politics, running for the Illinois General
Assembly. He was not elected, but received full support from his hometown.
As a young adult, Lincoln served as a military officer in the Black Hawk War, opened a
general store, was appointed postmaster, and became a surveyor. At the age of 25, he
was elected to the Illinois General Assembly, where he met a lawyer who helped train
him in the profession; two years later he earned a license to practice law. He was an
active lawyer for the next 25 years, until his presidency in 1861.
In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd. Lincoln was 33 and Mary was 23. They had four
children together: Robert, Eddie, Willie, and Tad. Unfortunately, only Robert would
survive to adulthood.
A few years after his marriage, Lincoln was nominated to the U.S. Congress and moved
to Washington as a representative of Illinois and a member of the Whig Party. He gave
one of his first influential speeches in which he spoke against the U.S. Mexican War in
the House of Representatives. However, his opinion angered many in the House and he
did not win reelection to Congress.
Lincoln’s law practiced blossomed as the issue of slavery in the United States became
heated. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 supported slavery in the United States; it
allowed for new states admitted into the Union to come as pairs - one as a free state and
one as a slave state. However, the growing addition of U.S. territories was challenging
this legislation. When California wanted to enter the Union as a free state, with no slave
state to balance it, discord erupted in Congress. Other events such as the Fugitive Slave
Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act further created division between the Northern and
Southern States.
Stephen Douglas of Illinois was the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which gave states
the right to decide, through an election, to be a slave or free state. This idea was called
“popular sovereignty.” It created disagreement among those in government, some so
severe that southern states were threatening to secede from the United States. The
argument also created a new political party, with the fight against slavery as its primary
agenda. That new party was the Republican Party and Lincoln became its leader.
In 1958, Lincoln and Douglas campaigned against each other for the U.S. Senate seat.
They debated the issue of slavery across the state of Illinois in a series of seven contests.
Lincoln believed slavery was a moral issue while Douglas felt it was one of states’
rights. Over 10,000 people showed up at each debate and the results were published in
newspapers across the country. The style of their debates is still used in politics and
debating today. Though Lincoln lost this election, it set the stage for his nomination for
the presidency. He was recognized as a fearless opponent of slavery and an intelligent,
engaging speaker. At the 1860 Republican convention in Chicago, Abraham Lincoln was
nominated for President with a unanimous vote.
Lincoln won the election in the November; however, he won with only 40 percent of the
popular vote. He received a majority of the Electoral College, however, as his three
opponents divided the remainder of the electorate. Not a single Southerner voted for him
– a sign of things to come.
Before Lincoln was even inaugurated, Southern states began seceding from the United
States in fear of a Lincoln administration threatening their state rights and the
safeguarding and expansion of slavery. By January, six states had left, and one month
later, they had formed the Confederate States of America. On March 4, 1861, Abraham
Lincoln became the 16th President of a nation on the brink of civil war.
The U.S. Civil War was and remains the bloodiest in U.S. history. It lasted from 1861
to1865. After the Battle of Fort Sumter, more Southern states seceded from the Union
for a total of 11. Over one million people died as a result of the U.S. Civil War, over
600,000 on the battle field and even more by disease.
The Union began to overpower the Confederacy in 1863 at the historic Battle at
Gettysburg. At the consecration of the Gettysburg battle field, Lincoln delivered one of
his most historic speeches, known as the Gettysburg Address. Though the war continued
for two more years, the Union began to overtake the south; they simply had more troops,
more supplies, and more funds. The south did not have the advantages of the industries
in the north and slowly ran out of ammunition and even food for its soldiers.
Amidst the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which
freed slaves in the Confederacy. He also encouraged Congress to pass the 13th
Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States; it was ratified in January
1865.
At the end of the civil war, Lincoln was reelection. He was inaugurated for a second term
on March 4, 1865. One month later, Union victories in Petersburg and Richmond finally
resulted in the surrender of the Confederate Army on April 9, 1865. Lincoln set about
the task of healing the nation and rebuilding the south. In his inauguration speech, he
expressed a wish to “bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Unfortunately, only days later, on April 14, while attending the theater with his wife,
President Lincoln was shot in the head by an assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln died
that evening. His body traveled by train from Washington, D.C. to his hometown in
Springfield, Illinois, where he was buried. Thousands of mourners lined the route to
honor the President.
Memorials to President Abraham Lincoln followed his death and continue today from the
naming of towns in his honor to statues of his likeness to the face of the U.S. penny. In
1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. was dedicated in his honor. A marble
statue of Lincoln sits at the west end of the National Mall; it is made of white marble and
is surrounded by 36 enormous marble columns.
Sources
Brandt, Keith. Abe Lincoln: The Young Years. Troll Associates, 1982.
Collier, James Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln You Never Knew. New York: Children’s
Press, 2003.
McGovern, Ann. If You Grew Up With Abraham Lincoln. New York: Scholastic Inc,
1966.
Otfinoski, Steven. Abraham Lincoln: Encyclopedia of Presidents. New York: Children’s
Press, 2004.
Patrick, Bethanne Kelly. Abraham Lincoln. Broomall: Mason Crest Publishers, 2003.
Sullivan, George. In Their Own Words: Abraham Lincoln. New York: Scholastic Inc,
2000.
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