Abraham Lincoln

장소: Hodgenville

타고난: 1809

죽음: 1865

전기:

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the country through the American Civil War, its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. Lincoln preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the national government and modernized the economy. Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in a poor family. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. representative from Illinois. In 1849, he returned to his successful law practice in Springfield, Illinois. In 1854, he was angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the territories to slavery, causing him to re-enter politics. He soon became a leader of the new Republican Party. He ran for president in 1860, sweeping the North to gain victory. Pro-slavery elements in the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding from the nation. Following the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Lincoln mobilized forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the union. Lincoln, a moderate Republican, had to navigate a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from both the Democratic and Republican parties. His allies, the War Democrats and the Radical Republicans, demanded harsh treatment of the Southern Confederates. He managed the factions by exploiting their mutual enmity, carefully distributing political patronage, and by appealing to the American people. Anti-war Democrats (called 'Copperheads') despised Lincoln, and some irreconcilable pro-Confederate elements went so far as to plot his assassination. Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the South. He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere, and averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states 'in rebellion' to be free. It also directed the Army and Navy to 'recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons', and to receive them 'into the armed service of the United States.' Lincoln pressured border states to outlaw slavery, and he promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime. Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign. He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. On April 14, 1865, just five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, he was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Mary, when he was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. 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. Lincoln is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, president in American history.