Abraham Lincoln Most Influential President of USA

Abraham Lincoln Most Influential President of USA
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Abraham Lincoln was the most influential president of America. He led the country during the American Civil War. He was fondly called “Honest Abe” and “Father Abraham’.

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in Kentucky to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln. From a very young age, Lincoln took a keen interest in studies. For the most part, he was self – educated. Even through both his parents were illiterate and unschooled, they wanted the best for him.

To support his family Lincoln worked many odd jobs such as being shopkeeper and a postmaster. Latter he moved to politics. And at the age of 25, he won in the Illinois legislature. One of the main reasons Lincoln entered politics was because he was against slavery, which had spread to different regions of the US. He wanted to develop and expand the United States. His main focus was on commerce rather than agriculture.

Before Lincoln became president, he served in the Illinois state legislature for many terms. To understand the political ground, he studied law and successfully passed the bar examination in 1836. Later, he worked as a lawyer under John T. Stuart. There he competed for a seat in the US Congress, which he won. Lincoln served as a congressman for one whole term. For his next election, he delivered a speech in Peoria in which he addressed his abhorrence for slavery and talked about the equality of rights amongst people.

For his candidacy, he spoke about the anti-slavery and Free Soil ideologies. In 1858, Lincoln was chosen for the US senate.

During this time began the famous Lincoln- Douglas debates, also known as “The Great Debates of 1858. It was a series of seven debates against the Democrat Stephen Douglas, mostly revolving around the issues of slavery.

The year 1860 was quite a prosperous year for Lincoln. He fought for the seat of the president of the United States.

Lincoln finally won the 1860 elections and became the president in 1861. He gained lots of support from the North and the West. But at that time, Southern states did not want Lincoln to be the president.

They were against his policies. The south decided to remove itself from the Union and formed a separate nation called the Confederate States of America. Lincoln refused to accept the Confederacy and declared it illegal. He still stood strongly for free soil and slave-free states. This situation created the most deadly conflict in America’s history. In 1861, the civil war started, just a month after Lincoln Joined office,

He took the help of the Northern state armies to defeat the South. It soon turned into a bloody war which lasted for four years and millions of Americans lost their lives. But Lincoln’s still managed to hold the country together.

In 1863, he announced the Emancipation Proclamation, an order that freed the slaves in the Confederate states, it also created a thirteenth Amendment, which released all slaves in the United States in the following years.

Lincoln spent months preparing the army and the country for emancipation. In short time, around three million slaves were released from the Confederate regions. Those slaves were then absorbed into the military according to the policy that Lincoln had established.

On April 9, 1865, the Civil War finally ended During the War; many Southern states were heavily damaged. Lincoln wanted to help these states but, sadly, he did not live long enough to see the country rebuild itself.

Lincoln married Mary Todd on November 4, 1842. The couple had four sons. Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while he was watching a play. He died on April 15, 1865, at the age 56. Post death, his body was wrapped in the American flag.