500+ Words Biography of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States. He was born on 12 February 1809 as the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln in a one-room log cabin on The Sinking Spring Farm in Hardin County, Kentucky. He had little formal schooling and worked early as a labourer in mills, but continued his studies, especially law, in leisure hours.
Afterward, he became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, an Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s. In 1854, he joined the newly formed Republican Party.
In the 1850s, slavery was still legal in the Southern United States but had been generally outlawed in the Northern States, such as Illinois. Lincoln disapproved of slavery and the spread of slavery to new US territories in the West. On October 16, 1854, in his ‘Peoria Speech,’ Lincoln declared his opposition to slavery. With a powerful voice, he said the Kansas Act had a “declared indifference,.. for the spread of slavery. I cannot but hate it. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our Republican example of its just influence in the world…” After a series of debates in 1858 that gave national visibility to his stand against the expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost the Senate race in Illinois to his rival Stephen Douglas.
However, in 1860, he secured the Republican Party Presidential nomination, and said, “… a house divided against itself cannot stand; a government cannot endure permanently half-slave.” And with almost no support in the South where the slave system was predominant, Lincoln swept the North and was elected President (the 16th President of the United States) on 6 November 1860.
His election as the President of the United States prompted seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederacy. The departure of the Southern States gave Lincoln’s party firm control of Congress but led to the Civil War in the USA. No formula for compromise or reconciliation was found. Lincoln explained in his second inaugural address: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the Nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” The Civil War continued for four years. At last, his firm policy succeeded.
On January 1, 1863, he proclaimed the abolition of slavery throughout America. In the great speech at Gettysburg, he said,”… democracy—government of the people, by the people and for the people.” His Gettysburg Address of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history. It was an iconic statement of America’s dedication to the principles of nationalism and internationalism.
At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. Lincoln argued, “The authors of the Declaration of Independence never intended to say all were equal in colour, size, intellect, moral developments or social capacity, but they did consider all men created equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
In the meantime, on 19 June 1862, endorsed by Lincoln, Congress passed an Act banning slavery on all federal territory. In July 1862, the Second Confiscation Act was passed, which set up court procedures that could free the slaves of anyone convicted of aiding the rebellion. In that month, Lincoln discussed the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet. In it, he stated, “… as a fit and necessary military measure, on January 1, 1863, all persons held as slaves in the Confederate States will thenceforward, and forever, be free.” By December 1863, a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw slavery was brought to Congress for approval. This first attempt failed to pass, falling short of the required two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives. After a long debate in the House, a second attempt was passed by Congress on 31 January 1865, and ultimately, it became the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on 6 December 1865.
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In 1865, Lincoln was re-elected President for a second time. On March 4, he delivered his second inaugural address and in it, he said, “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right,… let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
But four days after his speech promoting voting rights for blacks, he was shot dead at a theatre by John Wilkes Booth, an actor and a hater of blacks, on 15 April 1865. The whole nation mourned his death, and when Presbyterian minister P.D. Gurby was asked to offer a prayer, he said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”