By: Ann Wells

Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, entered office at a very important point in US history, right before the Civil War. He died from an assassination just before the war ended. To the position of President of the United States, he brought many things: integrity, knowledge, compassion, plus some wholesome characteristics that he acquired from his upbringing on the frontier. Unfortunately, because he lived on the frontier, he was self-educated, he didn’t have the leadership or political skills that a politician would normally need. Plus, he didn’t have much cultural experience. Even though he was lacking these things, he made an exquisite president. Above all, Abraham Lincoln was firm and stood behind his decisions and he was also very dedicated in preserving the Union. As a man, Lincoln was generally admired and loved by the public, but as a president he was constantly attacked on the basis of being the man responsible for every major issue that ever came up during his terms in office. Even though from event to event his reputation fluctuated, he was definitely a great man and a great president. He guided this country through one of its most perilous periods in history, shaping the country to be what it is now, but most importantly, he preserved the Union.

Lincoln’s father, Thomas Abraham, married Nancy Hanks in June of 1806. They settled in Kentucky and three years later, after they had a baby girl, Sarah, Abraham was born on February 12^th, 1809, in a log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. Like most of the children, who lived on the frontier, Abraham started performing chores at a very young age. He rarely had the chance to attend school, because the closest school was two to three miles away. He never got the chance as a child to experience any political activity, because there wasn’t any real government or governmental functions on the frontier, unless you were in the capital city of the state. Abraham Lincoln didn’t encounter many cultural influences, because on the frontier, he didn’t have the chance to experience plays, or social gatherings. You don’t have a real need for formal manners, because the only people you tend to see are those that are members of your family. The Lincolns were constantly moving from place to place trying to find the best home and farm land for them. Tragedy struck Abraham’s family when they lived in Indiana; around October of 1818, Lincoln lost his mother to a dreaded disease called milk sickness. The Lincoln family couldn’t survive without a woman to keep the household functioning. So, Thomas returned to Elizabethtown where he had met Nancy. There he married Ms. Sarah Bush Johnston. As a teenager Abraham Lincoln experienced many things. He was a fieldhand, he worked as a trader, and as a ferryman traveling on the Ohio River. Then he finally found his calling in life, politics.

Abraham Lincoln returned to New Salem and sought election to the state legislature. Lincoln gained the admiration of most of the community. People respected him for his kind and honest traits. This admiration helped him to win almost all of the votes in his community but he ended up losing the election because he was not known throughout the entire county. Finally in 1834 Abraham Lincoln won the election for a place in the Illinois House of Representatives; he was reelected for that position three more times. He decided to become a member of the Whig Party, because he wanted to follow his political idols, Henry Clay and John T. Stuart. On September 9^th, 1836 Abraham Lincoln received his license to practice law. Then he went into law practice with a friend in Springfield. There he earned his nickname, "Honest Abe," because he always made a conscientious effort to pay off any debts that he owed.

Even though he had a busy life working he always made time for his loved ones. On November 4^th, 1842 Abraham Lincoln and Marry Todd were married. She was a high-spirited, quick-tempered, girl who had an excellent education and cultural background, which were all things that Abraham lacked. Together they had four children. All of whom died at a young age, except for Robert Todd Lincoln, born on August 1st, 1843.

Lincoln worked hard in his first year of being a congressman, but couldn’t get credit for that work. Both out of innocence and pride in his party, he went along with the Whigs in applauding Polk for advancing the start of the Mexican War even though he personally opposed it extremely. When the government questioned whether the annexed territories were slave or free, Lincoln voted for the Wilmot Proviso and others designed to confine the idea of slavery to the state where it already was in progress. After finding conflict with the political status in the world, he dedicated himself to his studies in law for the next few years.

Then Lincoln returned to the world of politics. He was motivated to re-enter politics, because of the state of slavery in the national territories. Slavery had been decided by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850, but now was in a state of confusion, because of the actions of Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas had proposed the idea of allowing the people in the states of Kansas and Nebraska to vote on if slavery should or shouldn’t be allowed in that state. Steven Douglas’s idea was called popular sovereignty and was applied to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act caused much controversy in the political parties and started dividing them.

People all over the United States were changing their minds about issues and were regrouping their political parties to fit their beliefs. The Northern anti-slavery people bonded together to form the party named the Republicans. The lesser-known parties, such as the Know-Nothings and the Free Soil Parties dissolved and most of those people joined the Republican Party. Also the Whig Party came to an end and Abraham Lincoln was forced to pick a new political party; he chose the Republicans, as did most former Whigs. Through out these political parties changing, he himself changed; he had decided to run for president.

Abraham Lincoln set out on his tremendous voyage to save the United States of America. " ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Abraham Lincoln made this statement as the basis of his campaign. Soon after making that speech he challenged his opponent, Douglas, to a series of seven joint debates in which became the focus of the campaign. These debates could have made or broken the candidates chance to become president. They were very intense debates for both candidates. One thing that was constantly brought up was slavery, should it or should it not be allowed. Douglas refused to comment on whether he felt that slavery was right or wrong; he would just say to leave the decision up to "popular sovereignty." Lincoln on the other hand spoke more freely and said that slavery was an issue of morals and that when making decisions about it, we should refer to the principles of our Founding Fathers. By saying this, he was saying that we should learn to live with slavery where it existed, but look forward to its ultimate, inevitable extinction by preventing the spread of it. Unfortunately, Douglas won that election, but over the next four years, Lincoln took the time to better prepare himself for the role of president.

For the election of 1860, Lincoln delivered an exquisite speech on the need for restricting slavery, which put him at a great advantage in the Republican vote. The Democratic Party split in half, because of differences on views; they became the Northern Democrats and the Southern Democrats. This split resulted in the nomination of Douglas and John C Breckinridge for the two democratic parties and Abraham Lincoln for the Republicans. This split also practically guaranteed Lincoln a winning position for the 1860’s election. Lincoln, like expected, won; he got 1,865,593 votes out of 4,689,568 votes. Lincoln won 180 of the 303 electoral votes. The south said that if they ever had a Republican president they would secede.

As threatened, the South seceded. The lower seven states, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, seceded from the Union. During this time, Lincoln recognized his role as president and what lay before him; he said, "a task… greater than that which rested upon George Washington." Washington had to start a country, but Lincoln was facing war and division. Directly following Lincoln’s inauguration he was faced with an attack on Fort Sumter. If he removed his troops from the fort he would sound cowardice, but if he sent more troops down there to defend it, he would be presumed as hostile. Lincoln was determined not to fire the first shot, so he sent food and equipment, but no men. This decision led to the Union being forced to give up the fort. Directly following that, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina decided to secede from the Union. At this point Abraham Lincoln knew that the war had started, so he asked the states for 75,000 volunteers to fight in the war.

The Civil War was very different from the technological aspect. The soldiers started using rifles instead of shotguns. This helped greatly because a rifle could shoot more than one bullet with out having to be reloaded, plus it had a much better aim. Another great invention of the 1860’s was the steam train. It allowed entire armies to move from place to place a whole lot quicker and more efficiently that if they had to march. The telegraph made communication easier and quicker. It allowed people to know about a victory or loss sooner than before, but its main attribution was its ability to allow people in Washington to have a say in what went on in the battle fields. This is the main invention that allowed Abraham Lincoln to be as involved as he was in the decisions of the military.

Lincoln didn’t feel that anyone working for him was appropriate to help him make decisions about the Union war efforts. So he put himself in control of it all. He gave himself more power than any other president ever had and for that he got the names, dictator and tyrant from his enemies. He was called a "half-witted usurper," "the present turtle at the head of the government," "political coward," "shattered, dazed, and utterly foolish" by people in all political parties, even his own. Lincoln wasn’t only the president; he was the commander in-chief. He took this role just as seriously as his job as president. As commander in chief, it was Lincoln’s responsibility to raise armies, and finding generals. He struggled with find capable generals to head the arms. At first he put Gen. Winfield Scott in control and soon after the first battle at Bull Run, he evened out the responsibility and entrusted George B. McClellan with some power over the army. Later on in the war Lincoln brought in General Henry W. Halleck because he was known for his excellent strategic planning. Lincoln also had to look out for the welfare of every single person in the Union.

The Civil War only made Abraham Lincoln’s job as president even harder, because now he had to wage war as well as hold together a Union that was divided and falling apart. He had to please everyone and that was really hard to do, especially with the hot topic of slavery. Lincoln couldn’t voice his opinion as to if it was right or wrong throughout most of the war, because by doing so he would run the risk of losing that which was so very dear and important to the Union during the Civil War, the Border States. These four states had such an impact on the decisions that Lincoln made, because their succession was always a threat to him. Since the war had gone on his dislike of slavery had grown stronger. Lincoln was now torn between to sides, his own opinion now and what he felt when he was elected. The pressures that war was bestowing on Lincoln forced him to make a decision toward emancipation.

He was once regarded as the "Great Emancipator," because of his actions that started freeing the slaves. With this ordeal, Lincoln was careful to keep all control in his hands. He didn’t allow any actions to be made before they should, not in the government and not in the military. He got his military leaders, Fremont and David Hunter, to declare any slaves in the military now freed, at the same time that he was pleading with the border states to agree to a gradual emancipation with compensation for their loses in slaves. This effort wasn’t successful like he hoped it would be so, he prepared to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. When he delivered the Preliminary Proclamation, on September 22, 1862, he stated to all that after one hundred days had passed, all slaves in states still in rebellion would be free forever. Then on January 1^st, 1863, as he promised, Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. It stated that all slaves in the Border States and the Confederate territories that would under control of the Union were now and forever be free.

The Civil War was coming to an end, and this glorious day will never be cherished by our beloved President, Abraham Lincoln. Three days ago, on the night of April 15^th, 1865, our president was attending a performance at Ford’s Theater in Washington, when he was shot and murdered. This horrendous crime was committed by none other than the actor, John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln’s body was put to rest in the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois on May 4^th. The day before his death, Lincoln said something to his bodyguard, William H. Crook. He said "Crook, do you know I believe there are men who want to take my life? And I have no doubt they will do it...I know no one could do it and escape alive. But if it is to be done, it is impossible to prevent it." Abraham knew he was going to die, and unfortunately will never know it, but he did accomplish his main goal in life as president; he preserved the Union.