Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, two farmers, in a one-room log cabin on the 348-acre (1.4 km2) Sinking Spring Farm, in southeast Hardin County, Kentucky (now part of LaRue County), making him the first president born in the west. Lincoln was not given a middle name. His ancestor Samuel Lincoln had arrived in Hingham, Massachusetts from England in the 17th century.[5] His grandfather, also named Abraham Lincoln, had moved to Kentucky, where he owned over 5,000 acres (20 km2), and was ambushed and killed by an Indian raid in 1786. Thomas Lincoln was a respected citizen of rural Kentucky. He owned several farms, including the Sinking Spring Farm, although he was not wealthy. The family belonged to a Separate Baptists church, which had high moral standards frowning on alcohol consumption and dancing, and many church members were opposed to slavery. Abraham himself never joined their church, or any other church.
In 1816, the Lincoln family left Kentucky to avoid the expense of fighting for one of their properties in court, and made a new start in Perry County, Indiana (now in Spencer County). Lincoln later noted that this move was "partly on account of slavery", and partly because of difficulties with land deeds in Kentucky. Abraham's father disapproved of slavery on religious grounds and it was hard to compete economically with farms operated by slaves. Unlike land in the Northwest Territory, Kentucky never had a proper U.S. survey, and farmers often had difficulties proving title to their property. When Lincoln was nine, his mother, then 34 years old, died of milk sickness. Soon afterwards, his father remarried, to Sarah Bush Johnston. Lincoln and his stepmother were close; he called her "Mother" for the rest of his life, but he became increasingly distant from his father. Abraham felt his father was not a success, and did not want to be like him. In later years, he would occasionally lend his father money.[11] In 1830, fearing a milk sickness outbreak, the family settled on public land in Macon County, Illinois
The next year, when his father relocated the family to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, canoeing down the Sangamon River to the village of New Salem in Sangamon County. Later that year, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods from New Salem to New Orleans via flatboat on the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers.
Lincoln's formal education consisted of about 18 months of schooling; but he was an avid reader and largely self-educated. He was also skilled with an axe and a talented local wrestler, the latter of which helped give him self-confidence. Lincoln avoided hunting and fishing because he did not like killing animals, even for foodMarriage and family
Lincoln's first love was Ann Rutledge. He met her when he first moved to New Salem, and by 1835 they had reached a romantic understanding. Rutledge, however, died on August 25, probably of typhoid fever.
Earlier, in either 1833 or 1834, he had met Mary Owens, the sister of his friend Elizabeth Abell, when she was visiting from her home in Kentucky. Late in 1836, Lincoln agreed to a match proposed by Elizabeth between him and her sister, if Mary ever returned to New Salem. Mary did return in November 1836 and Lincoln courted her for a time; however they both had second thoughts about their relationship. On August 16, 1837, Lincoln wrote Mary a letter from Springfield, to which he had moved that April to begin his law practice, suggesting he would not blame her if she ended the relationship. She never replied, and the courtship was over.
In 1840, Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd, from a wealthy slaveholding family based in Lexington, Kentucky They met in Springfield in December 1839, and were engaged sometime around that Christmas. A wedding was set for January 1, 1841, but the couple split as the wedding approached. They later met at a party, and then married on November 4, 1842, in the Springfield mansion of Mary's married sister. In 1844, the couple bought a house on Eighth and Jackson in Springfield, near Lincoln's law office.
The Lincolns soon had a budding family, with the birth of son Robert Todd Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois on August 1, 1843, and second son Edward Baker Lincoln on March 10, 1846, also in Springfield. According to a house girl, Abraham "was remarkably fond of children". The Lincolns did not believe in strict rules and tight boundaries when it came to their children.
Robert, however, would be the only one of the Lincolns' children to survive into adulthood. Edward Lincoln died on February 1, 1850 in Springfield, likely of tuberculosis. The Lincolns' grief over this loss was somewhat assuaged by the birth of William "Willie" Wallace Lincoln nearly eleven months later, on December 21. But Willie himself died of a fever at the age of eleven on February 20, 1862, in Washington, D.C., during President Lincoln's first term. The Lincolns' fourth son Thomas "Tad" Lincoln was born on April 4, 1853, and, although he outlived his father, died at the age of eighteen on July 16, 1871 in Chicago. Robert Lincoln eventually went on to attend Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College. His (and by extension, his father's) last known lineal descendant, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, died December 24, 1985.
The death of the Lincolns' sons had profound effects on both Abraham and Mary. Later in life, Mary Todd Lincoln found herself unable to cope with the stresses of losing her husband and sons, and this (in conjunction with what some historians consider to have been pre-existing bipolar disorder) eventually led Robert Lincoln to involuntarily commit her to a mental health asylum in 1875. Abraham Lincoln himself was contemporaneously described as suffering from "melancholy" throughout his legal and political life, a condition which modern mental health professionals would now typically characterize as clinical depression.
Early political career and military service
Lincoln began his political career in March 1832 at age 23 when he announced his candidacy for the Illinois General Assembly. He was esteemed by the residents of New Salem, but he didn't have an education, powerful friends, or money. The centerpiece of his platform was the undertaking of navigational improvements on the Sangamon River. Before the election he served as a captain in a company of the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War, although he never saw combat. Lincoln returned from the militia after a few months and was able to campaign throughout the county before the August 6 election. At 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m), he was tall and "strong enough to intimidate any rival." At his first political speech, he grabbed a man accosting a supporter by his "neck and the seat of his trousers", and threw him. When the votes were counted, Lincoln finished eighth out of thirteen candidates (only the top four were elected), but he did manage to secure 277 out of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct.
In 1834, he won an election to the state legislature. He was labeled a Whig, but ran a bipartisan campaign. He then decided to become a lawyer, and began teaching himself law by reading Commentaries on the Laws of England.[36] Admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, that April, and began to practice law with John T. Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin, who let Lincoln have the run of his law library while studying to be a lawyer. With a reputation as a formidable adversary during cross-examinations and closing arguments, Lincoln became an able and successful lawyer. In 1841, Lincoln entered law practice with William Herndon, whom Lincoln thought "a studious young man". He served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives as a representative from Sangamon County, affiliated with the Whig party. In 1837, he and another legislator declared that slavery was "founded on both injustice and bad policy"[41][42] the first time he had publicly opposed slavery. In the 1835–1836 legislative session he'd voted to restrict suffrage to whites only. He would later say[citation needed] that he had been against slavery since he was a boy, but being labelled an abolitionist was "political suicide" in Sangamon County in those years, and so he chose his words carefully when discussing the issue publicly.
National politics
Lincoln was a Whig, and since the early 1830s had strongly admired the policies and leadership of Henry Clay. "I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig" he professed to friends in 1861. The party favored economic expansion such as improving roads and increasing trade.
In 1846, Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served one two-year term. As a House member, Lincoln was a dedicated Whig, showing up for most votes and giving speeches that echoed the party line. He used his office as an opportunity to speak out against the Mexican–American War, which he attributed to President Polk's desire for "military glory — that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood". Lincoln's main stand against Polk occurred in his Spot Resolutions: The war had begun with a violent confrontation on territory disputed by Mexico and Texas but as Lincoln pointed out, Polk had insisted that Mexican soldiers had "invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil". Lincoln demanded that Polk show Congress the exact spot on which blood had been shed, and prove that the spot was on American soil. Congress never enacted the resolution or even debated it, and its introduction resulted in a loss of political support for Lincoln in his district; one Illinois newspaper derisively nicknamed him "spotty Lincoln."
Despite his admiration for Henry Clay, Lincoln was a key early supporter of Zachary Taylor's candidacy for the 1848 presidential election. Lincoln's term ended, the incoming Taylor administration offered him the governorship of the Oregon Territory. The territory leaned heavily Democratic, and Lincoln doubted they would elect him as governor or as a senator after they were admitted to the union, so he returned to Springfield.
Prairie lawyer
Back in Springfield, Lincoln turned most of his energies to making a living practicing law, handling "every kind of business that could come before a prairie lawyer." He "rode the circuit"--that is, appeared in county seats in the mid-state region when the county courts were in session.
His reputation grew and he appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing a case involving a canal boat that sank after hitting a bridge.
Lincoln represented numerous transportation interests, such as the river barges and the railroads. As a riverboat man, Lincoln had initially favored riverboat interests, but ultimately he represented whoever hired him. In 1849, he had received a patent for a "device to buoy vessels over shoals". Lincoln's goal had been to lessen the draft of a river craft by pushing horizontal floats into the water alongside the hull. The floats would have served as temporary ballast tanks.[62][63] The idea was never commercialized, but Lincoln is still the only person to hold a patent and serve as President of the United States. In 1851, he represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad in a dispute with one of its shareholders, James A. Barret, who had refused to pay the balance on his pledge to the railroad on the grounds that it had changed its originally planned route. Lincoln argued that as a matter of law a corporation is not bound by its original charter when that charter can be amended in the public interest, that the newer proposed Alton & Sangamon route was superior and less expensive, and that accordingly the corporation had a right to sue Mr. Barret for his delinquent payment. He won this case, and the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court was eventually cited by 25 other courts throughout the United States. Lincoln appeared in front of the Illinois Supreme Court 175 times, 51 times as sole counsel, of which, 31 were decided in his favor.
Lincoln's most notable criminal trial came in 1858 when he defended William "Duff" Armstrong, who was on trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker. The case is famous for Lincoln's use of judicial notice to show an eyewitness had lied on the stand. After the witness testified to having seen the crime in the moonlight, Lincoln produced a Farmers' Almanac to show that the moon on that date was at such a low angle it could not have produced enough illumination to see anything clearly. Based on this evidence, Armstrong was acquitted.
mrs lincoln
braham Lincoln and his wife
Abraham Lincoln statue
abraham lincoln photo
Abraham Lincoln nice picture
Lincoln drawing
death bed abraham lincoln
abraham lincoln half length seated
braham Lincoln Money
