Abraham Lincoln
Report
[pic]
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Executed:
Examined: Akhmedova Z.G.
Makhachkala 2001
Contents
1. Introduction
page 3
2. Early Life
page 3
3. Ancestry
page 4
4. Childhood
page 6
5. Young Manhood
page 6
6. Politics and Law
page 6
7. Illinois Legislator
page6
8. Marriage page6
9. Congressman page 7
10. Disillusionment with Politics
page7
11. Return to Politics
page 8
12. Campaigns of 1856 and 1858 page 8
13. Election of 1860 page 9
14. Presidency page 9
15. Sumter Crisis page10
16. Military Policy page11
17. Emancipation page
12
18. Foreign Relations page
12
19. Wartime Politics page13
20. Life in the White House page
14
21. Reconstruction page
14
22. Death page
15
23. Source page
16
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Lincoln
entered office at a critical period in U. S. history, just before the Civil
War, and died from an assassin's bullet at the war's end, but before the
greater implications of the conflict could be resolved. He brought to the
office personal integrity, intelligence, and humanity, plus the wholesome
characteristics of his frontier upbringing. He also had the liabilities of
his upbringing--he was self-educated, culturally unsophisticated, and
lacking in administrative and diplomatic skills. Sharp-witted, he was not
especially sharp-tongued, but was noted for his warm good humor. Although
relatively unknown and inexperienced politically when elected president, he
proved to be a consummate politician. He was above all firm in his
convictions and dedicated to the preservation of the Union.
Lincoln was perhaps the most esteemed and maligned of the American
presidents. Generally admired and loved by the public, he was attacked on a
partisan basis as the man responsible for and in the middle of every major
issue facing the nation during his administration. Although his reputation
has fluctuated with changing times, he was clearly a great man and a great
president. He firmly and fairly guided the nation through its most perilous
period and made a lasting impact in shaping the office of chief
executive.Once regarded as the "Great Emancipator" for his forward strides
in freeing the slaves, he was criticized a century later, when the Civil
Rights Movement gained momentum, for his caution in moving toward equal
rights. If he is judged in the historical context, however, it can be seen
that he was far in advance of most liberal opinion. His claim to greatness
endures.
Early Life
The future president was born in the most modest of circumstances in a
log cabin near Hodgenville, Ky., on Feb. 12, 1809. His entire childhood and
young manhood were spent on the brink of poverty as his pioneering family
made repeated fresh starts in the West. Opportunities for education,
cultural activities, and even socializing were meager.
Ancestry
Lincoln's paternal ancestry has been traced, in an unbroken line, to
Samuel Lincoln, a weaver's apprentice from Hingham, England, who settled in
Hingham, Mass., in 1637. From him the line of descent came down through
Mordecai Lincoln of Hingham and of Scituate, Mass.; Mordecai of Berks
county, Pa.; John of Berks county and of Rockingham county, Va.; and
Abraham, the grandfather of the president, who moved from Virginia to
Kentucky about 1782, settled near Hughes Station, east of Louisville, and
was killed in an Indian ambush in 1786.
Abraham's youngest son, Thomas, who became the father of the president, was
born in Rockingham county, Va., on Jan. 6, 1778. After the death of his
father, he roamed about, settling eventually in Hardin county, Ky., where
he worked at carpentry, farming, and odd jobs. He was not the shiftless
ne'er-do-well sometimes depicted, but an honest, conscientious man of
modest means, well regarded by his neighbors. He had practically no
education, however, and could barely scrawl his name.
Nancy Hanks, whom Thomas Lincoln married on June 12, 1806, and who became
the mother of the president, remains a shadowy figure. Her birth date is
uncertain, and descriptions of her are contradictory. Scholars despair of
penetrating the tangled Hanks genealogy, and the legitimacy of Nancy's
birth is a subject of argument. Lincoln, himself, apparently believed that
his mother was born out of wedlock. In either case, Nancy came of lowly
people. Reared by her aunt, Betsy Hanks, who married Thomas Sparrow, she
was utterly uneducated.
Childhood
Thomas and Nancy Lincoln set up housekeeping in Elizabethtown, Ky.,
where their first child, Sarah, was born on Feb. 10, 1807. In December
1808, Thomas bought a hard-scrabble farm on the South Fork of Nolin Creek,
where Abraham was born. Soon after Abe's second birthday the family moved
to a more productive farm along Knob Creek, a branch of the Rolling Fork,
in a region of fertile bottomland surrounded by crags and bluffs. The old
Cumberland Trail from Louisville to Nashville passed close by, and the boy
could see a vigorous civilization on the march--settlers, peddlers, circuit-
riding preachers, now and then a coffle of slaves. This was probably his
first view of human bondage, for the small landholdings of the region were
not suited to slaveowning, and local sentiment, especially among the
Baptists, with whom the Lincolns had affiliated, was hostile to slavery.
Like most frontier children, Abraham performed chores at an early age, but
occasionally he and his sister Sarah attended classes in a log schoolhouse
some two miles (3 km) from home. Nancy bore a third child, Thomas, but he
died in infancy.
Faulty land titles, which were a constant problem to Kentucky settlers,
were especially troublesome to Thomas Lincoln. Because of a flaw in title,
he lost part of a farm he had bought before his marriage, and both his
other Kentucky farms became involved in litigation. For this reason, and
because of his roving disposition, he resolved to move to Indiana, where
land could be bought directly from the government.
Abraham was seven years old when, in December 1816, the Lincolns struck out
northwestward. They crossed the Ohio River on a ferry near the village of
Troy, made their way 16 miles (26 km) farther north through thick woods and
tangled underbrush, and settled near Pigeon Creek, in present Spencer
county, Ind. Thomas hastily threw up a half-faced camp, a rude shelter of
logs and boughs, closed on three sides and warmed only by a fire at the
open front. Here the family lived while Thomas built a cabin. The region
was gloomy, with few settlers, and wild animals prowled in the forest.
By spring Thomas had cleared a few acres for a crop. In an autobiography
that Abraham Lincoln composed in 1860, he said of himself: "Abraham, though
very young, was large of his age, and had an axe put into his hands at
once; and from that till within his twenty-third year, he was almost
constantly handling that most useful instrument--less, of course, in
plowing and harvesting seasons." So, year by year the clearing grew, and
the family's diet became more varied as farm products supplemented game and
fowl. At first, Thomas was a mere squatter on the land, but on Oct. 15,
1817, he applied for 160 acres (65 hectares) at the government land office
in Vincennes. Unable to complete payment on so large a tract, he later gave
up half, but paid for the rest.
The Lincolns had not been long in Indiana when they were joined by Thomas
and Elizabeth Sparrow, the relatives by whom Nancy had been reared. They
arrived from Kentucky with Dennis Hanks, the illegitimate son of another of
Nancy's aunts. An energetic youth of 19, he became Abraham's companion.
Within a year, however, the Sparrows became victims of the "milk-sick"
(milk sickness), a disease dreaded by Indiana settlers, and soon afterward,
on Oct. 5, 1818, Nancy Lincoln, too, died of this malady. Without a woman
to keep the household functioning, the Lincolns lived almost in squalor.
To remedy this intolerable condition, Thomas Lincoln returned to
Elizabethtown, where, on Dec. 2, 1819, he married Sarah Bush Johnston, a
widow with three children. A kindly, hard-working woman, she brought order
to the Lincolns' Indiana homestead. She also saw to it that at intervals
over the next two years Abraham received enough additional schooling to be
able, as he said later, "to read, write and cipher to the Rule of Three."
All told, however, he attended school less than a year.
