1809-1865. 16th president of the USA 1861-65.
In the US Civil War, his chief concern was
the preservation of the Union from which the
Confederate (Southern) slave states had
seceded on his election. In 1863 he announced
the freedom of the slaves with the
Emancipation Proclamation. He was re-elected
1864 with victory for the North in sight, but
assassinated at the end of the war. Lincoln
was born in a log cabin in Kentucky.
Self-educated, he practised law from 1837 in
Springfield, Illinois. He was a member of the
state legislature 1832-42, and was known as
Honest Abe. He joined the new Republican
Party 1856, and was elected president 1860 on
a minority vote. His refusal to concede to
Confederate demands for the evacuation of the
federal garrison at Fort Sumter, Charleston,
South Carolina, precipitated the first
hostilities of the Civil War. In the
Gettysburg Address 1863, he declared the aims
of preserving a `nation conceived in liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal'. Re-elected with a large
majority 1864 on a National Union ticket, he
advocated a reconciliatory policy towards the
South `with malice towards none, with charity
for all'. Five days after General Lee's
surrender, Lincoln was shot in a theatre
audience by an actor and Confederate
sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth.