Abraham Lincoln - Biography, Achievements and Quotes

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln successfully led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crisis—the American Civil War—preserving the Union. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s.

After a series of debates in 1858 that gave national visibility to his opposition to the expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost a Senate race to his arch-rival, Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln, a moderate from a swing state, secured the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1860. With almost no support in the South, Lincoln swept the North and was elected president in 1860. His election was the signal for seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederacy. 

The departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of Congress, but 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."

When the North enthusiastically rallied behind the national flag after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war effort. His goal was now to reunite the nation. As the South was in a state of insurrection, Lincoln exercised his authority to suspend habeas corpus, arresting and temporarily detaining thousands of suspected secessionists without trial. Lincoln averted British recognition of the Confederacy by skillfully handling the Trent affair in late 1861. 

His efforts toward the abolition of slavery include issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, encouraging the border states to outlaw slavery, and helping push through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which finally freed all the slaves nationwide in December 1865. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including commanding general Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln brought leaders of the major factions of his party into his cabinet and pressured them to cooperate. Under Lincoln's leadership, the Union set up a naval blockade that shut down the South's normal trade, took control of the border slave states at the start of the war, gained control of communications with gunboats on the southern river systems, and tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another until finally Grant succeeded in 1865.

Achievements & Facts About Abraham Lincoln

• Abraham was an unaffiliated Christian as he never officially acquired church membership.
• He created a national banking system with the National Banking Act in 1863, resulting in a standardized currency.
• As a child and during his growing up years Lincoln would avoid hunting and fishing whenever possible because he had an aversion to killing animals. He was often referred to as lazy because of this and no doubt his aversion seemed unmanly to frontier families who depended on fish and game to survive.
• Lincoln hated the manual labor that frontier living demanded but accepted that responsibility even going so far as to turn over the wages he made away from the family farm to his father until he was 21.
• Lincoln only had 18 months of formal education. He loved reading and educated himself becoming first a lawyer and later president of the United States.
• Robert Lincoln, the only son of Abraham Lincoln who would live to raise a family of his own was almost killed at a train station in New Jersey near the start of the Civil War. He slipped from a platform and would have fallen in front of the carriage had he not been grabbed by the collar and pulled to safety by Edwin Booth. Later Edwin’s brother would shoot and kill Abraham Lincoln.
• Lincoln bought a store at the age of 23 but, was so unsuccessful at store clerking that he later ended up owing $1000 for loans he and his partner took out.
• An example of Lincoln’s honesty lies in the fact that he paid back every last penny of the $1000 loan. It took him 17 years to do so.
• Lincoln was once challenged to a duel over a letter his wife wrote. The duel never took place due to Abe’s choice of weapon, the broadsword. Due to Lincoln’s long arms and his much smaller opponent the opponent decided it best to settle the issue without a fight.
• The Lincoln's Sparrow is not named after Abraham but for Thomas Lincoln, a man from Maine who shot the bird so that John James Audubon could draw it. Also not named after the 16th president are the towns of Lincoln in Alabama and Vermont, and the Lincoln counties in Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee. They're named after Benjamin Lincoln, the Revolutionary War general who accepted the British surrender at Yorktown.
• Lincoln declined the King of Siam's offer to supply elephants to the U.S. government, writing in 1862 that his country "does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant."
• Abraham Lincoln argued a case in front of the United States Supreme Court—and lost.
• After serving a term in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln returned to his self-proclaimed profession of “prairie lawyer” in Illinois.  He took cases dealing with everything from homicide to navigation rights to slave laws.  An arcane statute dispute brought him to the high chamber on March 7, 1849.   
• He argued on behalf of Thomas Lewis, a public administrator who had taken over the affairs of a man named Broadwell, who had sold 100 acres of land that he did not own and then died.  The true grit of the case was the question of whether or not the plaintiff, William Lewis (no relation), could still sue for damages regarding the poisoned contract or if the statute of limitations had already passed.  
• Lincoln claimed that William’s action came too late, and that Thomas could no longer be held liable.  After two days of hearings and five days of deliberations, the justices decided against Lincoln.  Despite this defeat, the prairie lawyer was becoming one of the most respected and feared litigants in Illinois.
• Abraham Lincoln is the only president in American history to hold a patent.
• Abraham Lincoln, sat at his office desk intently whittling a strange-looking wooden ship.  Looking up from time to time, Lincoln would excitedly explain how his invention would bring about a revolution in the burgeoning steamboat industry.  
• Lincoln’s design, which became U.S. Patent No. 6469, details the invention of an inflatable bellows system meant to improve the navigation of boats in shallow waters.  In effect, four balloons would be collapsed, accordion-like, and attached to both sides of a riverboat on either end.  If the boat found its way obstructed by a sandbar, the balloons would be filled with air in order to raise the hull higher than the bar, allowing passage without having to unload the cargo and carry the boat manually.  
• This issue was particularly important to the inventor, who had spent part of his youth on the treacherous Sangamon River and had twice run aground on high shoals.  Lincoln’s patent was never implemented and was in fact lost for many years after a fire in the patent office.  Throughout his life Lincoln expressed a strong philosophical love for the patent system.  Lincoln’s model and his drawings are now on display in the Smithsonian.
• Lincoln lost five separate elections before being elected president.
• For Lincoln, electoral successes had to be taken hand-in-hand with failures.  Since losing his first race for the Illinois General Assembly in 1832 he had gone on to lose a race for the U.S. Congress, two races for the U.S. Senate, and one campaign for a vice-presidential nomination.  His ambition was unchecked, however, and by 1858 he was a national player in the new Republican Party and perhaps its most prominent intellectual voice.  
• He won the 1860 Republican presidential nomination after a tough battle at the national convention, defeating notable opponents William H. Seward, Edward Bates, and Salmon P. Chase, before wading into the four-way general election against Democrat Stephen Douglas, Southern Democrat John Breckinridge, and Constitutional Unionist John Bell. 
• Lincoln and Douglas, rivals from the Lincoln-Douglas senatorial debates of 1858, squared off in the north while Breckinridge and Bell divided the southern states between them.  In the end the demographic dominance of the Republican Party gave Lincoln a victory, even though he lost every single southern state by a large margin.  By the time he was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, seven southern states had seceded.
• At the Battle of Fort Stevens in 1864 Lincoln actually came under Confederate fire, making him the second and last sitting president to be in such a position, the first being James Madison at the Battle of Bladensburg in 1812. At 6’4” Lincoln stood a foot taller than Madison, greatly increasing his peril. This episode was not an exception to Lincoln's involved role in the war. As commander-in-chief, Lincoln exercised the highest authority over the American military. 
• Applying his old talent for self-education, Lincoln began to voraciously study the principles that composed contemporary military thought.  He made the decision to resupply Fort Sumter, which prompted the Confederate barrage igniting the Civil War, and continued to take an active hand in formulating the grand strategy of the war.
•  Lincoln appointed every top general in the Union army, including Ulysses S. Grant.  Aides would often find him in the telegraph office poring over dispatches from the field—some days he would visit the office four or more times.  In addition to making frequent appearances in camps and at parades, Lincoln even personally tested such new pieces of military technology as the “coffee-mill” machine gun and the Spencer repeating rifle.
• The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on New Year's Day, 1863, freed all of the slaves in the rebellious states.  Legally, the Proclamation was classified as a military order and thus the responsibility for its enforcement rested with Lincoln, the commander-in-chief.  While saving the Union was the official war aim when the war began, the fate of the “peculiar institution” had never been far from Lincoln’s mind.  
• In the months before issuing the proclamation, he had paired personal moral progression with a series of canny political maneuvers to lay the foundation for the earth-shattering announcement.  His cause was strengthened by the growing strength of the Union military, as notably demonstrated at the Battle of Antietam.  
• The Emancipation Proclamation was not met with universal support, however.  Many American citizens were still undecided on the issue of slavery and the political class of Britain, which was considering an intervention, worried that the order was overly limited and that Lincoln would bring about a bloody slave uprising.  Despite the inevitable turmoil it engendered, the Emancipation Proclamation was the first giant step towards fulfilling America’s long-neglected promise of liberty for all.
• Lincoln desired a forgiving Reconstruction.
• After a long war there were many who felt that Southerners should be severely punished for their insurrection.  Some wanted to hold rebels criminally accountable, exact huge financial penalties, and relegate the Southern states to second-class status.  Lincoln, on the other hand, advocated amnesty and a swift return to an equal union.  The effects of Lincoln’s plan will only ever be speculative.  
• His assassination ensured that the ultimately injurious process of Reconstruction would leave deep fissures in American society.
• Lincoln was not the only member of his administration to be attacked on the night of April 14, 1865.
• On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth crept into the presidential box at Ford’s Theater, shot Lincoln in the head, and then leapt from the balcony and into one of the most dramatic manhunts in American history.  But Booth was just one of the prowlers in Washington on that bloody night.  In Lafayette Park, Lewis Powell forced his way into Secretary of State William Seward’s bedroom and stabbed him repeatedly with a knife.  At the Kirkwood Hotel, George Atzerodt was overpowered by fear before he could make his planned attack on Vice President Andrew Johnson.  
• The men sought to reinvigorate the Southern cause but within two months they would all be dead, shot or hanged, along with co-conspirators Mary Surratt and David Herold.  Seward survived Powell’s assault, but Lincoln died the next day.  At his deathbed, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton offered an epitaph: “Now he belongs to the ages.
• Lincoln was offered the governorship of Oregon Territory in 1849 but turned down the job.
• The story that Lincoln wrote his brilliant Gettysburg Address on a scrap of brown paper during a train ride on the way to the battlefield is complete bunk. Much of the blame can be laid at the feet of "The Perfect Tribute," an article by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews that ran in Scribner's Magazine in 1906 and became a best-selling book. Lincoln, a careful, gifted writer, by all accounts started the speech weeks before on White House stationery. Interestingly, a Chicago Tribune article decried the scrap-of-paper myth in 1877, nearly 30 years before "The Perfect Tribute."
• In May 1864, a New York journalist named Joseph Howard invested in gold and then forged phony news dispatches about how war setbacks were forcing Lincoln to draft 400,000 soldiers. Howard figured the bad news would inflate the price of gold. Two newspapers printed the bogus report, and Lincoln ordered the papers closed and their editors arrested, even though they were simply victims of the "Gold Hoax." Lincoln was especially angry because he indeed planned a major new draft, and felt compelled to delay it because of the hoax.
• Although Lincoln was a successful lawyer he was disorganized. He carried important papers in his stovepipe hat so he wouldn’t misplace them.
• He failed twice to gain a seat in the Senate.
• While in the White house Lincoln participated in several seances following the death of his son Willie. While his wife arranged for these seances Abe’s melancholy over his son’s death made him a willing participant.
• During the Civil War Lincoln himself handpicked General Grant to replace McClellan but, only after assuring himself that Grant did not plan on running for president against him.
• Lincoln was only in the forefront of American Politics for 6 short years but, in that time he became the most hated and the most loved president in the history of the United States. He was credited with tearing the country apart and bringing it back together and he changed this country forever.
• He was the first president to have a beard.
• Lincoln, one week before his death, had a dream of someone crying in the White House, when he found the room; he looked in and asked who had passed away. The man in the room said the President. When he looked in the coffin it was his own face he saw.
• Lincoln was fond of pets, and owned horses, cats, dogs and a turkey.

Superb Quotes by Abraham Lincoln

• If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
• Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
• Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
• If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
• “People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
• “Whatever you are, be a good one.”
• “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
• “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
• “My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”
• “Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
• You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time.
• I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
• There is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.
• "I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization." Lincoln's Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.
• "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, "Letter to Albert G. Hodges" (April 4, 1864), p. 281.
• "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." Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.
• "I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume IV, "Remarks at the Monogahela House" (February 14, 1861), p. 209.
• Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.
• We shall sooner have the bird by hatching the egg than by smashing it.
• “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
• “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.”
• “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
• “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”
• “I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”
• He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
• It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.