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Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was

very

important to the past history of our country. He helped to abolish

slavery in

this country and kept the American Union from splitting apart during

the Civil

War.

At 22, he moved to New Salem, Illinois. With his gift for

swapping

stories and making friends, he became quite popular and was elected to

the

Illinois legislature in 1834. In his spare time, he taught himself law

and

became a lawyer. In 1847, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, but

returned to

his law practice until 1858, when his concern about the spread of

slavery

prompted him to return to national politics and run for the U.S. Senate.Lincoln rose to greatness from a humble beginning. Born in 1809

in a

log cabin in Kentucky, Lincoln spent most of his childhood working on

the family

farm. He had less than a year of school but managed to educate himself

by

studying and reading books on his own.

He believed that slavery and democracy were fundamentally

incompatible.

In an 1858 speech, he said: What constitutes the bulwark of our own

liberty and

independance? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea

coats, our

army and our navy . . . Our defense is in the spirit which prized

liberty as the

heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and

you have

planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize

yourself with

the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them

(World Book

Encyclopedia).

He lost his campaign for the Senate, but during the debates with

his

opponent Stephen Douglas, he became well known for his opposotion to

slavery.

The southern states, which believed they depended upon slavery to remainprosperous in the cotton, tobacco, and rice industries, threatened to

secede

from the nation if Lincoln won the election. Lincoln was inaugurated

on March 4,

1861, and by April 12, the southern states had formed the Confedrate

States of

America and the Civil War began.

It was during the Civil War that Lincoln proclaimed the slaves

free in

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the Confederate states. This was his famous Emancipation Proclamation,

issued

in 1863.

But Lincoln knew that something else had to be done to insure

liberty

for the slaves after the war. So he worked hard to pass an antislavery

amendment to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment, passed by

Congress in

1865, prohibited slavery in all states. It was this important act, and

the

Emancipation Proclamation, that won Lincoln his reputation as the Great

Emancipator.

Josh Jenkins