Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 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.
Abraham Lincoln entered office, as the 16th President of the United States, at a critical period in U. S. history, just before the Civil War. The election of Lincoln caused great concern in the South, the South believed that Lincoln, more than any of the other candidates running in 1860, posed a threat to the institution of slavery.A split in the Democratic party, helped Lincoln presidential election a certain. Lincoln won only 40% of the votes. The seven states of the lower South had seceded from the Union, and Southern delegates meeting in Montgomery, Ala., had formed a new, separate government. Before Lincoln reached the national capital, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the Confederate States of America. In 1861, Lincoln's weaknesses were more evident than his strengths. Immediately after his inauguration he faced a crisis over Fort Sumter in the Charleston (S. C.) harbor, one of the few remaining U.S. forts in the seceded states still under federal control. Lincoln immediately blockaded of the Southern ports and suspended Habeas Corpus. Informed that the troops would have to be supplied or withdrawn, the inexperienced President anxiously explored solutions. Withdrawal would appear a cowardly backdown, but reinforcing the fort might precipitate hostilities. Lincoln painfully concluded that he would send supplies to Sumter and let the Confederates decide whether to fire on the flag of the Union. Lincoln was determined that he would not order the first shot fired. Informed of the approach of the federal supply fleet, Confederate authorities at Charleston during the early hours of April 12, 1861, South Carolina fired on the fort, and the Civil War began.
Because Congress was not in session, Lincoln moved swiftly to mobilize the Union by executive order. His requisition to the states for 75,000 volunteers precipitated the secession of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Kentucky tried to adopt an official policy of neutrality. President Lincoln was hampered by the lack of a strong military tradition in America and by the shortage of trained officers.
As a commander in chief Lincoln was soon noted for vigorous measures, sometimes at odds with the Constitution and often at odds with the ideas of his military commanders. After a period of initial support and enthusiasm for George B. McClellan, Lincoln's conflicts with that Democratic general helped to turn the latter into his presidential rival in 1864.
The first couple of years didn’t go well for the Union in the East. Union armies suffered defeats at Manassas, the Shenandoah Valley, 2nd Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville and managed a draw at Antietam. The turning point in the East came at the battle of Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863. At Gettysburg, the Union Army beat back an invasion of Pennsylvania by Robert E. Lee and forced him and the Army of Northern Virginia back from whence they came. From then on, the Union Army would be on the offensive. Because of the constant defeats at the hands of Lee and his army, Lincoln had a difficult time finding a general who could go head-to-head with the seemingly invincible Southern General.
In the West, it was different. Union Armies and Navies won victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, New Orleans, Memphis, a draw at Shiloh, and forced the surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson after long sieges, bringing the entire Mississippi under Union control. General Ulysses S. Grant proved that he could fight, and, in late 1863, Lincoln appointed Grant a Lieutenant General and gave him the command of the Army of the Potomac. He had finally found a general who was not afraid to fight Lee.
President Lincoln moved slowly on the emancipation of the slaves. In 1861, when John C. Frémont issued an order that all the slaves in Missouri were free, Lincoln ordered Frémont to rescind the order, and when he refused Lincoln fired him. He believed slavery should be abolished, but waited until January , to issue the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in Confederate-controlled territory. Because the proclamation exempted slavery in the border states and in all Confederate territory already under the control of Union armies and because Lincoln was not certain that his action would be sustained by the Supreme Court, he strongly urged Congress to adopt the 13th Amendment, forever abolishing slavery throughout the country. Congressional action on this measure was completed in January 1865
Lincoln did not support the radical reconstruction ideas of the South proposed by his fellow Republicans in Congress, but instead favored a more lenient approach. Under what would become know as the “10% Plan,” Lincoln proposed that when the voting population of a state (as it stood in 1860) swore an oath of allegiance to the United States Government, then the state would be started on the road to reconstruction. Excluded from this process were political office holders, Confederate officers holding a rank higher than Colonel, and anyone who had resigned their post in the United States government, whether civilian or military, to serve the Confederacy.
Lincoln stood for reelection in 1864 with Andrew Johnson from Tennessee as his running mate. Lincoln’s second term would only last five weeks. On April 14, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor with strong Southern sympathies, sneaked up on Lincoln and shot him in the head. The President was taken across the street to a boarding house where he died the next morning.
