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By almost every standard, Abraham Lincoln is rated as America's greatest president. This recognition stems from five factors. First, Lincoln presided, with ultimate success, over the direst crisis in American history. Had he been less skilled or less determined, the Civil War might very well have ended in the permanent division of the nation. Second, Lincoln accomplished the abolition of slavery in the United States and led the nation in taking its first steps toward racial justice. Third, Lincoln was one of the most impeccable craftsmen of the English language to ever hold political office in the United States. Indeed, with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson, no other national politician ever demonstrated such a stunning ability to express himself and inspire others through language and text. Fourth, Lincoln came from the humblest background of any person elected to the presidency. Born in a log cabin on the Kentucky frontier, lacking any formal education, scrupulously honest, and enormously hardworking, Lincoln embodied values that almost all Americans admire while symbolizing the idea that any American can escape poverty to achieve greatness. His two nicknames--"Honest Abe" and "the Rail Splitter"--convey his honesty, his humble roots, and his willingness to work hard to improve himself and his nation. Finally, Lincoln's death at the hands of an assassin mere days after the U.S. army's triumph in the Civil War made him into a hero and a national martyr of almost mythic proportions. The national outpouring of grief at his death, even in parts of the defeated South, was unprecedented.

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin near Hodgenville, Hardin County, Kentucky. His parents, Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, were illiterate farmers.

The family later moved to Knob Creek, where Lincoln learned the alphabet but little more while attending school for a few weeks. When he was seven, the family moved to Indiana, which had just been admitted to the Union.

Uncertain land titles in Kentucky helped prompt the move, but Thomas Lincoln also belonged to a church that opposed slavery, and thus the free state of Indiana was doubly attractive. When Lincoln was nine, his mother died; a year later his father married Sarah Bush Johnston. Sarah was literate and encouraged her young stepson to read, which he did, despite his father's belief that his love of learning was a sign of weakness and laziness. This led to tension between father and son that was never resolved. Thomas hired Abraham out to neighbors, collecting all his wages, and the teenager grew to resent this form of "slavery" imposed by his overbearing father. In 1828 the young Lincoln took a flatboat down the Mississippi, widening his horizons in part by encountering the horrors of true slavery for the first time. He would later claim that he was "naturally antislavery" and could "not remember when" he "did not so think, and feel" (Basler, 1953-1955, vol. 7, p. 281).

In 1830 the Lincolns moved to Illinois, and in the summer of 1831 Lincoln left his father's house, settling in New Salem. For the next six years he worked as a mill hand, store clerk, and postmaster. He was the part owner of a general store that went bankrupt; while his partner left town, Lincoln remained and gradually paid off all their creditors, leading to his nickname "Honest Abe." Lincoln also expanded his education, developing his oratorical skills by participating in a debate society. In 1832, during the Black Hawk War, he was elected captain of his militia company, reflecting his comrades' recognition of his natural leadership abilities. In 1834 he easily won a seat as county representative, running as a Whig. While in the legislature, where he would remain through 1841, he studied law under John Todd Stuart, the Whigs' leader. In 1836 Lincoln was admitted to the bar, and in 1837 he moved to Springfield, the new state capital, where he became Stuart's law partner. As one of a handful of state legislators to oppose a resolution condemning abolitionists, Lincoln instead offered a resolution condemning slavery, which was overwhelmingly defeated.

In 1846 Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, having promised to serve only one term. In Congress he opposed the Mexican-American War, as did most of his fellow Whigs. After his term ended, Lincoln returned to Illinois and left politics, focusing on his law practice. The 1854 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed most of the Missouri Compromise and allowed slavery in most of the western territories, brought Lincoln back into politics. In fact, opposition to this law led to a political revolution. Lincoln successfully ran for the state legislature by opposing the spread of slavery to the western territories. He hoped that the new legislature, now dominated by a rickety coalition of Whigs and Democrats who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, would send him to the U.S. Senate. Although he led for six ballots, he could not gain enough votes to win. Lincoln continued to make speeches against the spread of slavery, crisscrossing the state and the Midwest. By 1855 the movement against the Kansas-Nebraska Act had coalesced in the creation of the Republican Party.

In 1856 Lincoln made an unsuccessful bid to gain the new party's vice presidential nomination. After the election, he concentrated his efforts on unseating the state's incumbent Democratic senator--the author of the Kansas- Nebraska Act--Stephen A. Douglas. In March 1857, the Supreme Court held in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Congress could never ban slavery from the territories. In his brilliant critiques of that opinion Lincoln alleged that the decision was part of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery that included Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, President James Buchanan, and Senator Douglas. Lincoln's challenge to Douglas began with his "house divided" speech and continued through the 1858 campaign, as he debated Douglas seven times in cities and towns across Illinois. Although he lost the election, Lincoln emerged as one of the new party's most prominent speakers. At a dramatic convention in 1860 he secured the presidential nomination of the Republican Party. His campaign centered on ending the spread of slavery into the territories but not harming the institution where it existed. He was not on the ballot in most of the slave states, but he carried every northern state, won a plurality of the popular votes, and won a commanding majority of the electoral votes. By the time he was inaugurated, seven states had seceded from the Union, asserting that a Lincoln presidency threatened slavery.

No president before or since Lincoln ever faced a comparable crisis. The nation was coming apart; with seven states having created a new government as the Confederate States of America, war seemed inevitable. Lincoln's first inaugural address was a masterpiece of conciliation. Lincoln believed that by taking the oath or "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," he was under a moral obligation to prevent the destruction of the Union. While Lincoln asserted from the beginning of the Civil War that its purpose was to preserve the Union, everyone in the nation knew, as he would later admit in his second inaugural, that slavery was the war's cause. By early 1862 Lincoln had decided to move against the institution.

He spent much of the summer working on the Emancipation Proclamation but waited to present it, telling his critics that it would be foolish to try to end slavery without the military standing to do so. Following the Union's strategic victory at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, Lincoln issued the proclamation, which would take effect on January 1, 1863. Detailing how and where slaves would be freed, the decree was a dry legal document designed not to inspire the nation but to impress lawyers and, more important, the Supreme Court. It was in the Gettysburg address, given in November 1863, that Lincoln provided America with an eloquent and stirring argument for freedom and for the fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence. Finally, in his second inaugural address, with the war almost won and slavery virtually ended, Lincoln spoke to the future, when peace would be restored and freedom would finally be a national policy. A month and a half later, Lincoln lay dead, murdered by John Wilkes Booth, a pro-Confederate fanatic.

References:

1. Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

2. Holzer, Harold. Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

3. Lehrman, Lewis E. Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point; Getting Right with the Declaration of Independence. Mechanicsburg, Pa: Stackpole Books, 2008.

4. McPherson, James M. Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. New York: Penguin Press, 2008.

5. Oates, Stephen. With Malice toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.

6. Paludan, Phillip Shaw. The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994.

7. Peterson, Merrill D. Lincoln in American Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

8. Striner, Richard. Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

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