The biography of President Abraham Lincoln, as well as those of past presidents, is provided by the White House Historical Association.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, assumed office in 1861. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that slaves in the Confederate states were to be freed.

In his Inaugural Address, Lincoln warned the South: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”

Lincoln viewed secession as illegal and was prepared to use force to uphold Federal law and preserve the Union. When Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, prompting its surrender, Lincoln called on the states to provide 75,000 volunteers. The Civil War had officially begun, with four additional slave states joining the Confederacy, while four remained loyal to the Union.

Born into poverty as the son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to fight for both his livelihood and education. Just five months before receiving his party’s nomination for the presidency, Lincoln reflected on his humble beginnings:

“I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families–second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks…. My father … removed from Kentucky to … Indiana, in my eighth year…. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up…. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher … but that was all.”

Despite limited formal education, Lincoln made remarkable efforts to gain knowledge, balancing his studies with working on a farm, splitting rails, and keeping store in New Salem, Illinois. He served as a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and practiced law for many years. His law partner famously said of him, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.”

Lincoln married Mary Todd, and together they had four sons, only one of whom survived to adulthood. In 1858, Lincoln ran for the U.S. Senate against Stephen A. Douglas. Although he lost, the debates elevated his national profile and helped secure his Republican nomination for the presidency in 1860.

As President, Lincoln strengthened the Republican Party and rallied Northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, marking a pivotal step toward the abolition of slavery.

Lincoln emphasized the broader significance of the Civil War, notably in his address at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery: “That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Re-elected in 1864, Lincoln prepared for post-war reconciliation, promoting a spirit of generosity and urging Southerners to rejoin the Union swiftly.

This spirit of unity was exemplified in his Second Inaugural Address, now engraved on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds….”

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. His death dealt a significant blow to the prospects for a peaceful and magnanimous post-war reconciliation.