Abraham Lincoln

Family and childhood

Early life

Born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was raised on Sinking Spring Farm and Knob Creek Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky. The second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, he was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1637 (Abraham Lincoln said that Samuel Lincoln "came from Norwich, England, in 1638".) His paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Kentucky. The captain was killed in a Native American raid in 1786. The family settled in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s. Nancy is widely assumed to have been the daughter of Lucy Hanks. Thomas and Nancy married on June 12, 1806, and moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky. They had three children: Sarah, Abraham, and Thomas Jr., who died as an infant.

Lincoln's father bought multiple farms in Kentucky but could not get clear property titles to any, losing hundreds of acres in legal disputes. In 1816, the family moved to Indiana, where land titles were more reliable. They settled on a forested plot in Little Pigeon Creek Community. In Kentucky and Indiana, Thomas worked as a farmer, cabinetmaker, and carpenter. At various times, he owned farms, livestock, and town lots, appraised estates, and served on county patrols. Thomas and Nancy were members of a Separate Baptist Church, a pious evangelical group whose members largely opposed slavery. Overcoming financial challenges, Thomas obtained clear title to 80 acres (32 ha) in Little Pigeon Creek Community in 1827.

On October 5, 1818, Nancy died from milk sickness, leaving 11-year-old Sarah in charge of the household, which included her father, 9-year-old Abraham, and Nancy's 19-year-old orphan cousin, Dennis Hanks. Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a widow with three children of her own, on December 2, 1819. Abraham became close to his stepmother and called her "Mama". On January 20, 1828, Lincoln's sister died in childbirth, devastating him.

Education and move to Illinois

Lincoln was largely self-educated. His formal schooling was from itinerant teachers. It included two short stints in Kentucky, where he learned to read, but probably not to write. After moving to Indiana at age seven, he attended school only sporadically, for a total of less than 12 months by age 15. Nevertheless, he was an avid reader and maintained a lifelong interest in learning.

When Lincoln was a teenager his father relied heavily on him for farmwork and for supplementary income, hiring the boy out to area farmers and pocketing the money, as was the custom at the time. When he was somewhat older, Lincoln and some friends took a job carrying goods by flatboat to New Orleans, Louisiana, where the slave markets, according to the historian Michael Burlingame, "would leave an indelible impression on him.... It was the first time, but not the last, that he would be repelled while observing slavery firsthand."

In March 1830, fearing another milk-sickness outbreak, several members of the extended Lincoln family, including Abraham, moved west to Illinois and settled in Macon County. Abraham became increasingly distant from Thomas, in part due to his father's lack of interest in education; he would later refuse to attend his father's deathbed or funeral in 1851.

Marriage and children

Some historians, such as Michael Burlingame, identify Lincoln's first romantic interest as Ann Rutledge, a young woman also from Kentucky whom he met when he moved to New Salem, Illinois. Lewis Gannett disputes that the evidence supports a romantic relationship between the two. David Herbert Donald states that "How that friendship [between Lincoln and Rutledge] developed into a romance cannot be reconstructed from the record". Rutledge died on August 25, 1835, of typhoid fever. Lincoln took her death very hard, sinking into a serious depression and contemplating suicide.

In the early 1830s, Lincoln met Mary Owens from Kentucky. Late in 1836, Lincoln agreed to marry Owens if she returned to New Salem. Owens arrived that November and he courted her, but they both had second thoughts. On August 16, 1837, he wrote Owens a letter saying he would not blame her if she ended the relationship, and she declined to marry him.

In 1839, Lincoln met Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois, and the following year they became engaged. She was a daughter of Robert Smith Todd, a wealthy lawyer and businessman in Lexington, Kentucky. Lincoln initially broke off the engagement in early 1841, but the two were reconciled and married on November 4, 1842. In 1844, the couple bought a house in Springfield near his law office. The marriage was turbulent; Mary was verbally abusive and at times physically violent towards her husband.

They had four sons. The eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, was born in 1843, and was the only child to live to maturity. Edward Baker "Eddie" Lincoln, born in 1846, died February 1, 1850, probably of tuberculosis. Lincoln's third son, William Wallace "Willie" Lincoln, was born on December 21, 1850, and died of a fever at the White House on February 20, 1862. The youngest, Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, was born on April 4, 1853, and died of edema at age 18 on July 16, 1871. Lincoln loved children, and the Lincolns were not considered to be strict with their own. The deaths of Eddie and Willie had profound effects on both parents. Lincoln suffered from "melancholy", a condition now thought to be clinical depression.

Early vocations and militia service

In 1831, Lincoln's father moved the family to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, after which Abraham struck out on his own. He made his home in New Salem, Illinois, for six years. During 1831 and 1832, Lincoln worked at a general store in New Salem. He gained a reputation for strength and courage after winning a wrestling match with the leader of a group of ruffians known as the Clary's Grove boys. In 1832, he declared his candidacy for the Illinois House of Representatives, though he interrupted his campaign to serve as a captain in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War. He was elected the captain of his militia company but did not see combat. In his political campaigning, Lincoln advocated for navigational improvements on the Sangamon River. He drew crowds as a raconteur, but he lacked name recognition, powerful friends, and money, and he lost the election.

When Lincoln returned home from the war, he planned to become a blacksmith but instead purchased a New Salem general store in partnership with William Berry. Because a license was required to sell customers alcoholic beverages, Berry obtained bartending licenses for Lincoln and himself, and in 1833 the Lincoln–Berry General Store became a tavern as well. Burlingame wrote that Berry was "an undisciplined, hard-drinking fellow", and Lincoln "was too soft-hearted to deny anyone credit". Although the economy was booming, the business struggled and went into debt, prompting Lincoln to sell his share.

Lincoln served as New Salem's postmaster and later as county surveyor, but he continued his voracious reading and decided to become a lawyer. Rather than studying in the office of an established attorney, as was customary, Lincoln read law on his own, borrowing legal texts, including Blackstone's Commentaries and Chitty's Pleadings, from attorney John Todd Stuart. He later said of his legal education that he "studied with nobody."

Early political offices and prairie lawyer

Illinois state legislature (1834–1842)

In Lincoln's second state house campaign in 1834, as a supporter of Whig Party leader Henry Clay, he finished second among thirteen candidates running for four places. Lincoln echoed Clay's support for the American Colonization Society, which advocated abolition in conjunction with settling freed slaves in Liberia. The Whigs also favored economic modernization in banking, tariffs to fund internal improvements such as railroads, and urbanization.

Lincoln served four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives for Sangamon County. In this role, he championed construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Lincoln voted to expand suffrage beyond White landowners to all White men. He supported the chartering of the Illinois State Bank, and also led a successful campaign for moving the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield.

On January 27, 1838, Lincoln delivered an address at the Lyceum in Springfield, after the murder of the anti-slavery newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy. In this ostensibly non-partisan speech, Lincoln attacked Stephen A. Douglas and the Democratic Party, who the Whigs argued were supporting "mobocracy". His speech also attacked anti-abolitionism and racial bigotry.

Lincoln was criticized in the press for a planned duel with James Shields, whom he had ridiculed in letters published under the name "Aunt Rebecca". Although the duel did not take place, Burlingame noted that "the affair embarrassed Lincoln terribly".

U.S. House of Representatives (1847–1849)

In 1843, Lincoln sought the Whig nomination for Illinois's 7th district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives; John J. Hardin was the winning candidate, though Lincoln convinced the party convention to limit Hardin to one term. Lincoln not only gained the nomination in 1846, but also won the election. The only Whig in the Illinois delegation, he was assigned to the Committee on Post Office and Post Roads and the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department. Lincoln teamed with Joshua R. Giddings on a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but dropped the bill when it failed to attract support from most other Whigs.

Lincoln spoke against the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), for which he said President James K. Polk had "some strong motive ... to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood". He supported the Wilmot Proviso, a failed 1846 proposal to ban slavery in any U.S. territory won from Mexico. Polk insisted that Mexican soldiers had begun the war by "invading the territory of the State of Texas ... and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil". In his 1847 "spot resolutions", Lincoln rhetorically demanded that Polk tell Congress the exact "spot" where this occurred, but the Polk administration did not respond. His approach and rhetoric cost Lincoln political support in his district, and newspapers derisively nicknamed him "spotty Lincoln".

Lincoln had pledged in 1846 to serve only one term in the House. At the 1848 Whig National Convention, he initially supported Henry Clay and was among the leaders of the Illinois delegation backing Clay, voting for him on the early ballots. When it became clear that Clay could not secure the nomination, Lincoln joined other Whigs in shifting support to Zachary Taylor, who won the party's nomination and the presidency in 1848. After Taylor won, Lincoln hoped in vain to be appointed commissioner of the United States General Land Office. The administration offered to appoint him secretary of the Oregon Territory instead. This would have disrupted his legal and political career in Illinois, so he declined and resumed his law practice.

Prairie lawyer

Lincoln was admitted to the Illinois bar on September 9, 1836. He moved to Springfield and began to practice law under John T. Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin. He partnered for several years with Stephen T. Logan and, in 1844, began his practice with William Herndon.

In his Springfield practice, according to Donald, Lincoln handled "virtually every kind of business that could come before a prairie lawyer". He dealt with many transportation cases in the midst of the nation's western expansion, particularly river barge conflicts under the new railroad bridges. In 1849 he received a patent for a flotation device for the movement of riverboats in shallow water. His patent was never commercialized, but it made Lincoln the only president to hold a patent. Lincoln initially favored riverboat legal interests, but he represented whoever hired him.

He represented a bridge company against a riverboat company in Hurd v. Rock Island Bridge Company, a landmark case involving a canal boat that sank after hitting a bridge. Lincoln appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court in 411 cases. From 1853 to 1860, one of his largest clients was the Illinois Central Railroad, which Lincoln successfully sued to recover his legal fees.

Lincoln represented William "Duff" Armstrong in his 1858 trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker. The case is famous for Lincoln's use of a fact established by judicial notice to challenge the credibility of an eyewitness. After a witness testified to seeing the crime in the moonlight, Lincoln produced a Farmers' Almanac showing the Moon was at a low angle, drastically reducing visibility. Armstrong was acquitted. In an 1859 murder case, he defended "Peachy" Quinn Harrison, the grandson of Peter Cartwright, Lincoln's political opponent. Harrison was charged with the murder of Greek Crafton who, according to Cartwright, said as he lay dying that he had "brought it upon myself" and that he forgave Harrison. Lincoln angrily protested the judge's initial decision to exclude Cartwright's claim as hearsay. Lincoln argued that the testimony involved a dying declaration and so was not subject to the hearsay rule. Instead of holding Lincoln in contempt of court as expected, the judge, a Democrat, admitted the testimony into evidence, resulting in Harrison's acquittal.

Republican politics (1854–1860)

Emergence as Republican leader

The Compromise of 1850 failed to alleviate tensions over slavery between the slave-holding South and the free North. As the slavery debate in the Nebraska and Kansas territories became particularly acrimonious, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed popular sovereignty as a compromise; the measure would allow the electorate of each territory to decide the status of slavery. The legislation alarmed many Northerners, who sought to prevent the spread of slavery, but Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Act narrowly passed Congress in May 1854. Lincoln's Peoria Speech of October 1854, in which he declared his opposition to slavery, was one of an estimated 175 speeches he delivered in the next six years on the topic of excluding slavery from the territories. Lincoln's attacks on the Kansas–Nebraska Act marked his return to political life.

Nationally, the Whigs were irreparably split by the Kansas–Nebraska Act and other ineffective efforts to compromise on the slavery issue. Reflecting on the demise of his party, Lincoln wrote in 1855, "I think I am a whig; but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist.... I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery." The new Republican Party was formed as a northern party dedicated to anti-slavery, drawing from the anti-slavery wing of the Whig Party and combining Free Soil, Liberty, and anti-slavery Democratic Party members.

Lincoln resisted early Republican entreaties, fearing that the new party would become a platform for extreme abolitionists. Lincoln held out hope for rejuvenating the Whigs, though he lamented his party's growing closeness with the nativist Know Nothing movement. In 1854, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois legislature, but before the term began he declined to take his seat so that he would be eligible to run in the upcoming U.S. Senate election.

At that time, senators were elected by state legislatures. After leading in the first six rounds of voting, Lincoln was unable to obtain a majority. Lincoln instructed his backers to vote for Lyman Trumbull, an anti-slavery Democrat who had received few votes in the earlier ballots. Lincoln's decision to withdraw enabled his Whig supporters and Trumbull's anti-slavery Democrats to combine and defeat the mainstream Democratic candidate, Joel Aldrich Matteson.

Violent political confrontations in Kansas continued, and opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act remained strong throughout the North. As the 1856 elections approached, Lincoln joined the Republicans and attended the Bloomington Convention, where the Illinois Republican Party was established. The convention platform endorsed Congress's right to regulate slavery in the territories and backed the admission of Kansas as a free state. Lincoln gave the final speech of the convention, calling for the preservation of the Union.

Lincoln–Douglas debates and Cooper Union speech

In 1858, Douglas was up for re-election in the U.S. Senate, and Lincoln hoped to defeat him. Many in the party felt that a former Whig should be nominated in 1858, and Lincoln's 1856 campaigning and support of Trumbull had earned him a favor. For the first time, Illinois Republicans held a convention to agree upon a Senate candidate, and Lincoln won the nomination with little opposition. Lincoln accepted the nomination with great enthusiasm and zeal. After his nomination he delivered his House Divided Speech: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. The speech created a stark image of the danger of disunion. When informed of Lincoln's nomination, Douglas stated, "[Lincoln] is the strong man of the party ... and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won."

The Senate campaign featured seven debates between Lincoln and Douglas; they had an atmosphere akin to a prizefight and drew thousands. Lincoln warned that the Slave Power was threatening the values of republicanism, and he accused Douglas of distorting Jefferson's premise that all men are created equal. In his Freeport Doctrine, Douglas argued that, despite the Dred Scott decision, which he claimed to support, local settlers, under popular sovereignty, should be free to choose whether to allow slavery in their territory. He accused Lincoln of having joined the abolitionists.

Though the Republican legislative candidates won more popular votes, the Democrats won more seats, and the legislature re-elected Douglas. However, Lincoln's articulation of the issues had given him a national political presence. In the aftermath of the 1858 election, newspapers frequently mentioned Lincoln as a potential Republican presidential candidate. While Lincoln was popular in the Midwest, he lacked support in the Northeast and was unsure whether to seek the office. In January 1860, Lincoln told a group of political allies that he would accept the presidential nomination if offered and, in the following months, William O. Stoddard's Central Illinois Gazette, the Chicago Press & Tribune, and other local papers endorsed his candidacy.

In February 1860, Henry Ward Beecher invited Lincoln to address his congregation at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York. Lincoln agreed, but the venue shifted to Cooper Union in Manhattan. In his speech at Cooper Union, which he gave on February 27, Lincoln argued that the Founding Fathers had little use for popular sovereignty, and that in the Northwest Ordinance they had restricted slavery in the territories; he insisted that morality required opposition to slavery and rejected any "groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong". Many in the audience thought he appeared awkward and even ugly. But Lincoln demonstrated intellectual leadership, which brought him into contention for the presidency. Journalist Noah Brooks reported, "No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience". Historian David Herbert Donald described the speech as "a superb political move for an unannounced presidential aspirant." In response to an inquiry about his ambitions, Lincoln said, "The taste is in my mouth a little".

1860 presidential election

On May 9–10, 1860, the Illinois Republican State Convention was held in Decatur. Exploiting his embellished frontier legend of clearing land and splitting fence rails, Lincoln's supporters promoted him as "The Rail Candidate". On May 18 at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Lincoln won the nomination on the third ballot. A former Democrat, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, was nominated for vice president to balance the ticket.

Throughout the 1850s, Lincoln had not anticipated civil war, and his supporters rejected claims that his election would incite secession. When Douglas was selected as the candidate of the Northern Democrats, delegates from the Southern slave states selected incumbent Vice President John C. Breckinridge as their candidate. A group of former Whigs and Know Nothings formed the Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln and Douglas competed for votes in the North, while Bell and Breckinridge found support primarily in the South. A nationwide militaristic Republican youth organization, the Wide Awakes, "turned it into one of the most excited elections in American history" and "triggered massive popular enthusiasm", according to the political historian Jon Grinspan. People of the Northern states knew the Southern states would vote against Lincoln and rallied supporters for him.

As Douglas and the other candidates campaigned, Lincoln gave no speeches, relying on the enthusiasm of the Republican Party. Republican speakers emphasized Lincoln's childhood poverty to demonstrate the power of "free labor", which allowed a common farm boy to work his way to the top by his own efforts. Though he did not make public appearances, many sought to visit and write to Lincoln. In the runup to the election, he took an office in the Illinois state capitol to deal with the influx of attention. He also hired John George Nicolay as his personal secretary, who would remain in that role during the presidency.

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president. His victory was entirely due to his support in the North and West. No ballots were cast for him in 10 of the 15 Southern slave states. Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes, or 39.8 percent of the total in a four-way race, carrying the free Northern states, as well as California and Oregon, and winning the electoral vote decisively.

Presidency (1861–1865)

First term

After Lincoln's election, secessionists implemented plans to leave the Union before he took office in March 1861. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina adopted an ordinance of secession; by February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had followed. Six of these states declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America, selecting Jefferson Davis as its provisional president.

The upper South and border states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas) initially rejected the secessionist appeal. President Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy, declaring secession illegal. On February 11, 1861, Lincoln gave a particularly emotional farewell address upon leaving Springfield for Washington.

Lincoln and the Republicans rejected the proposed Crittenden Compromise as contrary to the party's platform of free-soil in the territories. Lincoln said, "I will suffer death before I consent ... to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege to take possession of this government to which we have a constitutional right". Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would have protected slavery in states where it already existed. The amendment passed Congress and was awaiting ratification by the required three-fourths of the states when Southern states began to secede. On March 4, 1861, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln said that, because he held "such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable".

Due to secessionist plots, careful attention was paid to Lincoln's security and the train he took to Washington. The president-elect evaded suspected assassins in Baltimore. He traveled in disguise, wearing a soft felt hat instead of his customary stovepipe hat and draping an overcoat over his shoulders while hunching to conceal his height. On February 23, 1861, he arrived in Washington, D.C., which was placed under military guard. Many in the opposition press criticized his secretive journey; opposition newspapers mocked Lincoln with caricatures showing him sneaking into the capital. Lincoln directed his inaugural address to the South, proclaiming once again that he had no inclination to abolish slavery in the Southern states:

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." The president ended his address with an appeal to the people of the South: "We are not enemies, but friends.... The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone ... will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched ... by the better angels of our nature". According to Donald, the failure of the Peace Conference of 1861 to attract the attendance of seven of the Confederate states signaled that legislative compromise was not a practical expectation.

Second term

Lincoln ran for re-election in 1864; the Democratic nominee was former general McClellan. The Republican Party selected Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat, as Lincoln's running mate. To broaden his coalition to include War Democrats as well as Republicans, Lincoln ran under the new label of the National Union Party. Grant's bloody stalemates and Confederate victories such as the Battle of the Crater damaged Lincoln's re-election prospects, and many Republicans feared defeat. Lincoln prepared a confidential memorandum pledging that, if he should lose the election, he would "co-operate with the President-elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards".

Victories at Atlanta in September and in the Shenandoah Valley in October turned public opinion, and Lincoln was re-elected with 55.1 percent of the popular vote as well as 212 electoral votes to McClellan's 21. As Grant continued to weaken Lee's forces, efforts to discuss peace began. On February 3, 1865, Alexander H. Stephens, the Confederate vice president, and two other Confederate officials met with Lincoln and Seward at Hampton Roads. Lincoln refused to negotiate with the Confederacy as a coequal, and the only agreement reached at the meeting concerned the exchange of prisoners.

Lincoln's second inauguration took place on March 4, 1865; historian Mark Noll places his second inaugural address "among the small handful of semi-sacred texts by which Americans conceive their place in the world"; it is inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial. Lincoln closed his speech with these words:

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; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

A month later, on April 9, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, signaling the end of the war. It triggered a series of subsequent surrenders across the South—in North Carolina, Alabama, and the trans-Mississippi Theater—and finally at sea with the surrender of the CSS Shenandoah in November 1865.

Assassination

John Wilkes Booth was a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland; although he never joined the Confederate army, he had contacts within the Confederate secret service. After attending Lincoln's last public address, on April 11, 1865, in which Lincoln stated his preference that the franchise be conferred on some Black men, specifically "on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers", Booth plotted to assassinate the President. When Booth learned of the Lincolns' intent to attend a play with Grant, he planned to assassinate Lincoln and Grant at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln and his wife attended the play Our American Cousin on the evening of April 14. At the last minute, Grant decided to go to New Jersey to visit his children instead.

At 10:15 pm, Booth entered Lincoln's theater box, crept up from behind, and fired at the back of Lincoln's head, mortally wounding him. Lincoln's guest, Major Henry Rathbone, momentarily grappled with Booth, but Booth stabbed him and escaped. After being attended by Charles Leale and two other doctors, Lincoln was taken across the street to Petersen House. He remained in a coma for nine hours and died at 7:22 am on April 15. Lincoln's body was wrapped in a flag and placed in a coffin, which was loaded into a hearse and escorted to the White House by Union soldiers. Johnson was sworn in as president later that day. Two weeks later, Booth was located, shot, and killed at a farm in Virginia by Sergeant Boston Corbett.

Funeral and burial

From April 19 to 20, Lincoln lay in state, first in the White House and then in the Capitol rotunda. The caskets containing Lincoln's body and the body of his third son Willie then traveled for two weeks on a funeral train following a circuitous route from Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, stopping at several cities for memorials attended by hundreds of thousands. Many others gathered along the tracks as the train passed with bands, bonfires, and hymn singing or in silent grief.

Historians emphasized the widespread shock and sorrow, but noted that some who had hated Lincoln celebrated his death. Walt Whitman composed four elegies to Lincoln, including "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "O Captain! My Captain!". Lincoln's body was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield and now lies within the Lincoln Tomb.

Philosophy and views

Lincoln redefined the political philosophy of republicanism in the United States. Because the Declaration of Independence says that all men have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, he called it the "sheet anchor" of republicanism, at a time when the Constitution was the focus of most political discourse. He presented the Declaration as establishing equality as a foundational principle for the United States, which had a significant impact on social and political movements in the U.S. into the 20th century.

As a Whig activist, Lincoln was a spokesman for business interests, favoring high tariffs, banks, infrastructure improvements, and railroads, in opposition to Jacksonian democrats. Nevertheless, Lincoln admired Andrew Jackson's steeliness and patriotism, and adopted the Jacksonian "belief in the common man". According to historian Sean Wilentz, "just as the Republican Party of the 1850s absorbed certain elements of Jacksonianism, so Lincoln, whose Whiggery had always been more egalitarian than that of other Whigs, found himself absorbing some of them as well."

Historian William C. Harris found that Lincoln's "reverence for the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, the laws under it, and the preservation of the Republic and its institutions strengthened his conservatism." In Lincoln's first inaugural address, he denounced secession as anarchy and argued that "a majority held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people."

Religious views

As a young man, Lincoln was a religious skeptic. However, he was deeply familiar with the Bible; throughout his public career, he often quoted scripture. His three most famous speeches—the House Divided Speech, the Gettysburg Address, and his second inaugural address—all contain such quotes. In the 1840s, Lincoln subscribed to the Doctrine of Necessity, a belief that the human mind was controlled by a higher power.

After the death of his son Edward in 1850, Lincoln more frequently expressed a dependence on God. He never joined a church, although he and his wife frequently attended First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois, beginning in 1852. While president, Lincoln often attended services at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. The death of his son Willie in February 1862 may have caused him to look toward religion for solace.

Lincoln's frequent use of religious imagery and language toward the end of his life may have reflected his own personal beliefs or might have been a device to reach his audiences, who were mostly evangelical Protestants. Sources differ in how they describe his religious beliefs. His law partner William Herndon gave a lecture after Lincoln's death stating that he was an "unbeliever"; James Smith, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, responded to this lecture with an open letter asserting that Lincoln "did avow his belief in the Divine Authority and the Inspiration of the Scriptures". Stephen Mansfield describes "an atheist or religiously skeptical Lincoln" as "the prevailing view", although he argues that "there was a spiritual journey of some kind in Abraham Lincoln's life". Richard Carwardine writes that "Many elements of the inner Lincoln, including his personal faith ... necessarily remain a puzzle". Lincoln's last words were, as reported by his wife, "There is no place I so much desire to see as Jerusalem".

Health and appearance

According to Michael Burlingame, Lincoln was described as "awkward" and "gawky" as a youth. In adolescence he was tall and strong, participating in jumping, throwing, wrestling, and footraces, and demonstrating exceptional strength. Burlingame notes that Lincoln's clothes "were typically rough and suited to the frontier", with a gap between his shoes, socks, and pants that often exposed six or more inches of his shin; "he cared little about fashion".

Lincoln was a slender six feet four inches, with a high-pitched voice. While he is usually portrayed bearded, he did not grow a beard until 1860 at the suggestion of 11-year-old Grace Bedell; he was the first U.S. president to do so. William H. Herndon described Lincoln's face as "long, narrow, sallow, and cadaverous", his cheeks as "leathery and saffron-colored". Lincoln described himself as having a "dark complexion, with coarse black hair". Although Lincoln's features were said to be "unpleasant to behold," Walt Whitman "wrote that Lincoln's face was 'so awful ugly it becomes beautiful.'" Lincoln's detractors also remarked on his appearance. For example, the Charleston Mercury described him as having "the dirtiest complexion" and asked "Faugh! after him what decent white man would be President?"

Among the illnesses that Lincoln is either documented or speculated to have suffered from are depression, smallpox, and malaria. He took blue mass pills, which contained mercury, to treat melancholy or hypochondriasis; this could have resulted in mercury poisoning. Several claims have been made that Lincoln's health was declining before his assassination, as photographs of Lincoln appear to show weight loss and facial changes. It has been proposed that he could have had a rare genetic disorder such as Marfan syndrome or multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B.

Legacy

Historical reputation

In surveys of U.S. scholars ranking presidents since 1948, the top three presidents are generally Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, although the order varies. A 2004 study found that scholars in history and politics ranked Lincoln number one, while legal scholars placed him second after Washington. Between 1999 and 2011, Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan were the top-ranked presidents in eight public opinion surveys by Gallup.

Lincoln's assassination made him a national martyr. He was viewed by abolitionists as a champion of human liberty. Many, though not all, in the South considered Lincoln to be a man of outstanding ability. In the New Deal era, liberals honored Lincoln as an advocate of the common man who they claimed would have supported the welfare state, and Lincoln became a favorite of liberal intellectuals across the world. The sociologist Barry Schwartz argues that in the 1930s and 1940s, Lincoln provided the nation with "a moral symbol inspiring and guiding American life." Schwartz states that Lincoln's American reputation grew slowly from the late 19th century until the Progressive Era (1900–1920s), when he emerged as one of America's most venerated heroes, even among White Southerners. The high point came in 1922 with the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

In 2008, Schwartz argued that Lincoln's symbolic power has lost relevance since World War II, and this "fading hero is symptomatic of fading confidence in national greatness." By the 1970s, Lincoln had become a hero to political conservatives—apart from neo-Confederates such as Mel Bradford, who denounced his treatment of the White South—for his nationalism, his support for business, his insistence on stopping the spread of slavery, and his perceived devotion to the principles of the Founding Fathers.

The Black orator and former slave Frederick Douglass stated that in "his company, I was never reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color", and Lincoln has long been known as the Great Emancipator. By the late 1960s, some Black intellectuals denied that Lincoln deserved that title. Lerone Bennett Jr. won wide attention when he called Lincoln a White supremacist in 1968. He noted that Lincoln used ethnic slurs and argued that Lincoln opposed social equality and proposed that freed slaves voluntarily move to another country. Defenders of Lincoln highlighted his condemnation of slavery and his contributions to its abolition, casting his delays and racist rhetoric as concessions to political necessity rather than reflections of his personal beliefs.

Memorials and commemorations

Lincoln's portrait appears on two denominations of United States currency, the penny and the $5 bill. He appears on postage stamps across the world, including in Ghana, Honduras, China, Haiti, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Argentina. He has been memorialized in many town, city, and county names, including the capital of Nebraska. The United States Navy has named three vessels after Lincoln, including the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72). The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., is one of the most visited National Park Service sites in the country.

Memorials in Springfield, Illinois, include the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Lincoln's home, and his tomb. A carving of Lincoln appears with those of three other presidents on Mount Rushmore, which receives about 3 million visitors a year. A statue of Lincoln completed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens stands in Lincoln Park, Chicago, with recastings given as diplomatic gifts standing in Parliament Square, London, and Parque Lincoln, Mexico City. Several states commemorate "Presidents' Day" as "Washington–Lincoln Day".

Lincoln has been extensively portrayed in media. Early works, such as Abraham Lincoln's Clemency (1910), attempted to mythologize him, emphasizing his mercifulness. Works from the Great Depression era, such as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), embellished his early struggles and folksiness. The 1938 play Abe Lincoln in Illinois won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted in film. After a marked decrease in film portrayals between 1941 and 1999, Daniel Day-Lewis won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal in Lincoln, a 2012 biographical film directed by Steven Spielberg.