Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born in February 12, 1809. The sixteenth President of the United States, successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. Assassinated as the war was drawing to a close, Limcoln had been the first Republican elected to the Presidency. Before his presidency, he was a lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, a menber of the United States House of Representatives, and twice an unsuccessful candidate for election of the Senate.

As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States. Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president later that year. His tenure in office was occupied primarily with the defeat of the secessionist Confederate Ststes of America in the Americal Civil War. He introduced measures that reulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting th passage of the thirteenth Amendment to the Constutution, which passed Congress before Lincol's death and was ratified by the states later in 1865.