THE WHITE HOUSE Administration Priorities The Record Briefing Room Español MENU
Abraham
Lincoln
THE 16TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES
ABOUT THE WHITE HOUSE
PRESIDENTS
The biography for President Lincoln and past presidents is courtesy of the White PRESIDENTS
House Historical Association.
George Washington
John Adams
Abraham Lincoln became the United States’ 16th Thomas Jefferson
President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation James Madison
James Monroe
Proclamation that declared forever free those John Quincy Adams
slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: “In your hands, my James K. Polk
Zachary Taylor
dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of
Millard Fillmore
civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in
Franklin Pierce
Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to
James Buchanan
preserve, protect and defend it.”
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend
Ulysses S. Grant
Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter
Rutherford B. Hayes
and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four James Garfield
more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. Chester A. Arthur
The Civil War had begun. Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and Grover Cleveland
for learning. Five months before receiving his party’s nomination for William McKinley
President, he sketched his life: Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
“I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both Woodrow Wilson
born in Virginia, of undistinguished families–second families, perhaps I Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name
Herbert Hoover
of Hanks…. My father … removed from Kentucky to … Indiana, in my eighth
Franklin D. Roosevelt
year…. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the
Harry S. Truman
woods. There I grew up…. Of course when I came of age I did not know much.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher … but that was all.”
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a
Richard M. Nixon
farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He Gerald R. Ford
was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois James Carter
legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said Ronald Reagan
of him, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.” George H. W. Bush
William J. Clinton
He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to George W. Bush
maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost Barack Obama
the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that Donald J. Trump
won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national
organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union
cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that
declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger
issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at
Gettysburg: “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.”
Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end
to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous,
encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.
The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address,
now inscribed on one 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 at Ford’s Theatre in
Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was
helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln’s death, the
possibility of peace with magnanimity died.
Learn more about Abraham Lincoln’s spouse, Mary Todd Lincoln.
Stay Connected
ZIP CODE
EMAIL ADDRESS *
ZIP Code Sign Up
[email protected] Contact Us
Home Briefing Room
Privacy Policy
The Administration The White House Copyright Policy
Accessibility Statement The White House
Executive Offices Disclosures
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Priorities Get Involved
The Record Español
