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Abraham Lincoln Birthday

CLASSROOM EXTRA
New York Post, February 11, 2011
Written by: Robin Wallace

A BRAHAM LINCOLN, the 16th president of the United States, was born 202 years ago on February 12, 1809 in rural Kentucky. He is best known as the president who presided over the Civil War and ended slavery, and was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth shortly after being elected to his second term. Although he had no formal education, he was a brilliant intellectual, a gifted orator and writer and is considered by scholars to have been one of the greatest and wisest US presidents.

At six foot four inches, Lincoln was the tallest president, the first Republican to serve as president, the first president to wear a beard and the first to be assassinated.

He earned the nickname Honest Abe because of his unfailing integrity. Although he abhorred slavery personally, he was not an abolitionist he did not believe the government had the power to end it where it already existed. However, he very much believed that the federal government had the power to prohibit its expansion into states and territories where it did not and had not existed. It was this debate that propelled the country toward war, and Abraham Lincoln to the presidency.

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky to poor, uneducated farmers. The family moved to Indiana, finally settling in Illinois, where they lived in a log cabin.

Lincolns mother died when he was nine, but his father remarried, and Lincoln had a very close and loving relationship with his stepmother. Young Abe could read, and his stepmother encouraged him to educate himself.

Lincoln worked long and hard in the fields with his father. Later, as a young man, he served as a captain in the military. He was tireless and ambitious, trying many different jobs, even serving as the Postmaster of New Salem, IL.

He was elected to the Illinois State Legislature in 1834. He studied law and became an extremely successful lawyer. He lived in Springfield, the capital of Illinois, with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. The couple had four sons, but only one survived past the age of 18.

Lincoln was a member of the Whig party and elected to the US House of Representatives in 1847, where he served one term. During a run for the Senate in 1858, he debated his opponent, Stephen O. Douglas, several times. Lincoln lost the election, but his eloquent and brilliant debates with Douglas paved the way for him becoming the Republican Partys candidate for president in 1860.

Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1861 when the country was on the brink of Civil War, the South threatening to secede from the US. President Lincoln believed passionately in the preservation of the Union. When the Confederacy (the organization of seceding southern states) attacked Fort Sumter, Lincoln formed a Union army to retaliate. The Civil War had begun.

Lincoln was known for his great wit and humor despite suffering from severe bouts of depression. He was a tough and shrewd Commander in Chief during the war, but always made it clear that the South would be forgiven and rebuilt when the Union was reunited. He freed all slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

Lincoln was re-elected to a second term in 1864, and the Civil War ended with the surrender of the Confederacy on April 9, 1865, at Appatomox, Md.

Six days later, Lincoln was dead, shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth while watching a play at the Fords Theater in Washington, DC.

New York Post, February 11, 2011
Written by: Robin Wallace

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