16th President
— 1861-1865 —
Born: February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Harden (now Larue) County, Kentucky
Married: Mary Todd (1818-1882), November 4, 1842
Children: Robert Todd, Edward Baker, William Wallace, and Thomas "Tad"
Died: April 15, 1865, Washington, D.C., having been shot at Ford's Theatre the night before.
Education: No formal education
Occupation: Lawyer
Political Party: Whig, then Republican
Career Highlights: · Elected captain of his company in the Black Hawk War, 1832; · Elected to the Illinois State Legislature, 1834; · Member of U.S. House of Representatives, 1847-49
National Highlights: · The Civil War began April 12, 1861, with an attack on Fort Sumpter, South Carolina; · Writ of habeas corpus suspended nationally on September 24, 1862; · Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863; · Civil War ended April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to be free.... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth." - Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862
"We are not enemies, but friends, We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." - First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
Gutzon Borglum, Sculptor of Mount Rushmore:
"He was more deeply rooted in the home principles that are keeping us together than any man who was ever asked to make his heart-beat national." - Lincoln Borglum Manuscript Collection, Corpus Christi, Texas
"He is at once the heart and soul of Mount Rushmore." - New York Times Magazine, August 25, 1940
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