For those who don’t know about Lincoln, here’s a little lesson on his Birthday. A self-educated man, Lincoln became a lawyer. Among his greatest accomplishments, he ended slavery, fought the only Civil War on American soil and managed to rebuild the economy. His political career started as a Whig Party leader, followed by Illinois state legislator and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840’s. Considered a moderate, he secured the Republican Party nomination in 1858 after his famous speech in which he stated “a house divided cannot stand.”
Despite no support from the Southern states, many of whom did not even list Lincoln on their ballots; he was elected President of the United States. Shortly after his election, seven southern “slave states” declared their secession from the Union and formed the “Confederacy” giving Lincoln’s party control of Congress. In 1863, he issued his Emancipation Proclamation encouraging the Border States to outlaw slavery, pushing through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which freed all the slaves in December of 1865. An astute politician, he managed his own re-election in 1864. During his second inaugural address he stated: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the Nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” Under his unwavering leadership, the Union prevailed in the Civil War.
