– Introduction –

Born, February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.

Education defective.

Profession, a lawyer.

Have been a captain of volunteers in Black Hawk War.

Postmaster at a very small office.

Four times a member of the Illinois legislature, and was a member of the lower house of Congress.

—Abraham Lincoln

BASED ON LINCOLN’S OWN autobiographical entry written in June of 1858 for the Dictionary of Congress, it seems unimaginable that in less than three years, he would find himself elected to the office of the President of the United States. Indeed, in highlighting only the most basic facts from his life, Lincoln seemed unaware that by June of 1858, he had risen far above local prominence.

But for a single occurrence that touched off a sequence of events that would ultimately lead Lincoln to the White House, his political life could very well have ended in a more or less lackluster fashion. In the spring of 1849, Lincoln had finished his term in the U.S. House of Representatives and in keeping with a promise he had made to serve only one term, he did not seek reelection. Rather, he returned to Springfield and resumed his law practice. As his reputation for being an excellent lawyer thrived, so did his legal practice. He was representing prestigious clients, including banks, insurance companies, and the powerful Illinois Central Railroad, and he appeared regularly before the Illinois Supreme Court.

His family was also expanding, with Mary giving birth to sons William and Tad after losing son Edward, who died after a two-month illness when only a toddler. Later admitting that his interest in politics was waning at this point, Lincoln may well have slipped back into private life for good.

But on May 30, 1854, an event happened that Lincoln later said “astounded” him leaving him “thunderstruck and stunned.” It was also the catalyst that Lincoln needed to re-ignite his interest in politics and eventually focus national attention on him. It was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which had been introduced in Congress earlier in the year by Lincoln’s longtime political rival, Stephen A. Douglas. The Act allowed the settlers in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to determine whether or not slavery would be allowed within their borders. It thus rendered the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the longstanding agreement prohibiting the extension of slavery, “inoperative and void.” Speaking at a Whig convention later that summer, Lincoln attacked the Act calling it a “great wrong and injustice.” For the fifth time, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois State legislature, but declined the seat in order to make a bid for the Senate. Though he lost the Senate race, having thrown his supporters to an anti-Nebraska Democrat to prevent a win by a Douglas-supported Democrat, he continued his course of action in vigorously denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the extension of slavery at every opportunity—all the while gaining more and more attention, admiration, and supporters.

Within two years, Lincoln would make another bid for the Senate, this time for the seat held by Douglas himself. During the campaign, Lincoln invited Douglas to a series of seven debates in various locations throughout the state. The debates were wildly successful with an average of ten to fifteen thousand people in attendance to hear Lincoln and Douglas in their heated exchange over the issue that was causing a firestorm of controversy in the nation.

Although Douglas won the Senate seat by a slim margin, the debates had served to thrust Lincoln into the national spotlight. In a brilliant political move, Lincoln actively lobbied to have his scrapbook of clippings and major speeches of the debates published in book form in 1860. It became an immediate best-seller. So it was, that within sixteen months of losing the Senate race, Lincoln was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate.

The challenges and seemingly insurmountable odds that Lincoln faced in politics he also faced regularly in other areas of his life. His impoverished beginnings and his family’s struggle for survival from their meager crops marked his earliest years. Then, at the age of nine, Lincoln lost his beloved mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. His father, Thomas, remarried a widow with three children, Sarah Bush Johnston, a year later. She proved to be a wonderful choice for Thomas and his family and raised the Lincoln children with love and affection. Lincoln’s self-described defective education consisted of brief stints in log-house schools along with his sister Sarah when he was a boy. He learned to “read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all.” The remainder of what he learned, he taught himself “under the pressure of necessity.” He read the family Bible—which would provide him with comfort and reassurance for the balance of his life—Shakespeare, and whatever books he could borrow from friends between plowing, planting, and working as a hired hand for neighbors.

Lincoln moved to Illinois with his family in 1830, and made his first known political speech to promote better navigation along the Sangamon River. The following year, he moved to New Salem on his own. He worked as a store clerk, made friends, and gained the respect of the local men, in part after wrestling the leader of a local gang to a draw. In 1832, Lincoln’s mettle was further tested in the Black Hawk War, where he was elected the company captain, a success that gave him great personal satisfaction. Later that year, Lincoln ran for the Illinois General Assembly. He lost the election, but it was, as he pointed out, the only time he’d ever been “beaten by the people.”

In 1833, Lincoln was left deep in debt after a general store that he’d opened with a partner failed. In need of money, he began writing deeds and mortgages for neighbors and worked as a hired hand. He was later appointed postmaster of New Salem, and then the deputy surveyor for the County. The following year, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois General Assembly, and began in earnest his study of law. Without the benefit of any higher education or mentors, Lincoln studied Blackstone’s Commentaries and other law books borrowed from a friend with a single-minded purpose and drive, and greatly sharpened his analytical, reasoning, and interpretive skills in the process.

Lincoln faced yet another devastating loss in 1835. It was then that Ann Rutledge, said to be Lincoln’s first love, died from a fever at the age of twenty-two. The two had known each other since 1831 when Lincoln befriended her father, James Rutledge, a local tavern-keeper. What started as friendship between the two, turned to romance, and likely to an engagement. Friends of Lincoln recalled that he fell into a deep depression upon her death, which was the third time he had suffered the loss of a woman close to him, after his mother, and his sister Sarah, who had died in childbirth in 1828.

In the spring of 1837, Lincoln left New Salem for Springfield. He had received his law license the year before and was ready to begin his legal career. He roomed with Joshua F. Speed, who became his lifelong friend, and joined John T. Stuart in a legal partnership. He practiced in the areas of both civil and criminal law, and in 1839, made his first trip on the Illinois Eighth Judicial Circuit. This required Lincoln to travel on horseback or in horse-drawn carriage from courtroom to courtroom on legal matters all over central and eastern Illinois.

It was also in 1839, that Lincoln met Mary Todd, the daughter of a prominent Kentucky banker, at a local ball. After an on-again off-again relationship that involved a broken engagement and much despair on both sides, the two married quietly in 1842 after secretly resuming their courtship. In 1843, their first son, Robert Todd Lincoln was born. He would be the only of their four sons to reach adulthood. And in 1844, Lincoln started his own practice and took in a young partner, the twenty-six-year-old William H. Herndon. The same year, the Lincolns moved into a house in Springfield purchased for $1,500.00, which was their home until 1861. A second son, Edward, was born in 1846, and on August 3rd, Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

After his rise to national recognition from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln captured the Republican presidential nomination and then the presidency itself, receiving 180 of 303 electoral votes and 40 percent of the popular vote. When Lincoln assumed office in March of 1861, he did so understanding that he confronted a greater challenge than even Washington had faced. But the same qualities that had served him well in life would aid him in the biggest crises in the life of the nation. Scholars point to his steadfast character—molded through a lifetime of adversity—coupled with his political genius, and extraordinary capacity to adapt to new circumstances as key traits that would enable him to successfully lead the country through the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln: His Essential Wisdom gathers together hundreds of quotations from Lincoln drawn from his letters, speeches, and other writings. In the selections, Lincoln speaks passionately about the paramount need to save the Union; the injustice of slavery and his staunch refusal to compromise over its extension. In letters to his generals and cabinet members he reveals his expert grasp of military matters and his keen understanding of the human psyche. In still other selections he expresses his great affection for his wife and their “dear rascals”; and sincerely consoles those who have lost loved ones in the War.

Of the countless tributes and eulogies that were written in an attempt to make sense out of Lincoln’s shocking death, perhaps the words of Noah Brooks, Lincoln’s friend and journalist, written more than thirty years after Lincoln’s death, do much to express the essence of this extraordinary man and his place in history: “He no longer stands for what is best in American life and genius, but for what is best in humanity. He belongs to the world, not alone to us.”

—Carol Kelly-Gangi
Rumson, New Jersey, 2007