Abraham Lincoln is one of the most famous US presidents ever. He succeeded in getting rid of slavery in America for good.
YOUNG ABRAHAM
Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 into a farming family in Kentucky. When he grew up he tried a few different jobs, then, despite having only been to school for less than a year altogether, he studied law books and became a lawyer when he was 27.
HEATED DEBATES
Lincoln was interested in the issue of abolishing slavery, which drew him into politics. He joined the Republican Party and challenged a Democrat for a seat in the US Senate. He lost, but the debates he’d had with the Democrat about slavery made him famous – he’d had a lot of practice at persuasive speaking as a lawyer.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN
In 1860 Lincoln ran for election as President of the United States and won. The southern states were a bit alarmed by this, because Lincoln was anti-slavery and lots of people in the South wanted to keep slaves to work on plantations. So 11 southern (Confederate) states became independent from the rest of the Union. The year after Lincoln was elected the American Civil War began.
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
On new year’s day in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which said that all slaves in southern states were free, and opened the Union army to freed slaves. Every time the northern states captured a region in the South, the slaves there were freed. About 180,000 of them joined the Union army. Just before the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln gave an especially rousing speech reminding the Union troops of what they were fighting for: not only an end to slavery, but for a new kind of equality and freedom for all American citizens. The Union troops went on to win the most important victory of the war.
DEADLY ASSASSIN
The freed slaves helped win the Civil War. To celebrate, Lincoln went to the theatre. Unfortunately, so did an assassin who supported slavery and wanted Lincoln dead. He shot him in the head and Lincoln died the next day. He’s become known as the ‘Great Emancipator’.
Find out more about the American Civil war here.
