Birth Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln
Its the 200th birthday of America’s 16th President. Lincoln successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. As the war was drawing to a close, Lincoln became the first American president to be assassinated.*
Did you know that Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was the first Republican elected to the nation’s highest office?
Lincoln also differed from his predecessors in that he did not come from a family of means. The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln’s mother died when he was just ten years old. Lincoln married Mary Todd and together they had four sons, but only one survived into adulthood.
Lincoln also struggled initially as a politician, losing his run for the Senate in 1858. Just two years later, however, Lincoln was elected president of the United States. He presided over the Union Forces in the Civil War (1861-1865) and, in 1863, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in America. President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the first of four U.S. presidents to be assassinated.
*source: Wikipedia – Abraham Lincoln