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Abraham Lincoln, spesso italianizzato in Abramo Lincoln (Hodgenville, 12 febbraio 1809 – Washington, 15 aprile 1865), è stato un politico, avvocato e militare statunitense. Fu il sedicesimo presidente degli Stati Uniti d'America, dal 4 marzo 1861 fino alla sua uccisione, avvenuta nell'aprile del 1865.
Abraham Lincoln fu il sedicesimo presidente degli Stati Uniti (dal 1861 al 1865) e fu il principale artefice della vittoria degli unionisti nella guerra di secessione americana e dell'abolizione della schiavitù.
Learn about the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States who led the nation through the Civil War and abolished slavery. Find out about his early years, political career, military strategy, assassination, and more.
- Overview
- Life
- Childhood and youth
Abraham Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party and later a Republican. He believed that the government’s job was to do what a community of people could not do for themselves. One of his greatest preoccupations as a political thinker was the issue of self-governance and the promise and problems that could arise from it. The choice by some to allow the expansion of slavery was one such problem and was central to the American Civil War. Although opposed to slavery from the outset of his political career, Lincoln would not make its abolition a mainstay of his policy until several years into the war.
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How did Abraham Lincoln get into politics?
From 1834 to 1840, Abraham Lincoln occupied a seat in the Illinois state legislature. He also practiced law in Illinois during the 1830s and ’40s, and in that time he became one of the state’s most renowned lawyers. He first entered national politics in 1847 while serving a single term in Congress. In 1858 he made a bid for the Senate in a much-publicized race which he ultimately lost but which transformed him into a nationally recognized political figure. In 1860 he was nominated at the Republican National Convention to be the party’s presidential candidate, and he embarked on a presidential campaign that he would win.
Read more below: Life: Early political career
Lincoln was born in a backwoods cabin 3 miles (5 km) south of Hodgenville, Kentucky, and was taken to a farm in the neighbouring valley of Knob Creek when he was two years old. His earliest memories were of this home and, in particular, of a flash flood that once washed away the corn and pumpkin seeds he had helped his father plant. His father, Tho...
In December 1816, faced with a lawsuit challenging the title to his Kentucky farm, Thomas Lincoln moved with his family to southwestern Indiana. There, as a squatter on public land, he hastily put up a “half-faced camp”—a crude structure of logs and boughs with one side open to the weather—in which the family took shelter behind a blazing fire. Soon he built a permanent cabin, and later he bought the land on which it stood. Abraham helped to clear the fields and to take care of the crops but early acquired a dislike for hunting and fishing. In afteryears he recalled the “panther’s scream,” the bears that “preyed on the swine,” and the poverty of Indiana frontier life, which was “pretty pinching at times.” The unhappiest period of his boyhood followed the death of his mother in the autumn of 1818. As a ragged nine-year-old, he saw her buried in the forest, then faced a winter without the warmth of a mother’s love. Fortunately, before the onset of a second winter, Thomas Lincoln brought home from Kentucky a new wife for himself, a new mother for the children. Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln, a widow with two girls and a boy of her own, had energy and affection to spare. She ran the household with an even hand, treating both sets of children as if she had borne them all; but she became especially fond of Abraham, and he of her. He afterward referred to her as his “angel mother.”
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His stepmother doubtless encouraged Lincoln’s taste for reading, yet the original source of his desire to learn remains something of a mystery. Both his parents were almost completely illiterate, and he himself received little formal education. He once said that, as a boy, he had gone to school “by littles”—a little now and a little then—and his entire schooling amounted to no more than one year’s attendance. His neighbours later recalled how he used to trudge for miles to borrow a book. According to his own statement, however, his early surroundings provided “absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three; but that was all.” Apparently the young Lincoln did not read a large number of books but thoroughly absorbed the few that he did read. These included Parson Weems’s Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington (with its story of the little hatchet and the cherry tree), Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and Aesop’s Fables. From his earliest days he must have had some familiarity with the Bible, for it doubtless was the only book his family owned.
In March 1830 the Lincoln family undertook a second migration, this time to Illinois, with Lincoln himself driving the team of oxen. Having just reached the age of 21, he was about to begin life on his own. Six feet four inches tall, he was rawboned and lanky but muscular and physically powerful. He was especially noted for the skill and strength with which he could wield an ax. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked in the long-striding, flat-footed, cautious manner of a plowman. Good-natured though somewhat moody, talented as a mimic and storyteller, he readily attracted friends. But he was yet to demonstrate whatever other abilities he possessed.
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Scopri la vita e il contributo di Abraham Lincoln, il 16° presidente degli Stati Uniti, che guidò il paese durante la Guerra Civile e combatté per l'abolizione della schiavitù. Leggi il riassunto della sua carriera politica, del discorso di Gettysburg, dell'Emancipation Proclamation e della sua tragica morte.
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Un viaggio approfondito nella storia di Abraham Lincoln, dal suo umile inizio alla sua ascesa alla Casa Bianca, passando per la sua lotta contro la schiavitù e la sua tragica morte. Scopri le lezioni chiave da questo faro di resilienza e giustizia, che ha plasmato l'America e il mondo.
29 ott 2009 · Learn about the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States who led the country through the Civil War and abolished slavery. Explore his childhood, political career, speeches, assassination and more.