林肯介绍
General summary
Abraham Lincoln was born in rural Kentucky in 1809, to parents of low social
standing and little education. During his childhood and early youth, the family would move several times, first to Indiana and later to Illinois. Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, died when Lincoln was still a boy, and the next year his father, Thomas remarried to Sarah Bush Johnston, who helped raise the young Lincoln.
Lincoln got his start in life after a pair of flatboat journeys to New Orleans. Soon afterward, he moved to New Salem, Illinois and set up as a store clerk there. When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832, he became the captain of his volunteer company, serving for three months but seeing no active duty.
Lincoln married Mary Todd in 1842. The couple had four sons together, two of whom would die tragically while still children. Then, in 1846, Lincoln was elected to U.S. Congress.
In 1849, Lincoln returned to Springfield to resume his career as a lawyer and devote more time to his family. His political life seemed to be over. But when the slavery question heated up in the middle 1850s, Lincoln took to the stump again, running unsuccessfully for Senate in 1854 and 1858.
A combination of luck, manipulation, and talent won Lincoln the Republican nomination for president in 1860. An especially fragmented race, featuring four major candidates, resulted in a victory for Lincoln despite the fact that he won less than 40 percent of the popular vote. With an avowed opponent of slavery having gained the nation's top office, several southern states began to consider the prospect of secession.
The Civil War proved long and costly for both sides, and though the Union enjoyed superior numbers and stores, they were often overwhelmed by the superior military minds of the Confederacy. Despite heavy criticisms from all sides, Lincoln maintained enough support to win re-election in 1864. As the war drew to a close, Lincoln made preparations for a charitable reconstruction plan to help unify the nation once again.
Less than one week after the Confederate surrender, while attending a Washington theater, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. The nation mourned as he lay in state, and Illinois wept when her favorite son was interred at Springfield a few weeks later. The work of reconstruction would carry on without Lincoln, but his memory would live on in the nation's
imagination. For his work in preserving the union and bringing an end to the
