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Abraham Lincoln was the 16th (1861-1865) President of the United States, and the first President from the Republican Party.

Born on February 12, 1809, in Kentucky, he moved at a young age to the area near Springfield, Illinois. He served as a captain in the U.S. Army during the Black Hawk War. He later tried his hand at several business and political ventures which all proved unsuccessful. It is widely believed that Lincoln suffered from bouts of severe depression, a theory supported by Lincoln's own statements and reports of the young lawyer spending days alone in bed. It is also suggested that Lincoln may have suffered from Marfan's Syndrome, a disease which results in an elongated figure and bone structure.

Lincoln eventually married and raised a family with Mary Todd Lincoln. Mary is reported to have had some psychological difficulties of her own, and required almost constant attention from her husband. Mrs. Lincoln generaly disliked politics and her tenure as first lady was marked with some scandal as she spent lavishly to redecorate the White House and reportedly purchased an inordinate amount of hats, gloves, and other fashionable items of clothing.

First elected to the Senate, Lincoln spent most of his time in Washington alone and made less than a spectacular impression on his fellow politicians. During his presidential election, it was Lincoln's well-known gift of oratory that brought public support to an otherwise unimpressive presidential candidate. Lincoln debated his opponent in a series of events that are well documented and which represented a national discussion on the issues that were about to split the nation in two. The Lincoln/Douglas debates marked Lincoln's coming of age as a public figure and catapulted him into the White House in the most dire of times.

Shortly after his election, the South made it clear that secession was inevitable and war was all but impossible to avoid. The tension was so great that Lincoln was convinced to arrive in Washington with little fanfare, in effect sneaking into the city. The South ridiculed Lincoln for this seemingly cowardly act, but the efforts at security may well have been prudent. After all, the Union's soon to be enemy was headquartered just across the Potomac. At Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, the Turners formed Lincoln's bodyguard, and a sizable garrison of Union troops was always present in Washington, ready to protect the president and the capital from rebel invasion.

During his presidency, Lincoln is credited with freeing the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation, though this only freed the slaves in areas of the Confederacy not yet controlled by the Union. During the Civil War Lincoln held powers no previous president had wielded. He effectively suspended the writ of habeas corpus and frequently imprisoned Southern spies and sympathizers without trial.

He showed tremendous leadership to the Union populace during the war as evidenced by the Gettysburg Address, a speech dedicating a cemetery of union soliders from the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. While most of the speakers at the event spoke at length, some for hours, Lincoln's few choice words resonated across the nation and across history, defying Linoln's own prediction that "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." While there is little documentation of the other speeches of the day, Lincoln's address - written on the back of an envelope on the train ride to Gettysburg - is regarded as one of the greatest speeches in history.

The war was a source of constant frustration for the president, and it occupied nearly all of his time. After repeated frustrations with General George McClellan's lack of effort in applying the Army of the Potomac to the war, Lincoln made a fateful decision to install a radical and somewhat scandalous army commander in his. General Ulysses S. Grant would apply his military knowledge and his charisma in an effort that would finally bring about the close of the Civil War.

When Richmond (the confederate capital) was at long last captured, Lincoln made what must have been a surreal trip to the city. He walked through its empty streets and hollow, crumbled ruins, and eventually made his way to the office of his arch-rival. The Confederacy's President, Jefferson Davis, had long since evacuated, and Lincon made a point, perhaps with great political and psychological deliberation, of sitting behind Davis's desk in Davis's own chair, symbolicaly saying to the nation that the President of the United States, and the U.S. constitution held authority over the entire land.

The reconstruction of the Union weighed heavy on the President's mind. He was determined to take a course that would not further alienate the former confererate states, a course that would reunite the nation as a single people with goodwill towards all and, as Lincoln stated, "malice toward none."

Lincoln met frequently with Grant as the war ended. The two men planned matters of reconstruction in the White House, and it was evident to all that the two men held one another in high regard. During their last meeting, on April 26, 1865, Lincoln invited General Grant to a social engagement for that evening. Grant declined (his wife was not eager to spend time with Mary Todd Lincoln).

Without the General and his wife, the Lincolns left to attend a play at Ford's theater. The play was Our American Cousin, a musical comedy. As Lincoln sat in the balcony, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and southern sympathizer, aimed a single-shot, round slug pistol at the President's head and fired. He shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" ("Thus always to tyrants") and jumped from the balcony to the stage below, breaking his leg in the process.

Booth managed to limp to his horse and escape, and the mortally wounded president was taken to a house across the street where he lay in a coma for some time before he quietly expired.

Booth and several of his companions (some of whom were later shown to be innocent) were eventually captured and either hanged or imprisoned.

Lincoln's body was carried by train in a grand funeral procession through several states. The nation mourned a man who, they realized in his absence, was the savior of the United States and protector and defender of what Lincoln himself called "the government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

One of the most respected and beloved presidents, Lincoln has been memorialized in many city names, notably the capital of Nebraska, with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and on the penny. In polls among historians, Lincoln is often rated as the greatest president in American history.

Related articles

• U.S. presidential election, 1860
• U.S. presidential election, 1864