Abraham Lincoln Biography

Abraham Lincoln

(Hodgenville, United States, 1809-Washington, 1865) American lawyer and politician who was the 16th president of the United States (1861-1865).Always evoked as the president who abolished slavery, Abraham Lincoln is one of the most admired figures in American history; honesty, strength of spirit, and depth of thought and conviction, evident in his writings and speeches, stand out among the virtues of a statesman whose performance was not without hesitation.

Abraham Lincoln

Unfortunately, when Lincoln assumed the presidency, a national crisis that had lasted since the beginning of the century was reaching its culmination: the confrontation between the dynamic and modern industrial societies of the northern states, which rejected slavery, and the aristocracy of the southern landowners, who owned huge plantations that employed millions of slaves, and who saw the abolition of slavery as the end of their way of life.

In 1820, by the Missouri Compromise, the country had been divided (along the 36th parallel line) into slave states and abolitionist states.But the acquisition of new territories, together with the flight of slaves to the north, weakened the balance.Thirty years later, in 1850, the incorporation of California as a non-slave state was considered as the annulment of the Missouri commitment (being located, to a large extent, south of the 36th parallel), also assuming the end of parity between slave states.and abolitionists in the federal Senate.The subsequent entry into the federation of Minnesota and Oregon worsened the situation for Southerners.

In the middle of the century, coinciding with Lincoln's temporary retirement, public opinion in the northern states began to show a growing concern about the survival of a situation that clearly violated the principles of the Constitution.The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), the celebrated novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, raised the debate to a national issue.The moral disgust that northern people felt for slavery had become extreme, while southerners feared that the northern states, increasingly powerful in Washington, would end up imposing abolition.For southern aristocrats, the end of slavery would mean the end of their global monopoly on cotton and their way of life.Clearly uncomfortable, the southern states were pondering the convenience of separating from the federation, convinced of the possibility of surviving independently thanks to their prosperous plantations.

Towards the presidency

Abraham Lincoln returned to public life in 1854, when the issue of slavery again shifted from the social to the political plane as a result of the approval of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed slavery to be implemented in the northwestern states.As already indicated, Lincoln did not support the abolition of slavery in the states where it already existed, especially in the southern ones; Each territory had to legislate in this regard according to the conscience of its citizens.However, he fervently opposed the establishment of slavery in those others in which it was not authorized.Particularly famous for the vehemence of his verb and the solidity of his arguments was the antislavery speech that he delivered in the city of Peoria (Illinois) in 1854.

In 1856 a new party was clearly established in the northern states abolitionist, the Republican Party, which considered itself heir to the political tradition of President Thomas Jefferson.Committed to the anti-slavery cause, Lincoln joined the Republican Party the same year it was founded.Defeated again in the Senate elections of 1858, the intensity of the anti-slavery campaign and the dialectical duels he had with the Democratic candidate Stephen A.Douglas, elected on the occasion, restored his lost popularity; The discussions revealed his extraordinary gifts as a speaker, the depth of his thought and preparation, the maturity of his judgment, and great faith in his mission.

Abraham Lincoln (detail of a portrait of George Peter Alexander Healy)

On February 27, 1860, a large audience in New York surrendered to one of his most memorable speeches (reproduced the next day in all the newspapers), which was followed by another eleven no less acclaimed in different cities.The moderation of his positions was decisive so that on May 17, 1860, the Republican convention in Chicago chose him as a candidate for the presidency to the detriment of William H.Seward, representative of the most radical abolitionists.

The creation of the Republican Party served not only to cause alarm and irritation in the South, but also to divide the Democratic Party precisely on the issue of slavery.Thus, the elections of 1860 were attended by four parties: the two Democrats from the north and the south, the Whig Party and the Republican Party, whose candidate was Abraham Lincoln.On November 6, 1860, favored by the internal divisions of the Democrats, Lincoln won the presidential election.The Republicans were victorious in all the northern states, while the other three parties divided those in the south.

The Civil War

The The Republican Party was unequivocally abolitionist and Lincoln, despite his moderate demeanor, had manifested himself as one of the staunchest antislavers; his election could not but unleash the reaction of the southern states.Before Lincoln officially assumed the presidency, the state of South Carolina took the initiative to leave the Union.Following in Carolina's footsteps, ten other states soon declared independence.Secession consummated without difficulty, the divided states were organized into a new political unit: the Confederacy or Confederate States of America, with capital in Richmond (Virginia) and Jefferson Davis as president.The Southerners hoped that Washington would not react, and, furthermore, they relied on the presumed military superiority of their aristocratic and chivalric elites to dissuade the government from any plan of aggression.

The secession did not mean immediate war.Lincoln denied the secessionists the right to leave the Union and was reluctant to acknowledge the reality of the separation, but he was very careful to use force; He tried to avoid an armed conflict and restore unity by forming a coalition government with the Southerners.It was the southern states that began hostilities by attacking Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, a federal enclave that defended the entrance to the port of Charleston.

The Civil War lasted four years (1861-1865) and it would end up showing the superiority of the twenty-three northern states in terms of population and war resources, although the southern states promptly organized their defense and the wealth of their ruling classes allowed them to acquire weapons in Europe.At the beginning of the war, the southern army compensated for the inferiority of forces with its capacity for initiative, its maneuvering ability and the preparation of its soldiers.Lincoln promulgated the Homestead Act in 1862, for the colonization of the West, and proposed a progressive abolition of slavery, with the intimate purpose of promoting a rapprochement with the southern Confederacy that would accelerate the end of the war.After confirming once again the intransigence of the other side, on January 1, 1863, he decreed the emancipation of slaves throughout the Union.

Lincoln presents to his cabinet the decree of abolition of slavery (oil by Francis Bicknell Carpenter)

The army of the north was progressively imposing its superiority, since After his victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July 1863, the course of the war turned in his favor.The tactical skill of Generals Ulysses S.Grant and William T.Sherman, and the effects of the naval blockade, which caused serious economic damage to the Confederacy and deprived it of supplies of all kinds, also contributed considerably to this.With his army divided and weakened by desertions, Southern General Robert E.Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

Considered the first great modern warlike conflict, characterized by extreme cruelty to the civilian population, the massive use of modern means of combat and the systematic destruction by the Yankees of the Southern plantations, the Civil War produced a macabre toll of between six hundred thousand and one million casualties among civilians and military.The abolition of slavery devastated the agricultural economy of the devastated southern states, in which, although the freedom of blacks and their right to vote were legally sanctioned, discrimination and racial segregation could no longer be erased.On the other hand, the victory of the industrialized and antislavery North marked the triumph of industrial capitalism and the beginning of an impressive economic take-off: the country's physiognomy was rapidly transformed, shaping the United States we know today.

The assassination

During the war, Abraham Lincoln had to improvise as a strategist and general in chief, remedying military disasters, seditions and internal corruption , and to oppose your quiet integrity to any criticism and accusations.He acted swiftly and energetically against insurgents and foreign intrusions, passed drastic martial laws, and established rigorous press censorship, so that, despite his clemency and restraint, he was branded a dictator by his opponents.Since 1863, the favorable course of military operations, its measures to protect the development of industry, and its conciliatory policy with respect to unruly states allowed it to maintain the confidence of its fellow citizens.

With General McClellan (Antietam, Maryland, 1862)

Once the war ended, the problem immediately posed was that of the reconstruction of the Union in the political field, that is that is to say, the reincorporation of the rebel states to the federal congress.Lincoln was in favor of the restoration of the federation in equal rights for all the states, of inscribing in the Constitution the end of slavery and of immediately beginning the reconstruction of the country; He advocated an immediate reinstatement of the former confederates, with minimal guarantees and the condition that they approve the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which entailed the abolition of slavery.Congress, however, wanted to add tougher requirements to this formula.

No less important was the material reparation of the ravages caused by the war.In November 1864, when the northern forces almost completely dominated the situation and the end of the war was near, Lincoln was re-elected for a second term with a program of national reconstruction that, however, he would not see carried out.: Five months later, while attending a theatrical performance in Washington, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a Southerner actor named John Wilkes Booth.

On April 14, 1865, five days after the Southerner's surrender, John Wilkes Booth learned that a messenger from the White House had arrived at Ford's Opera House, a prestigious Washington theater, announcing that President Lincoln and his wife Mary would attend that night's performance.John Booth was a young actor, highly esteemed by the public, who years before had embraced the southern cause.During the war he had not stopped playing his favorite roles, which were those of Romeo and Brutus, the latter assassin of Julius Caesar.At the same time, his sympathies for the Confederates had turned into hatred against Lincoln, in which he saw a tyrant and accused him of wanting to become "king of the United States."

Lincoln's assassination

When he learned that his enemy was going to the theater that night, he knew his chance had come.Abraham and Mary Lincoln promptly occupied their box.The play began after those present gave an ovation to its president and the first lady.In the corridor, the policeman in charge of his protection believed that such precautions were not necessary and he went out for a beer in a bar located next to the theater.John Booth arrived shortly after, greeted the clerk at the entrance, and headed for the presidential box without being blocked by anyone.He was elegantly dressed, a well-known actor, and he knew perfectly the twists and turns of a theater in which he had worked dozens of times.

When he entered the box, the president was leaning forward.He held his wife's hand in his and presented his left profile to the executor.He crept forward with a Derringer, a small, single-shot pistol.He brought it close to Lincoln's head and fired.Blue smoke filled the box.The president hardly moved: only his head slowly leaned against his chest.

Booth brandished a dagger so that no one would stop him and exclaimed: "Sic semper tyrannis!" (This is how death always comes to tyrants), words put into the mouth of Brutus at the moment of stabbing Julius Caesar, which are also the currency of the state of Virginia.Then he rushed to the railing, yelled again: "The South has been avenged!", And fell heavily into the box, breaking his leg.However, he managed to get up and limped away.Mary screamed and there was extraordinary agitation.Lincoln died the next day shortly after seven in the morning, the time he usually started work.