For a long time, it didn’t look as if he would succeed. Lincoln’s primary goal as president was to hold the country together. The Civil War officially began on April 12, 1861, at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, when troops from the Confederacy attacked the U.S.
Eventually, 11 southern states formed the Confederate States of America to oppose the 23 northern states that remained in the Union.
Southern leaders didn’t agree with this plan and decided to secede, or withdraw, from the nation. When he became president, Lincoln allowed the enslavement of people to continue in southern states but he outlawed its spread to other existing states and states that might later join the Union. Now Northerners and Southerners were close to war. The nation had been arguing for more than a hundred years about enslaving people and each state’s right to allow it. When Lincoln first took office in 1861, the United States was not truly united. (Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery in the United States.) In the four-way presidential race of 1860, Lincoln got more votes than any other candidate. But the debates he had about the enslavement of people with his 1858 senatorial opponent, Stephen Douglas, helped him win the presidential nomination two years later. House of Representatives but lost two U.S. Once there, he taught himself law, opened a law practice, and earned the nickname "Honest Abe." At age 25 he was elected to the local government in Springfield, Illinois. His father-a carpenter and farmer-remarried and moved his family farther west, eventually settling in Illinois.Īs a young adult, Lincoln worked as a flatboat navigator, storekeeper, soldier, surveyor, and postmaster. When Lincoln was nine years old, his mother died. He went to school on and off for a total of about a year, but he educated himself by reading borrowed books. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Ībraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky on February 12, 1809, to parents who could neither read nor write.
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