Abraham Lincoln

He was tall, he was cunning, and he had gray eyes, intelligent, a fast learner, and a great leader. All of these traits plus the famous top hat created one of America's greatest leaders. Abraham Lincoln was considered many things like a dreamer, but there were some who believed he was not meant to lead our fair country. They called him a terrible leader and that he knew nothing about leading a country. Yet he made one of the biggest and greatest events in history, but he died soon after. He did indeed die an honorable man and he did change the face of our history today. He was his story before he died.

Abraham Lincoln was born in February 12, 1809 and was one of the greatest America's presidents, but he did not live a life of luxury. He lived in a log cabin as a child that was eighteen feet long and sixteen feet wide with dirt floor and no windows. Both of his parents were not very educated yet they had just enough to sign their names. Abraham Lincoln was not rich and moved from one small farm to another, try to make a living. Then the family moved from Kentucky to Indiana. One of the many reasons they moved to Indiana was because it was a "free state" meaning it had no slavery which the family hated. Then they finally moved to a small farm in Illinois. Since Abraham Lincoln was tall and strong for his age and by the time he was eight he was able to pick up an ax and cut wood like a grown man, but he hated the idea of hunting because when he was seven years of age he shot a wild turkey and discovered that he hated killing things. Then when Abraham was only nine years old his mother died and it was a terrible loss for him and his family. Soon his father realized he could not raise his children by himself so he returned to Kentucky and married to a new wife.

After he finished school he taught himself how to read and he even walked twenty miles just to get a book. Abraham did not want to be a farmer like his father and left his home at twenty-one. He was hired to help load sailboats and one time the boat got stuck in a dam in a town called "New Salem" that was located in Illinois. Lincoln opened a store and it was a place where everyone gathered, Lincoln became popular and everyone began to trust him. This encouraged him to join the debating club. Abraham's was always saying funny remarks but his opinions were very intelligent. He impressed everyone even the farm folk, his friends did encourage to run for Legislature in 1832 but he lost. Soon he ran again and won by doing good deeds and helping everyone in the town.

Abraham decided to run for president. James Douglas was asked by Lincoln to debate and he accepted this time. He rode the train with everyone else, joking and chatting, but they were very skilled speakers. Lincoln was going to say something about slavery in the United States but he always thought that the Constitution said slavery was legal so he was afraid that if the Congress tried to force slave owners to give up their slaves that it would just lead to violence. He had to convince people that slavery was bad for our country. Yet he thought that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a terrible step in the wrong direction. Douglas however defended the Kansas-Nebraska Act so Lincoln wanted to prove him wrong, so the next day a huge audience gathered. As Lincoln spoke for three hours and said that Douglas only made sense if you did not think of blacks as people. He thought blacks should have the same rights to decide how to live their lives as white people. Lincoln said that America had been founded on the belief that "no man is good enough to govern another man without that others consent", no matter what color that person was. Soon his speech made Lincoln famous. Then in 1854 he decided to run for Senate, though it was close he was not elected. Soon he had more to think about, now there were Republicans as well. He said the United States could not continue as half-free and half-slave. Either slavery would end, or it would take over the whole country. Or the country would be destroyed.

While Lincoln was making a name for himself, the country was moving towards a crisis. States in the South talked about leaving the United States to become their own country. Abraham Lincoln did very little campaigning and did not expect to win. He was unlikely to be president due to the fact that he did not attend school and had almost no experience in national government. Soon after he became president a girl wrote to him saying "you would look more like a president if you grew a beard", and so he grew a beard. Now that he was president he was going to be in a lot of trouble because the slave states now hated him and almost no one in the South voted for him when it came to the election. After several states were no longer part of the United States and he was no longer their president, they made Jefferson Davis as their president and was not happy and spoke to a huge crowd explain that he would not let the nation become two countries. Despite Lincoln's wishes the country was split into two and a month later on April 12,1861,Southern soldiers fired on Union soldiers at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. This is when the Civil War started. Lincoln's family was split during the Civil War because his wife, Mary, had relatives in the South who owned slaves, so she favored their side. He needed an army so he hired General George B. McClellen, he was organized and good at being very detailed, so the soldiers trusted him to take care of them. With war going on Lincoln needed distractions from his sons until Willie Lincoln died of typhoid fever. After the second year more than one hundred battles fought neither side was winning so he found a way to end slavery and obey the Constitution at the same time. Soon laws chipped away at slavery by slaves being able to run away from their owners and were captured by the Union army so they were free, he made the Emancipation Proclamation but it only freed the slaves in the Confederate states. After black men could join the army and fight against their owners, so by the end of the war almost 200,000 black men joined the army. He soon made a two minute speech to the people who were mad at him for siding with the black men and his speech was simple and direct, people were so moved that they said nothing. Lincoln had a dream that he was killed and soon after on April 14, 1865 he went to a theater to relax for a comedy with his wife and his dream came true when a man named John Wilkes killed Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln died slowly and painfully but he didn't die with any regrets and Lincoln changed so much history that without him our lives would be so much different than they are now. This was the story of the sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln.