Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth
President,
1861–1865
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“With malice toward none, with charity
for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
—Second Inaugural Address, 1864
Political Pro:
Lincoln was one of the least popular presidents when elected. Even a supporter called the fanatically honest Illinois lawyer "a first-rate second-rate man." Yet Lincoln proved them wrong as he guided the nation wisely and fairly through the perilous Civil War. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, forever freeing slaves in Confederate territory. Later that year, he delivered his Gettysburg Address on the site of the war’s bloodiest battle. He proclaimed that the soldiers did not die in vain, "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Finally, in 1865, Confederate troops surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia. Lincoln had generous and conciliatory post-war plans for rebuilding the nation, but he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth just five days after the surrender.
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Portrait by
George P.A. Healy
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1887
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NPG.65.50
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Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
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Fast Facts
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Party: |
Republican
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Date of Birth: |
Sunday, February 12, 1809
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Date of Death: |
Saturday, April 15, 1865
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Vice President: |
Hannibal Hamlin, Andrew Johnson
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First Lady: |
Mary Todd Lincoln
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