The life and death of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, held the office from March 1861 until April 1865. John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Lincoln was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Kentucky; his family moved to Indiana in 1816, then to Illinois in 1830. Lincoln was elected to the Illinois State Legislature in 1834. He was against slavery. Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846; he didn’t seek reelection at the end of his term. He joined the Republican Party, formed mainly in opposition to slavery that was extending through the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This act allowed voters to decide whether their territory could have slaves or be free. Lincoln fought the Kansas-Nebraska Act in debates.

In May 1860, the Republicans chose Lincoln as their presidential candidate. He won the election and began serving in March 1861. The Confederacy, formed by seven Southern slave states before Lincoln took office, seceded from the Union. He was the president of the United States through the Civil War, which started in April 1861. On Jan 1, 1863, during the Civil War, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that all individuals who were held as slaves “henceforward shall be free.”

Lincoln was reelected in 1865, and on April 9, 1865, the confederacy’s commander of the Army of Virginia, Gen. Robert E. Lee, surrendered to the Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, and the civil war was over. Lincoln was able to end slavery. John Wilkes Booth fatally shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., and he died the following morning. (AP)

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