Abraham Lincoln
The mid-nineteenth century in the United States was a period of profound constitutional strain, as the question of slavery fractured the republic along sectional lines and pushed the nation toward open conflict. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, at Sinking Spring Farm in Hodgenville, Kentucky, and would rise through several occupations — farmer, postmaster, lawyer, military officer, and writer among them — before arriving at the political stage that defined his public life.
Lincoln worked as a lawyer and politician before assuming the office that would place him at the center of the country's gravest crisis. As the 16th President of the United States, he served during the period in which slavery was abolished, a cause in which he played a major role. His occupations were varied and at times unglamorous, and his path to the presidency was one that moved through frontier labor and local civic service before it reached national prominence.
Among the acts most directly associated with his presidency was the delivery of the Gettysburg Address, a speech that stands as one of the most cited documents to emerge from the Civil War era. As a writer and statesperson, Lincoln brought a distinctive voice to the public record of that period — one that combined legal precision with a considered plainness of expression. His roles as politician and statesperson were conducted in English, specifically American English, and his written and spoken work reflects the particular pressures of governing during wartime.
Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, in Washington, D.C., at the Petersen House, having been shot the previous evening. His death came in the final weeks of the Civil War, a proximity of timing that shaped how subsequent generations understood both the conflict and his role within it. The Gettysburg Address, delivered during his presidency, has continued to be cited as a defining piece of American political writing, and his central part in the abolition of slavery remains among the most documented facts of his tenure as the nation's sixteenth president.
Quotes by Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln's insights on:
And in as much as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them.
There is no permanent class of hired laborers among us. Twenty-five years ago, I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday labors on his own account today, and he will hire others to labor for him tomorrow.
All that love's labor serves the nation. All that harms labor is treason to America. There is no America without labor, and to fleece one is to rob the other.
My childhood home I see again, / And gladden with the view; / And still as mem'ries crowd my brain, / There's sadness in it too. / O memory! though mid-way world / 'Twixt Earth and Paradise / Where things decayed, and loved ones lost / In dreamy shadows rise.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life
As I said before, this crisis is all artificial. It has no foundation in facts. It was not argued up, as the saying is, and, cannot, therefore, be argued down. Let it alone and it will go down of itself.
Upon the subject of education. I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.
I know that there is a God and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I am ready.