Abraham Lincoln
1809 – 1865 · United States
Known for: Abolished slavery; preserved the Union
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Biography
Born in a one-room log cabin on the Kentucky frontier, self-taught by firelight, Abraham Lincoln rose to become the president who held the United States together through its bloodiest war. He led the nation through the Civil War, defended the Union, and with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in America.
His Gettysburg Address, 272 words delivered in two minutes over the graves of a battlefield, redefined the meaning of the republic as a place where all men are created equal. Five days after the war ended he was assassinated at Ford's Theatre, the first American president to be murdered, and became a martyr for the union he saved.