Abraham Lincoln 15

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County (now LaRue County), Kentucky.   His parents, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, had two other children, one dying in child birth.   Lincoln’s mother died on October 5, 1818 and his father remarried to a woman named Sarah Bush Johnston on December 2, 1819.   On November 4, 1842
Lincoln married Mary Todd. They had five sons, Edward, William, Thomas, and Robert.
On August 4, 1834 Lincoln won the election to first term in Illinois House of Representatives, which he kept for 26 years.  
Abraham Lincoln was elected sixteenth president of the United Stated in the year 1860, defeating Douglas, John Bell, and John C. Breckinridge.   He was formerly the Illinois Congressman.   The day of his inauguration on March 4, 1861, Lincoln had gotten up before sunrise to work on his inaugural address.   “He would reduce complex ideas into paragraphs and sentences,” stated John Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary.   To help construct his inaugural speech, Lincoln had used Andrew Jackson’s nullification proclamation, the Constitution, Daniel Webster’s “Liberty and Union Forever” speech, and Cassius Clay’s address to the senate arguing for the compromise of 1850.   When Lincoln arrived at the capitol to give his speech, he was greeted by more than thirty thousand cheering spectators.
In his inaugural speech he expressed his lack of aversion to slavery by stating, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.   I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”   He thought people did not have the right to own slaves.   However, he also expressed his hatred of war by saying to the south, "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.   The government will not assail you... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I... [continues]

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