Abraham Lincoln timeline

  • born

    Abraham was born in a single-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm in LaRue County, Kentucky on February 12, 1809
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    Childhood

    Lincoln spent a lot of his early life working the land with his father. Occasionally, he would get to attend school, but not very often. He did not enjoy farm work and loved to spend all of his free moments reading and learning. He did suffer loss at a young age when his little brother died, as well as his mother.
  • start of legal career

    Abraham Lincoln enjoyed a successful legal career in Illinois spanning nearly 25 years. Like most lawyers of his time, he did not attend law school. It was customary to study under established lawyers, but he lived in a rural village and taught himself.
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    legal career

    While running for the Illinois legislature in 1834, Lincoln met John Todd Stuart, a fellow Whig also running for office, who loaned Lincoln some law books. Lincoln studied enthusiastically. He got his law license in September 1836 without attending law school or passing the bar as it is known now.
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    Pesidential Election

    In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, absent from the ballot in ten slave states, won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states already had abolished slavery, and a national electoral majority comprising only Northern electoral votes.
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    Presidency

    As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
  • Assasination

    assassination of Abraham Lincoln, murderous attack on Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of April 14, 1865. Shot in the head by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln died the next morning