"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free...
We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth." - Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862
Abraham Lincoln
| Born | February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Hardin (now Larue) County, Kentucky |
| Married | Mary Todd (1818-1882, November 4, 1842 |
| Died | April 15, 1865, Washington D.C., having been shot at Ford's Theatre the night before |
| Education | No formal education |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Political Party | Whig, then Republican |
| Career Highlights |
- Elected captian of his company in the Black Hawk War, 1832 - Elected to Illinois State Legislature, 1834 - Member of U.S. House of Representatives, 1847-49 |
| National Highlights |
- The Civil War began April 12, 1861, with an attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina - Write of habeas corpus suspended nationally on September 24, 1862 - Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 - The Civil War ended April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse |
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must
not be enemies. Though passion may have
strained, it must not break our bonds of
affection. The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield, and patriot
grave, to every living heart and hearthstone,
all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely they will be, by
the better angels of our nature."
-First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
Gutzon Borglum, Sculptor of Mount Rushmore
"He was more deeply rooted in the home
principles that are keeping us together than
any man who was ever asked to make his
heart-beat national."
-Lincoln Borglum Manuscript Collection, Corpus Christi, Texas
"He is at once the heart and soul of
Mount Rushmore."
-New York Times Magazine, August 25, 1941
