How long lincoln was president

When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in , seven slave states left the Union to form the Confederate States of America, and four more joined when hostilities began between the North and South. A bloody civil war then engulfed the nation as Lincoln vowed to preserve the Union, enforce the laws of the United States, and end the secession. The war lasted for more than four years with a staggering loss of more than , Americans dead. Midway through the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves within the Confederacy and changed the war from a battle to preserve the Union into a battle for freedom.

He was the first Republican President, and Union victory ended forever the claim that state sovereignty superseded federal authority. Killed by an assassin's bullet less than a week after the surrender of Confederate forces, Lincoln left the nation a more perfect Union and thereby earned the admiration of most Americans as the country's greatest President.

Professor Burlingame is the Chancellor Naomi B. No president has ever had a more difficult first year than Lincoln, asserts historian Gary Gallagher in this essay for the First Year Project. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky in , but he was raised mostly in Indiana. As a young man, Lincoln became a lawyer and served in the Illinois state legislature as a member of the Whig Party.

Lincoln married Mary Todd in , and they had four sons. He is shown here with his youngest son, Tad. In , Abraham Lincoln won the nomination for president from the Republican Party. He won the presidential election and took office in President Lincoln visited with his generals after the battle.

Robert Todd Lincoln said it was the best likeness of his father. Photographer Henry F. Lincoln and his team huddled in a telegraph office waiting for the key results from New York and Pennsylvania.

Shortly before 2 a. As the votes were counted, Lincoln had about 40 percent of the popular vote and electoral votes, compared with for his opponents combined. But the southern secession threats cast a pall over the upcoming Electoral College voting process: What if the southern states refused to take part in the Electoral College?

What would constitute a quorum? For the next few years, he worked there as a lawyer and serving clients ranging from individual residents of small towns to national railroad lines. Lincoln won election to the U.

House of Representatives in and began serving his term the following year. As a congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with many Illinois voters for his strong stance against the Mexican-American War. Promising not to seek reelection, he returned to Springfield in Events conspired to push him back into national politics, however: Douglas, a leading Democrat in Congress, had pushed through the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than the federal government, had the right to decide whether the territory should be slave or free.

On October 16, , Lincoln went before a large crowd in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Douglas, denouncing slavery and its extension and calling the institution a violation of the most basic tenets of the Declaration of Independence. Seward of New York and other powerful contenders in favor of the rangy Illinois lawyer with only one undistinguished congressional term under his belt.

In the general election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the northern Democrats; southern Democrats had nominated John C. He built an exceptionally strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates and Edwin M. After years of sectional tensions, the election of an antislavery northerner as the 16th president of the United States drove many southerners over the brink.

By the time Lincoln was inaugurated as 16th U. The Confederates fired on both the fort and the Union fleet, beginning the Civil War. Hopes for a quick Union victory were dashed by defeat in the Battle of Bull Run Manassas , and Lincoln called for , more troops as both sides prepared for a long conflict.

While the Confederate leader Jefferson Davis was a West Point graduate, Mexican War hero and former secretary of war, Lincoln had only a brief and undistinguished period of service in the Black Hawk War to his credit. He surprised many when he proved to be a capable wartime leader, learning quickly about strategy and tactics in the early years of the Civil War, and about choosing the ablest commanders.

General George McClellan , though beloved by his troops, continually frustrated Lincoln with his reluctance to advance, and when McClellan failed to pursue Robert E.

During the war, Lincoln drew criticism for suspending some civil liberties, including the right of habeas corpus , but he considered such measures necessary to win the war. Shortly after the Battle of Antietam Sharpsburg , Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation , which took effect on January 1, , and freed all of the enslaved people in the rebellious states not under federal control, but left those in the border states loyal to the Union in bondage.

Two important Union victories in July —at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of the war. Grant , as supreme commander of the Union forces.