Happy Lincoln’s Birthday

America’s 16^th President, Abraham Lincoln, was born and raised in a one-room log cabin in Hodgenville, Kentucky in 1809, became a state legislator in Springfield, Illinois, and was assassinated in Washington, D.C. in 1865.

Mr. Lincoln was a self-taught man who toiled at many jobs: working on a river flatboat, a shopkeeper, and a postmaster, until he became a local politician. He was a self-taught attorney who first won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1946. Mr. Lincoln opposed slavery, was a dynamic orator, and was elected to the highest office in the land in 1860.

Two highlights during the Civil War were the writing and passage of the Emancipation Proclamation and the eloquent, short (272-word) Gettysburg Address.