Lincoln

David Herbert Donald presents this biography from Lincoln's own perspective, tracing what Lincoln knew at each stage of his career and why he made his decisions. Donald identifies an essential passivity in Lincoln's nature, a lifelong fatalism rooted in what Lincoln called the "Doctrine of Necessity," the belief that human action is governed by forces beyond individual control. Donald frames Lincoln's motto, "My policy is to have no policy," as reflecting a preference for responding to events rather than initiating bold plans.

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was an honest but unambitious carpenter and farmer who lost his inheritance under Virginia's primogeniture law, which granted the full estate to the eldest son. The family moved to Indiana in 1816, driven by disputes over land titles and Thomas's opposition to slavery. There, nine-year-old Abraham endured the death of his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, from milk sickness, a frontier illness caused by cattle consuming poisonous white snakeroot. Thomas remarried in 1819, and his new wife, Sarah Bush Johnston, became a loving and stabilizing presence who encouraged Abraham's education. Lincoln attended sporadic frontier schools totaling less than one year but became a voracious reader, absorbing the Bible, Aesop's Fables, and Parson Weems's Life of George Washington. Growing increasingly alienated from his father, whom he considered uneducated and unambitious, Lincoln left the family household in 1830 after helping them settle in Illinois.

Lincoln settled in New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a store clerk, postmaster, and surveyor while studying law and grammar on his own. He won respect through his physical strength, storytelling, and intellectual curiosity, and in 1834 was elected to the Illinois state legislature. As floor leader of the Sangamon County delegation, he helped relocate the state capital to Springfield. He entered into a romance with Ann Rutledge, daughter of one of New Salem's founders, but her death from typhoid fever in 1835 sent him into a severe depression. Licensed to practice law in 1836, Lincoln moved to Springfield the following April.

In Springfield, Lincoln delivered his Lyceum address of January 1838, revealing both his devotion to the rule of law and his fierce personal ambition. He courted and became engaged to Mary Todd, a vivacious, well-educated Kentuckian, but broke the engagement in January 1841, plunging into the deepest depression of his life. The couple reconciled and married on November 4, 1842. Their domestic life proved turbulent but was grounded in shared political interests and mutual devotion to their children.

Lincoln built a successful law practice, first with Stephen T. Logan and then with William H. Herndon, becoming one of the most prominent attorneys in Illinois. Elected to Congress in 1846, he served a single term in which he attacked President Polk's justification for the Mexican War and attempted to broker a compromise on slavery in the District of Columbia. Both efforts failed, and Lincoln returned to Springfield convinced his political career was over.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, introduced by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, reawakened Lincoln's political ambitions. By repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowing settlers in the territories to decide whether to permit slavery through a principle called popular sovereignty, the act struck Lincoln as a moral catastrophe. He reentered politics, delivering speeches that subjected Douglas's arguments to rigorous scrutiny while condemning the "monstrous injustice" of slavery. After losing a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1855, Lincoln helped organize the Illinois Republican party and emerged as a national figure through his 1858 debates with Douglas. His "house divided" speech declared that the nation "cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free," and across seven debates he framed the contest as a struggle between those who viewed slavery as a wrong and those who did not. Though Lincoln lost the Senate race due to an outdated legislative apportionment, the debates brought him national recognition.

Lincoln's Cooper Union address of February 1860, a meticulously researched argument that the Founding Fathers supported federal authority over slavery in the territories, established him as a serious presidential contender. Nominated on the third ballot at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, he won the presidency in November with less than 40 percent of the popular vote, carrying every free state but receiving no votes in ten Southern states.

Seven Southern states seceded before Lincoln took office. His inaugural address on March 4, 1861, declared secession illegal and pledged to hold federal property, while concluding with an appeal to "the better angels of our nature." When Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12, Lincoln called for 75,000 militia, and four more states seceded. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, expanded the army without congressional authorization, and proclaimed a naval blockade.

The first year of war brought frustration. The Union defeat at Bull Run in July 1861 shattered early optimism. Lincoln appointed George B. McClellan to command the Army of the Potomac, but McClellan proved brilliant at organization and reluctant to fight. Lincoln overruled General John C. Frémont's unauthorized emancipation of slaves in Missouri, insisting that decisions about slavery belonged to the President alone. He resolved the Trent affair by releasing captured Confederate envoys, avoiding war with Great Britain.

Lincoln moved gradually toward emancipation. In March 1862, he proposed compensated emancipation for the border states, the slave states that had remained in the Union, but their representatives refused. He drafted an emancipation proclamation during the summer and presented it to his cabinet on July 22. Secretary of State William H. Seward persuaded him to delay until after a military victory. McClellan's qualified success at Antietam on September 17 provided the opportunity, and on September 22 Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, giving rebellious states 100 days to return to the Union or lose their slaves. The final proclamation, signed on January 1, 1863, declared all persons held as slaves in states still in rebellion "are, and henceforward shall be free" and authorized the enrollment of African Americans in the armed forces.

Military setbacks continued. The Army of the Potomac, now under General Joseph Hooker, was defeated at Chancellorsville in May 1863. Lincoln replaced Hooker with George Gordon Meade just before the battle of Gettysburg. Meade's victory on July 1–3, combined with Union General Ulysses S. Grant's capture of Vicksburg on July 4, marked the war's turning point, though Lincoln was furious that Meade allowed Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army to escape into Virginia. On November 19, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, redefining the war's purpose in 272 words that promised "a new birth of freedom."

In December 1863, Lincoln announced his "10 percent plan" for reconstruction, offering amnesty to rebels who accepted emancipation and recognizing state governments supported by one-tenth of the 1860 electorate. Radical Republicans, those in Congress who sought harsher terms for the defeated South, passed the Wade-Davis bill in response, which Lincoln pocket-vetoed.

Lincoln appointed Grant as general-in-chief in March 1864. Grant's Wilderness campaign produced staggering casualties, and by August, Lincoln privately predicted he would not be reelected. The fall of Atlanta on September 2 reversed his fortunes, and he won reelection decisively on November 8. He then devoted intense effort to securing House passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, which was approved on January 31, 1865.

Lincoln's second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, attributed the war to divine judgment on the national sin of slavery and concluded: "With malice toward none; with charity for all . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in." He visited Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia, and on April 4 walked through the streets of the newly captured Confederate capital of Richmond, where freed slaves greeted him as a liberator. As the war drew to a close, Lincoln urged generous terms for the defeated South. On the evening of April 14, he attended Ford's Theatre with Mary to see Our American Cousin. John Wilkes Booth, a 26-year-old actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot Lincoln in the back of the head. Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen house, where he lay unconscious through the night. He died at 7:22 the next morning. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton paid tribute: "Now he belongs to the ages."