Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he held the Union together, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and renewed the economy.
He was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin at Sinking Spring farm, south of Hodgenville, in Hardin County, Kentucky. A land title dispute forced the Lincolns to leave, they relocated to Knob Creek farm, a few miles to the north. By 1814 Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, had lost most of his land in Kentucky in legal disputes over land titles. In 1816 The Lincoln family moved to Indiana, where they settled in Hurricane Township, Indiana. Abraham spent his childhood years on the family farm in southern Indiana. As most children on the frontier, Lincoln received a subpar education, maybe totalling twelve months. However, he learned on his own from experience and through reading and reciting what he had read or heard from others. Two years after their arrival in Indiana, nine-year-old Lincoln lost his birth mother, Nancy
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After helping his father build a farm in Macon County, Illinois, Lincoln set out on his own. Lincoln made a living as a boatman, store clerk, surveyor, militia soldier, and became a lawyer in Illinois. Eventually, he was elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1834, and was reelected four different times. In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd. Their four sons, all born in Springfield, were: Robert Todd Lincoln, Edward Baker Lincoln, William Wallace Lincoln, and Thomas Lincoln. Abraham continued his involvement in politics, in addition to his law career, serving in the United States House of Representatives from Illinois in 1846. He was elected president of the United States in