Abraham Lincoln's Accomplishments

Abraham Lincoln as a young, struggling politician worked hard for an extensive period of time to work his way up the political ladder, only to be a helper for Zachary Taylor’s presidential election. When Taylor took office, Abe was hoping for appointment of the title of The Commissioner of the General Land Office. When his goal was overlooked by Mr. Zachary Taylor- Mr. Lincoln retired from national politics and went back to his law practice in Illinois. While in Illinois he was content with his practice- until the Kansas Nebraska Act was put into place 5 years later. Abraham sprung back into politics again. This was due to one of his most admirable characteristics, his abolitionistic way of thought. He believed strongly in preventing the spread

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky on a farm called Sinking Spring on February 12th, 1806. From his birth he was a self motivated young man with the will to learn everything that he could despite his family’s financial background which didn’t warrant them the money for the supplies needed to educate themselves. Yet in their free time they went to a log school house that was nearby where the Lincoln children went to learn how to read, write, and do basic math. Contrary to popular belief the Lincoln’s were not impoverished, they were living in comfort for the age and time. Sarah, Abraham’s older sister, and Abraham- were the only two children of the house. They had a little brother named Thomas, named after his father, whom died in infancy. When Thomas Lincoln ran into property rights problems, he moved his family to Indiana- which happened to be a Free State, that worked hand in hand with his beliefs that slavery was a cruel institution. He obviously passed this way of thought down to his son,

Within Abraham’s first months in office- He was met by the secession of South Carolina. He was elected president in November of 1860 and by December 20th of that same year South Carolina had formally seceded from The Union. To add onto that, by his inauguration on March 6, 1861- eleven states, other than South Carolina, seceded as well. To Lincoln however, secession was seen as “unlawful”, this was due to his belief that if the rest of the world saw the only major democracy at the time fail, then they would believe that it would be impossible to have a government by the people, for the people. This was one of the many problems that Abraham Lincoln was met with when he came into office. When the Civil War began on April 12, 1861 Lincoln was given another large task; to keep up the Northern army’s morale. In doing this he had to bring their attention to their wins and not their losses which, at the beginning of the war, were more prominent and superseded their successes. It was a much more challenging task then one would assume, but considering the circumstances, where there could be fighting within genealogical backgrounds . It could be assumed that you might be put in the position to kill your Confederate brother, whilst fighting for the Union. Yet something that kept