Abraham Lincoln's path from self-education to the presidency

¶ … Life of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky in 1809 but his family moved to Indiana when he was still a child and he himself settled in Illinois as an adult. He was largely self-educated. He learned to read and one of the books he read continuously was the Bible because this was one of the few books the family possessed. Lincoln's ability memorize Scripture and to tell anecdotal stories is what helped him develop the appeal he would later cultivate so as to become a political figure prior to his campaign for the office of the U.S. President.

Lincoln taught himself to practice law as a young man and he became a lawyer, working in Illinois at his own firm with partner William Herndon in the 1840s. Lincoln was an accomplished lawyer and he used his connections and his skill at oratory to achieve a position as a U.S. Representative in Congress from 1847 to 1849. It was here that he made his famous declaration in opposition to the Mexican-American War instigated by President Polk. (Ironically, Lincoln would not oppose instigating the Civil War a decade and a half later when he would send ships to Ft. Sumter in order to force the hand of the Confederacy's President Davis) (Foote). Following this stint in Congress, Lincoln returned to his role as a lawyer in Illinois. But at the support of his friend Abraham Jonas (another lawyer), Lincoln was persuaded to run for president of the United States (Sarna, Shapell).

Lincoln gave numerous speeches around the country in order to drum up support for his nomination. He made the issue of slavery part of the platform of his campaign and challenged his opponent Stephen Douglas on this issue as Douglas felt it best to let the Southern states solve it by themselves. The South was already threatening to secede from the Union, and for abolitionists, slavery was a hot-button issue that Lincoln exploited in order to gain popularity.

Lincoln defeated Douglas and Republican took the White House in 1861 just as the southern states began to make good their promise to secede. Lincoln vowed to maintain the Union and sent a ship to Ft. Sumter, a federal fort in the south that the Confederacy claimed as its own. The Confederacy fired on the ship that Lincoln sent and the war began.

The war dragged on for four years but in the end the North prevailed and the Confederacy was defeated, thanks in no small part to the approval of Lincoln to allow General Tecumseh Sherman to initiate Total War on the South by laying waste to everything in his path on his road "to the Sea" in order to subjugate and break the moral of the Southern opponents. It was this final thrust into the belly of the Southern states and the crippling of its infrastructure that helped Lincoln to claim victory over his Confederate opponents at long last.