“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” — Abraham Lincoln
Today is the 201st anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, one of the nation’s greatest presidents.
Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States, 1809 – 1865
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a log cabin in Hardin County (now LaRue County), Kentucky. He rose from humble origins and less than a year of formal education to become the 16th President of the United States, and one of the great men of American history.
Lincoln was elected President on November 6, 1860, and led the United States through the nation’s greatest crisis, the Civil War (1861-1865). He is credited with saving the Union from disintegration and eliminating slavery in America.
On the evening of April 14, 1865 Lincoln was assassinated as he watched a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. He was the first American President to be assassinated. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks as his funeral train moved him from Washington to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois.