Lot About Abraham Lincoln As A President example essay topic

The topic that I have chosen for this essay is Abraham Lincoln. He is the sixteenth president of United States of America. I chose this topic because according to the things he has done for this nation he is one of the greatest presidents America could have ever had. I think that this president is one of the greatest people in the American history and will be remembered by all the people in this country. He was born on Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.

His parents were both were born in Virginia, of undistinguished families. Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, after that spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. After all those rough years, he got into politics. Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois legislature in 1832. Two years later, he was elected to the lower house for the first of four successive terms (until 1841) as a Whig.

As a Whig, Lincoln supported the Second Bank of the United States, the Illinois State Bank, government-sponsored internal improvements (roads, canals, railroads, harbors), and protective tariffs. Encouraged by Whig legislator John Todd Stuart, Lincoln became a lawyer in 1836, and in 1837, he moved to Springfield, where he became Stuart's law partner. Lincoln served one term (1847-49) as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he opposed the Mexican War as unnecessary and unconstitutional. He did not run for Congress again, returning instead to Springfield and the law. Lincoln "was losing interest in politics" when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by Congress in 1854.

This legislation opened lands previously closed to slavery to the possibility of its spread; Lincoln viewed the provisions of the act as immoral He saw this act, which had been sponsored by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, as a new and alarming development. In 1856, he joined the newly formed Republican Party, and two years later, he campaigned for the Senate against Douglas. In his speech at Springfield, in acceptance of the Republican senatorial nomination (June 16, 1858) Lincoln suggested that Douglas, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and Democratic presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan had conspired to nationalize slavery. In February 1860, Lincoln made his first major political appearance in the Northeast when he addressed a rally at the Cooper Union in New York. He was now sufficiently well known to be a presidential candidate. At the Republican national convention in Chicago in May, William H. Seward was the leading candidate.

Seward, however, had qualities that made him undesirable in the critical. As a result Lincoln won the nomination by being the second choice of the majority. On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was sworn in as president of the United States of America. On Apr. 12, 1861, South Carolina fired on the fort, and the Civil War began.

As a commander in chief Lincoln was soon noted for vigorous measures, sometimes at odds with the Constitution and often at odds with the ideas of his military commanders. After a period of initial support and enthusiasm for George B. McClellan, Lincoln's conflicts with that Democratic general helped to turn the latter into his presidential rival in 1864. Famed for his clemency for court-marshaled soldiers, Lincoln nevertheless took a realistic view of war as best prosecuted by killing the enemy. Above all, he always sought a general, no matter what his politics, who could fight. He found such a general in Ulysses S. Grant, to whom he gave overall command in 1864. Thereafter, Lincoln took a less direct role in military planning, but his interest never wavered.

On April 14, 1865, a man by the name of John Wilkes Booth planned to assassinate Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was at Ford's theater in Washington watching Our American Cousin. Booth made his way to the box where Abraham Lincoln was seated, around ten thirty p. m. He put a pistol to Lincoln's head a fired once; Abraham Lincoln's body fell in his seat.

I learnt that Abraham Lincoln did a lot of this country and his people and even at times he went beyond his rules to help the American people. I learnt a lot about Abraham Lincoln as a president while researching for this topic and this has been very helpful for me to learn about American History.