Abraham Lincoln

When Lincoln was only seven years old, his family moved to Indiana. His family lived in a log cabin and had a farm. Young Lincoln helped his father chop trees, plant and plow.

As a boy, Lincoln worked hard and went to school when he didn't have to work. He didn't get to go to school very much, but he read as many books as he could. Abraham Lincoln loved to read.

When Lincoln was 21 years old, his family moved again. This time, his family moved to Illinois. Lincoln left his family's farm and worked at several different jobs. He found out that he was most interested in government and law.

Lincoln worked and studied books about law and United States government. In 1832, Lincoln ran for the Illinois state legislature and lost. He was determined to win and he ran again and won two years later. Lincoln also became a lawyer during this time.

Lincoln worked and studied harder and was elected to Congress, the legislative branch of the United States government. While he was in Congress, many congressmen argued about a subject that was beginning to divide the United States - slavery. In Congress, Lincoln spoke out against slavery. He thought it was wrong for a person to be owned by another. He thought that everyone should be free.

Many people in the southern United States were angry at Lincoln for speaking out against slavery. Southerners wanted to keep their slaves, who were almost all African Americans, to pick their cotton and work their fields.

Even though some people didn't like what Lincoln said about slavery, many people respected him and thought he would make a good president. In 1860, Lincoln ran for president and won. Lincoln's election made people in slave-owning states unhappy and angry. The people in these states thought that Lincoln would make slavery illegal.

People in these states were so angry and afraid that they decided to break away, or secede, from the United States and form their own nation called the Confederate States of America. Eleven southern states made up the Confederacy. The Confederate States were South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Virginia and Tennessee.

The Confederate States raised an army and attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April, 1861. Fort Sumter belonged to the United States government. The Civil War between the United States and the Confederate States began.

The war made Lincoln sad, but he knew it was important to keep the United States together as a country and to keep slavery from spreading. In 1863, Lincoln made an important decree called the Emancipation Proclamation. This proclamation declared that all the slaves in the Confederacy were free. The Confederate leaders were very angry.

The United States' and Confederate armies fought many battles and thousands of people died. For a while, the Confederate armies were winning and the people in the northern states began to protest the war. At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of a terrible battle, Lincoln made an important speech to remind Northerners what they were fighting for. This speech, the Gettysburg Address, was only three minutes long, but it renewed the faith of the people.

Few people in the United States or the Confederacy could imagine how long the Civil War would last and how many people would die. The war lasted for almost four years and hundreds of thousands died. The United States won the war and the nation was unified, but victory came at a high cost.

Lincoln was re-elected president toward the end of the Civil War. After the war ended, Lincoln had the task of rebuilding the nation that had been torn apart. Before Lincoln could start his work, he was killed. On April 14, 1865, five days after the war ended, John Wilkes Booth, a man who supported the ideas of the Confederacy, shot Lincoln at Ford's Theater. Lincoln died the next morning.