Abe Lincoln :: essays research papers

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a log cabin in the Kentucky wilderness. When be was a little boy his Grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War. He had a little sister by the name of Sarah. As he went to school he met a boy by the name of Austin. They instantly became friends more so best of friends. At first Abe wasn't allowed to go to school because he didn't have a good pair of britches. In his pastime he loved to read. When Abe was eleven, his mother died of what they called "milk sick" which occurred from drinking unpasteurized milk. That was four years after they moved to a new farm in southern Indiana. He had to live in an open shed throughout the winter. The same year his mother died, his father remarried. He married Sarah Bush Johnson. She brought three kids and a cousin Dennis Hanks. When Abe was nineteen, he worked as a boatman and make his first trip down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, the center of the slave trade. When Abe was twenty-one, he moved with his family to Illinois. However Abe's brother Thomas didn't make it to Illinois because he died of influenza. Soon after Abe made his second trip on the flatboat to New Orleans to defend the blacks and fight slavery. Abe served as a captain in the Black Hawk War and was defeated. Abe came back to Illinois and not long after was elected to the State Legislature and soon became one of the most promising young Whig party leaders. When Abe was thirty-three, he married Mary Todd on November 4,1842. Over the next eleven years the two would have four children their names were Robert, Edward, William, and Thomas. Not long after their marriage Abe became a lawyer and practiced in Springfield, Illinois. Not long after that Abe was elected to Congress. While in Congress it was said that Abe had a secret romance with Ann Rutledge sadly, Ann died in 1835. Also during his reign in Congress Abe proposed that slave owners in the District of Columbia he lost a lot of popularity when doing so. Abe and his counter part Douglas debated each other over the expansion of slavery into the territories. As these debates went on a man by the name of John Brown attempted to start a rebellion by leading an attack on Harper's Ferry.