Abraham Lincoln

The 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln endured some of the most trying time in American history. He was the first Republican President, though originally he was a member of the Whig party, and he had anti-slavery sympathies. He was a self-made man who grew up on farms and homesteads in Kentucky and Indiana, then moved to Illinois when he was a young man. He was ashamed of his humble upbringing, and was not close with his father, who did not understand his hunger for education. He also tended toward melancholy, also a trait of his mother, and would brood in silence on a number of questions, often pondering religion and death.

Lincoln was fascinated by law, and after moving to Illinois worked in a general store and read and studied all the law books he could. He began to run in local elections, joined...