Thomas traveled back to Kentucky to find a wife and mother for his children in 1820. He did so when he married the widowed mother Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln. Abraham and Sarah were very close. They stuck together while Thomas would have to make trips for supplies into town and would be gone for days at a time (43).
In 1830 Lincoln attended school from time to time, worked in the farm fields, and read whenever he got the chance. That same year Thomas moved the family to Illinois where they settled near Decatur. It was here where Abraham Lincoln political career started. He gave a speech in attempt to persuade the local council into improving navigation on the Sangamon River (59).
For several years Lincoln worked in and owned bookstores in New Salem, Illinois. After learning basic math and becoming well read Lincoln began studying law in 1831. He studied vigorously for the next years wanting nothing but a license to practice law in the state of Illinois.
Five years later Lincoln was received his law license and was once again re-elected as member of the State Assembly as leader of the Whig Party (176). Lincoln began arguing cases in nine counties in the central part of the state. These occurrences, along with the next five to ten years were vital in the takeoff of Lincoln’s political career. In those years he became Whig Floor Leader of the Illinois General Assembly, argued State Supreme Court cases, and not to mention married his twenty three year old girlfriend, Mary Todd.
Now in 1846, and with three sons, Lincoln became a member of the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party (198). Lincoln spent many years between practicing law and having a United States Congressional Seat. He fought against actions like the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the Dred Scott Decision, and the War with Mexico. He began to gain national attention in 1856 when he received one hundred-ten votes to be a Vice Presidential Nominee (213). It was after this that he began his famous series of debates with long time friend, Democrat, Stephen Douglas. But in 1859 it was Douglas, not Lincoln who was chosen to become Senator of Illinois by a vote of fifty-four to forty-six (220).
However losing that election may have been better for Lincoln. In 1860 he was chosen as the Republican Presidential Nominee. He was up against Northern Democrat, and friend Stephen Douglas, and Southern Democrat John Breckenridge. The three debate up until the November election. In that election Lincoln is elected with one hundred-eighty of three hundred-three electoral votes and forty percent of the popular vote (237).
The rest of Lincoln’s life is history. He went on to bring the country up through the Civil War and freed the slaves. In 1865, after the war and his re-election, a southern radical by the name of John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln in the back of the head while he and his wife were watching the play Our American Cousins, he was fifty-six years old (263). Less than two weeks later Booth was shot and killed in a Virginia tobacco barn.
When it comes to accomplishments Abraham Lincoln had them all. He was a respected lawyer and politician on the state level and the national level. Lincoln was responsible for keeping an entire nation together through war and bringing it back together after. He freed the hundreds of thousands of African American slaves in the South. The question isn’t what did Abraham Lincoln do to become a significant historical figure, it’s what didn’t Abraham Lincoln do to be considered a significant figure of United States history.
Abraham was president during one of the nation’s darkest times. The country was at war with itself. The war between the North and the South was inevitable but it took a man like Abraham Lincoln to bring the country through it. He possessed all of the political and psychological skills that one needed in the situation. The United States would not be the same today without Abraham Lincoln but was he only remembered because he was U.S. President during the Civil War? The answer to that is more than likely no. It was his extreme opposition to the institution of slavery that leads the South to secede from the Union and begin the Civil War. Whether it was the 1820’s, 1860’s, or 1960’s the Civil War would have taken place. So did the time make Abraham Lincoln? Absolutely not. Abraham Lincoln was completely responsibly for today’s remembrance of the decade of the 1860’s.
