Abraham Lincoln's Family and childhood

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and promoting economic and financial modernization. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives, but failed in two attempts to be elected to the United States Senate.

Family and childhood

life
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln (née Hanks), in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in Hardin County, Kentucky, (now LaRue County). Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake, Abraham, had moved his family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky, where he was ambushed and killed in an Indian raid in 1786, with his children, including Lincoln's father Thomas, looking on.Thomas was left to make his own way on the frontier.Lincoln's mother, Nancy, was the daughter of Lucy Hanks, and was born in what is now Mineral County, West Virginia, then part of Virginia. Lucy moved with Nancy to Kentucky. Nancy Hanks married Thomas, who became a respected citizen. He bought and sold several farms, including the Sinking Spring Farm. The family attended a Separate Baptists church, which had high moral standards and opposed alcohol, dancing, and slavery.Thomas enjoyed considerable status in Kentucky—where he sat on juries, appraised estates, served on country slave patrols, and guarded prisoners. By the time his son Abraham was born, Thomas owned two 600-acre (240 ha) farms, several town lots, livestock, and horses. He was among the richest men in the county.However, in 1816, Thomas lost all of his land in court cases because of faulty property titles.


The young Lincoln in sculpture at Senn Park, Chicago
The family moved north across the Ohio River to free (i.e., non-slave) territory and made a new start in Perry County, Indiana. Lincoln later noted that this move was "partly on account of slavery" but mainly due to land title difficulties.In Indiana, when Lincoln was nine, his mother Nancy died of milk sickness in 1818.After the death of Lincoln's mother, his older sister, Sarah, took charge of caring for him until their father remarried in 1819; Sarah later died in her 20s while giving birth to a stillborn son.
Thomas Lincoln's new wife was the widow Sarah Bush Johnston, the mother of three of her own children. Lincoln became very close to his stepmother, and referred to her as "Mother". As a pre-teen, he did not like the hard labor associated with frontier life. Some in his family, and in the neighborhood, for a time considered him to be lazy.As he grew into his teens, he willingly took responsibility for all chores expected of him as one of the boys in the household and became an adept axeman in his work building rail fences. He attained a reputation for brawn and audacity after a very competitive wrestling match to which he was challenged by the renowned leader of a group of ruffians, "the Clary's Grove boys".Lincoln also agreed with the customary obligation of a son to give his father all earnings from work done outside the home until age 21. In later years, Lincoln occasionally loaned his father money. Lincoln became increasingly distant from his father, in part because of his father's lack of education. While young Lincoln's formal elementary education consisted approximately of a year's worth of classes from several itinerant teachers, he was mostly self-educated and was an avid reader.
In 1830, fearing a milk sickness outbreak along the Ohio River, the Lincoln family moved west, where they settled on public land in Macon County, Illinois, another free, non-slave state. In 1831, Thomas relocated the family to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois. It was then that, as an ambitious 22-year-old, Lincoln decided to seek a better life and struck out on his own. Canoeing down the Sangamon River, Lincoln ended up in the village of New Salem in Sangamon County. In the spring of 1831, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods by flatboat from New Salem to New Orleans via the Sangamon, Illinois, and Mississippi rivers. After arriving in New Orleans—and witnessing slavery firsthand—he walked back home

Marriage and children
Lincoln's first romantic interest was Ann Rutledge, whom he met when he first moved to New Salem; by 1835, they were in a relationship but not formally engaged. She died on August 25, most likely of typhoid fever. In the early 1830s, he met Mary Owens from Kentucky when she was visiting her sister. Late in 1836, Lincoln agreed to a match with Mary if she returned to New Salem. Mary did return in November 1836, and Lincoln courted her for a time; however, they both had second thoughts about their relationship. On August 16, 1837, Lincoln wrote Mary a letter suggesting he would not blame her if she ended the relationship. She never replied and the courtship was over.
In 1840, Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd, who was from a wealthy slave-holding family in Lexington, Kentucky.They met in Springfield, Illinois, in December 1839 and were engaged the following December.A wedding set for January 1, 1841 was canceled when the two broke off their engagement at Lincoln's initiative. They later met again at a party and married on November 4, 1842, in the Springfield mansion of Mary's married sister.While preparing for the nuptials and feeling anxiety again, Lincoln, when asked where he was going, replied, "To hell, I suppose."
In 1844, the couple bought a house in Springfield near Lincoln's law office.Mary Todd Lincoln worked diligently in their home, assuming full household duties which had previously been performed for her by slaves at her home in Kentucky. She efficiently used the limited income available from her husband's law practice. Robert Todd Lincoln was born in 1843 and Edward Baker Lincoln (Eddie) in 1846. Lincoln "was remarkably fond of children",[34] and the Lincolns were not considered to be strict with their children.Robert was the only child to live to adulthood. Edward died on February 1, 1850, in Springfield, likely of tuberculosis. "Willie" Lincoln was born on December 21, 1850 and died on February 20, 1862. The Lincolns' fourth son, Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, was born on April 4, 1853 and died of heart failure at the age of 18 on July 16, 1871.
The deaths of their sons had profound effects on both parents. Later in life, Mary struggled with the stresses of losing her husband and sons, and Robert Lincoln committed her temporarily to a mental health asylum in 1875.Abraham Lincoln suffered from "melancholy", a condition which now is referred to as clinical depression.
Lincoln's father-in-law was based in Lexington, Kentucky; he and others of the Todd family were either slave owners or slave traders. Lincoln was close to the Todds, and he and his family occasionally visited the Todd estate in Lexington. He was an affectionate, though often absent, husband and father of four children.

Religious and philosophical beliefs

Scholars have extensively written on topics concerning Lincoln's beliefs and philosophy; e.g. whether Lincoln's frequent use of religious imagery and language reflected his own personal beliefs or was a device to appeal to his audiences, who were mostly evangelical Protestants. Though he never joined a church, Lincoln was familiar with the Bible, quoted it and praised it.
In the 1840s Lincoln subscribed to the Doctrine of Necessity, a belief that asserted the human mind was controlled by some higher power.Some scholars[who?] maintain that in the 1850s, Lincoln acknowledged "providence" in a general way, and rarely used the language or imagery of the evangelicals; instead, they[who?] argue, he regarded the republicanism of the Founding Fathers with an almost religious reverence. Some historians[who?] also conclude that when he suffered the death of his son Edward, Lincoln more frequently acknowledged his own need to depend on God.
As Lincoln grew older, it may be that the idea of a divine will somehow interacting with human affairs increasingly influenced his beliefs and public expressions. On a personal level, the death of his son Willie in February 1862 may have caused Lincoln to look towards religion for answers and solace.After Willie's death, in the summer or early fall of 1862, Lincoln apparently attempted to put on paper his private thoughts on why, from a divine standpoint, the severity of the war was necessary. He wrote at this time that God "could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds." In April 1864, discussing Emancipation, Lincoln wrote, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it.