Answer(s)
• Freed the slaves (Emancipation Proclamation) • Saved (or preserved) the Union • Led the United States during the Civil War • 16th president of the United States • Delivered the Gettysburg Address
• Freed the slaves (Emancipation Proclamation) • Saved (or preserved) the Union • Led the United States during the Civil War • 16th president of the United States • Delivered the Gettysburg Address
Sixteenth President who preserved the Union and ended slavery.
Lincoln's famous speech honoring the Civil War dead.
Lincoln's primary goal of keeping the country together.
DOUGLAS GINSBURG, Federal Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit:
Abraham Lincoln – a self-taught lawyer from Illinois – was our sixteenth president. Many historians consider him our greatest president.
As he took office, Lincoln faced the worst ordeal in our history: Civil war. When eleven states seceded from the Union, Lincoln had to decide whether to let them go – or to hold them to the Constitution. Many believed the war would be brief. Instead, it dragged on for four tragic years. Lincoln persevered -- and preserved the Union. Despite suffering major defeats in the South, and calls for peace from many in the North.
Lincoln is also renowned for his Emancipation Proclamation, which crushed slavery in much of the Confederacy and laid the groundwork for ending it throughout America.
Several months after the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln gave one of history’s greatest speeches, the Gettysburg Address - when dedicating the cemetery there. It’s also one of the shortest: fewer than three hundred words -- memorized by generations of students.
Lincoln began by reminding Americans of the ideals of the Founders: “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He concluded by stating, so eloquently, the causes for which men were dying: “a new birth of freedom” and the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
