Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States during the American Civil War.  Abraham Lincoln was in office during perhaps the most critical time in the nation’s history and provided exceptional leadership.  Lincoln is remembered as a man of wit and strategic vision.  Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is among the nation’s most treasured documents of freedom along with his Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863, which freed slaves in territories in revolt against the United States.  Abraham Lincoln was mortally wounded by assassin John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, and died the following morning at the age of 56.

Abraham Lincoln

The Main Civil War Generals Who Helped Define the War

By Roy Morris, Jr.

Mr. Morris is the author of seven well-received books on 19th Century American history and literature. He has served as a consultant for A&E, the History Channel, and edited a three-book series for Purdue University Press on American Civil War and post-Civil War history, journalism and literature. Read more

Looking back at the Battle of Gettysburg

Abraham Lincoln

The American Civil War: Forging a National Identity

by Mike Haskew

The American Civil War was the tragic culmination of divergent perspectives on the proper conduct of the government of the United States and socio-economic issues that had been frequently at the forefront of American political life for decades. Read more

Lincoln's moral leadership and political legacy, as well as Lee and Jackson's expert command have never left our popular imagination.

Abraham Lincoln

Looking Back on the Vicksburg Campaign

Brooke C. Stoddard

When the sun set on the Confederacy, the stars began to rise and shine, none more brightly for Northerners than that of Abraham Lincoln, and for Southerners than those of Robert E. Read more

Abraham Lincoln

Firing on Fort Sumter: the Start of Civil War

By Al Hemingway

Shortly after midnight on the morning of April 12, 1861, four men in a rowboat made their way across the pitch-black harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, toward Fort Sumter, an unfinished and architecturally insignificant masonry fort three miles out from the city where the harbor meets the Atlantic Ocean. Read more

Abraham Lincoln clashed publicly with Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont over his hasty emancipation proclamation in Missouri.

Abraham Lincoln

The Frémont Emancipation Proclamation

By Lawrence Weber

As the early days of the Civil  War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was beginning to be contested on the battlefield, Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more

Despite numerous attempts to deescalate the situation on both sides, Fort Sumter was fired upon in April 1861, marking the start of the American Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln

American Civil War Timeline: the Road to War

by William Welsh

One of the catalysts for a major rebellion in the United States were irregular warfare in “Bleeding Kansas” from 1854 to 1861 between anti-slavery Free Staters and pro-slavery border ruffians. Read more