Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865) was an American statesman and lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Lincoln led the nation through its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis in the American Civil War. He preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the U.S. economy.

Lincoln was born in poverty in a log cabin and was raised on the frontier primarily in Indiana. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. Congressman from Illinois. In 1849 he returned to his law practice but became vexed by the opening of additional lands to slavery as a result of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He reentered politics in 1854, becoming a leader in the new Republican Party and he reached a national audience in the 1858 debates against Stephen Douglas. Lincoln ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North in victory. Pro-slavery elements in the South equated his success with the North's rejection of their right to practice slavery, and southern states began seceding from the union. To secure its independence, the new Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter, a U.S. fort in the South, and Lincoln called up forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the Union.

As the leader of moderate Republicans, Lincoln found his political opposition was manifold, and included Radical Republicans, War Democrats, Copperheads (anti-war Democrats), and irreconcilable secessionists. He managed the various factions by pitting them against each other, by exploiting political patronage, and by appealing to the American people.:65–87 His Gettysburg Address became a historic clarion call for nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. Lincoln scrutinized the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals and the naval blockade of the South's trade. He suspended habeas corpus, and he averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. He engineered the end to slavery with his Emancipation Proclamation and his order that the Army protect escaped slaves. He also encouraged border states to outlaw slavery, and promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which outlawed slavery across the country.

Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign. He sought to reconcile the war-torn nation by exonerating the secessionists. On April 14, 1865, just days after the war's end at Appomattox, he was enjoying a night at the theatre with his wife Mary when he was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln's marriage had produced four sons, two of whom preceded him in death, with severe emotional impact upon him and Mary. Lincoln is remembered as the United States' martyr hero and he is consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as the greatest U.S. president.

Death
Surgeon Charles Leale Charles Leale, a young Army surgeon, pushed through the crowd to the door of Lincoln's box but found it would not open. Rathbone, inside the door, soon noticed and removed the wooden brace with which Booth had jammed it shut. 120

Leale entered the box to find Lincoln seated with his head leaning to his right as Mary held him and sobbed: "His eyes were closed and he was in a profoundly comatose condition, while his breathing was intermittent and exceedingly stertorous." Thinking Lincoln had been stabbed, Leale shifted him to the floor. Meanwhile, another physician, Charles Sabin Taft, was lifted from the stage into the box.

After Taft and Leale opened Lincoln's shirt and found no stab wound, Leale located the gunshot wound behind the left ear. He found the bullet too deep to be removed, but was able to dislodge a clot, after which Lincoln's breathing improved; he learned that regularly removing new clots maintained Lincoln's breathing. As actress Laura Keene cradled the President's head in her lap, he pronounced the wound mortal.

Skull fragments and probe used. Leale, Taft, and another doctor, Albert King, decided that while Lincoln must be moved, a carriage ride to the White House was too dangerous. After considering Peter Taltavull's Star Saloon next door, they concluded to take Lincoln to one of the houses across the way. It rained as soldiers carried Lincoln into the street, where a man urged them toward the house of tailor William Petersen. In Petersen's first-floor bedroom, the exceptionally tall Lincoln was laid diagonally on the bed.

Lincoln's deathbed More physicians arrived: Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes, Charles Henry Crane, Anderson Ruffin Abbott, and Robert K. Stone (Lincoln's personal physician). All agreed Lincoln could not survive. Barnes probed the wound, locating the bullet and some bone fragments. Throughout the night, as the hemorrhage continued, they removed blood clots to relieve pressure on the brain, and Leale held the comatose president's hand with a firm grip, "to let him know that he was in touch with humanity and had a friend.

Lincoln's older son Robert Todd Lincoln arrived sometime after midnight but twelve-year-old Tad Lincoln was kept away. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton arrived. Stanton insisted that the sobbing Mary Lincoln leave the sick room, then for the rest of the night essentially ran the United States government from the house, including directing the hunt for Booth and his confederates. Guards kept the public away, but numerous officials and physicians were admitted to pay their respects.

The Last Hours of Abraham Lincoln (Alonzo Chappel, 1868) Initially, Lincoln's features were calm and his breathing slow and steady. Later one of his eyes became swollen and the right side of his face discolored. Maunsell Bradhurst Field wrote in a letter to The New York Times that the President then started "breathing regularly, but with effort, and did not seem to be struggling or suffering." As he neared death, Lincoln's appearance became "perfectly natural" (except for the discoloration around his eyes). Shortly before 7 a.m. Mary was allowed to return to Lincoln's side, and, as Dixon reported, "she again seated herself by the President, kissing him and calling him every endearing name."

Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15. Mary Lincoln was not present. In his last moments Lincoln's face became calm and his breathing quieter. Field wrote there was "no apparent suffering, no convulsive action, no rattling of the throat ... [only] a mere cessation of breathing". According to Lincoln's secretary John Hay, at the moment of Lincoln's death, "a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features". The assembly knelt for a prayer, after which Stanton said either "Now he belongs to the ages" or "Now he belongs to the angels."

On Lincoln's death, Vice President Johnson became president, and was sworn in by Chief Justice Salmon Chase between 10 and 11 a.m.