el gato

Born dirt-poor in a log cabin in Kentucky in 1809, I grew up in frontier Kentucky and Indiana, where I was largely self-educated, with a taste for jokes, hard work, and books. I served for a time as a soldier in the Black Hawk War, taught myself law, and held a seat in the Illinois state legislature as a Whig politician in the 1830s and 1840s. From state politics, I moved to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1847, where I voiced my opposition to the U.S. war with Mexico. In the mid-1850s, I left the Whig Party to join the new Republican Party. In 1858, I went up against one of the most popular politicians in the nation, Senator Stephen Douglas, in a contest for the U.S. Senate. I lost that election, but my spectacular performance against Douglas in a series of nationally covered debates made me a contender for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination.In the 1860 campaign for President, I firmly expressed my opposition to slavery and my determination to limit the expansion of slavery westward into the new territories acquired from Mexico in 1850. My election victory created a crisis for the nation, as many southern Democrats feared that it would just be a matter of time before I would move to kill slavery in the South. Rather than face a future in which black people might become free citizens, much of the white South supported secession. This reasoning was based upon the doctrine of states' rights, which placed ultimate sovereignty with the states.I vowed to preserve the Union even if it meant war. I eventually raised an army and navy of nearly 3 million northern men to face a southern army of over 2 million soldiers. In battles fought from Virginia to California (but mainly in Virginia, in the Mississippi River Valley, and along the border states) a great civil war tore the United States apart. In pursuing victory, I assumed extralegal powers over the press, declared martial law in areas where no military action justified it, quelled draft riots with armed soldiers, and drafted soldiers to fight for the Union cause. No President in history had ever exerted so much executive authority, but I did so not for personal power but in order to preserve the Union. In 1864, as an example of my limited personal ambitions, I refused to call off national elections, preferring to hold the election even if I lost the vote rather than destroy the democratic basis upon which I rested my authority. With the electoral support of Union soldiers, many of whom were given short leaves to return home to vote, and thanks to the spectacular victory of Union troops in General Sherman's capture of Atlanta, I was decisively reelected.What started as a war to preserve the Union and vindicate democracy became a battle for freedom and a war to end slavery when I issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863. Although the Proclamation did not free all slaves in the nation -- indeed, no slaves outside of the Confederacy were affected by the Proclamation -- it was an important symbolic gesture that identified the Union with freedom and the death of slavery. As part of the Proclamation, I also urged black males to join the Union forces as soldiers and sailors. By the end of the war, nearly two hundred thousand African Americans had fought for the Union cause, and I referred to them as indispensable in ensuring Union victory.Almost all historians judge me as the greatest President in American history because of the way I exercised leadership during the war and because of the impact of that leadership on the moral and political character of the nation. I conceived of my presidential role as unique under the Constitution in times of crisis. I was convinced that within the branches of government, the presidency alone was empowered not only to uphold the Constitution, but also to preserve, protect, and defend it. In the end, however, I'm measured by my most lasting accomplishments: the preservation of the Union, the vindication of democracy, and the death of slavery -- accomplishments achieved by acting "with malice towards none" in the pursuit of a more perfect and equal union.