American President

Biography

Generally considered to be the greatest president of the United States, who freed four million slaves and saved the nation after leading the Union to victory in the Civil War of 1861-65, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky in 1809 to a pioneer family on what was then the western frontier of the United States. His family then moved to southern Indiana in 1816 and southern Illinois three years later, although Lincoln by all accounts never intended to follow the same social and economic path as these poor white farmers. Even as a young man, though, he picked up their strongly antislavery views and the common belief that poor whites had little opportunity to better their social and economic circumstances in the slave states. Given the lack of schools and universities on the frontier, almost all of Lincoln's education was really self-education, and he learned his writing...
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