Abraham Lincoln - 16th President of USA updated Sat Aug 22 2009 10:44 am CDT

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States from 1860. He successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. Lincoln was the first Republican president, having previously been a country lawyer, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and twice an unsuccessful candidate for election to the U.S. Senate. He was an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States. His tenure in office was occupied primarily with the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. As the civil war was drawing to a close, Lincoln became the first American president to be assassinated.