Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln led the Union through the bloodiest war in American history and made ending slavery one of its aims — a man who'd had barely any formal schooling and taught himself law from borrowed books. Five days after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, he was shot, dying the next morning before he could see the country through what came next.

He entered the White House in 1861 with seven slave states already seceded. His 1863 Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people free in areas designated as in rebellion, but left slavery legal in loyal border states. To abolish it nationwide, he pressed Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment. Congress did so in January 1865; the states ratified it after his death.

What still travels is the voice itself. At Gettysburg, Edward Everett spoke for two hours before Lincoln got up; the next day, Everett wrote to him wishing his own remarks had come as close to the moment's meaning "in two hours" as Lincoln's had "in two minutes." Six weeks before his death, Lincoln urged mercy in his Second Inaugural — "with malice toward none, with charity for all." At that evening's reception, abolitionist Frederick Douglass called it "a sacred effort."

Sources

• National Park Service — Lincoln Chronology, Lincoln Home NHS: https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/lincolnchronology.htm

• National Archives — Emancipation Proclamation: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/emancipation-proclamation

• National Archives — 13th Amendment: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment

• Library of Congress — Gettysburg Address research guide: https://guides.loc.gov/gettysburg-address/digital-collections

• National Park Service — Confronting a President: Douglass and Lincoln, Frederick Douglass NHS: https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/confronting-a-president-douglass-and-lincoln.htm