Abraham Lincoln , a self-taught lawyer, legislator and vocal opponent of slavery, was elected 16th president of the United States in November , shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. His family moved to southern Indiana in In , his family moved to Macon County in southern Illinois , and Lincoln got a job working on a river flatboat hauling freight down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.
After settling in the town of New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a shopkeeper and a postmaster, Lincoln became involved in local politics as a supporter of the Whig Party , winning election to the Illinois state legislature in Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay and Daniel Webster , Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery to the territories, and had a grand vision of the expanding United States, with a focus on commerce and cities rather than agriculture.
Did you know? The war years were difficult for Abraham Lincoln and his family. After his young son Willie died of typhoid fever in , the emotionally fragile Mary Lincoln, widely unpopular for her frivolity and spendthrift ways, held seances in the White House in the hopes of communicating with him, earning her even more derision.
Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar examination in The following year, he moved to the newly named state capital of Springfield. For the next few years, he worked there as a lawyer and served clients ranging from individual residents of small towns to national railroad lines. Lincoln won election to the U.
House of Representatives in and began serving his term the following year. As a congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with many Illinois voters for his strong stance against the Mexican-American War. Promising not to seek reelection, he returned to Springfield in Events conspired to push him back into national politics, however: Douglas, a leading Democrat in Congress, had pushed through the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than the federal government, had the right to decide whether the territory should be slave or free.
