Lincoln: From Hick to Hero
1860 AD
1860 1860
77.04W38.45N
MISC

WASHINGTON, D.C.
	Abraham Lincoln is remembered as one of the United States' greatest presidents, but that wasn't what people thought of him during the Civil War.
	Then he was an amateur, a hick, a tyrant and a bungler. Not only did Southerners hate him, many Northerners did as well. They were sick of the slaughter of the Civil War. There were riots in the cities and it was very likely Lincoln would have been thrown out of office by a peace candidate. If not for General William Sherman's capture of Atlanta just before the presidential election, the United States might have become two countries.
	Though it is well known that Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin and was mostly self-educated, he did not jump from the cabin to the presidency.
	By the time he became president he was a successful lawyer with a high income. He had served in the Illinois State Legislature, the House of Representatives and Senate. He become particularly prominent through his slavery debates with William Douglas.
	Lincoln was tall and -- many thought -- rather homely. He even joked about it. When accused of being two-faced, he replied: "I leave it to my audience, If I had two faces, do you think I would wear this one?" 	In 1860 Lincoln was selected as the presidential candidate of the Republican Party. Though he won the election by carrying every Northern state, the South was furious at his anti-slavery beliefs and withdrew from the Union. Lincoln tried to prevent a war between the North and South, but when Confederate forces in South Carolina fired upon the Union-held Fort Sumter, the Civil War began.
	After the battle of Antietam, Lincoln announced his Emancipation Proclamation, which announced that slaves in the breakaway southern states were free.
	Fearing that his proclamation would be overturned by legal means after the war, he pushed through a constitutional amendment to ban slavery forever, which was ratified in 1865.
	Shortly before the fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, Lincoln had a disturbing dream. In it he wandered around the White House and heard people sobbing, but went from room to room and saw nobody. Then, in the East Room he saw a corpse surrounded by guards. "Who is dead in the White House?" he asked a soldier. "The President," he replied. Lincoln awoke and didn't get more sleep that night.
	On April 14, 1865, just five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered, Lincoln and his wife, Mary, were watching the comedy "Our American Cousin" at Ford Theater in Washington, when John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer, came into his box and shot him in the back of the head. The funeral was held in the East Room of White House.