Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth President of the United States who led the country through its greatest internal crisis and was assassinated five days after the Confederacy surrendered. Born in a log cabin in Kentucky in 1809, he educated himself through borrowed books, worked as a rail-splitter and storekeeper, taught himself law, and rose through Illinois politics to the presidency in 1860. His management of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address — delivered in 272 words — secured his historical reputation before he was killed in 1865. His aphorisms have the plainness of someone who grew up without resources: always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing; you can fool all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. He was fifty-six years old.