11. Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln became the president of the United States in 1860. His presidency was dominated by the secession of the Confederate States and the United States Civil War which raged from 1861-1865. At first, Lincoln declared that his aim was to preserve the Union but as the war continued on throughout his first term in office, Lincoln took measures to liberate the slaves of the Confederate States still in rebellion.
After the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which stated that all slaves held by the Confederate States still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be, “thenceforward, and forever free.” The Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory in the Civil War ultimately laid the groundwork for the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery in the United States.
Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address at the scene of the battle fought there where so many Americans on both sides lost their lives has gone down in history as one of the greatest speeches ever made by an American president. Ironically, Lincoln’s speech lasted just two minutes and contained only 263 words, but the significance of the words that Lincoln spoke that day still resonate to this day. Referring to the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln alludes to what the founding fathers of America had envisioned in 1776, “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Little over a month after Lincoln’s inauguration for his second term in office, he was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The last known photo of Abraham Lincoln while he was alive was taken on February 5, 1865 at Gardner’s Gallery in Washington D.C. by photographer Alexander Gardner. Gardner took several multiple-lens photographs of the President during the session. This is reportedly the last one taken. The line which runs across the photo which looks like a crease is actually a crack in the glass plate negative.