"All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel-mother."

Iconic American President

Abraham Lincoln

(1809-1865)

Abraham Lincoln served as the 16^th president of the U.S.A. at its most trying time: The American Civil War. One of his most famous speeches is the Gettysburg Address which galvanized the North and helped spur them to victory over the South. In winning this war, Lincoln was able to end slavery by changing the Constitution through the Emancipation Proclamation which gave Black Americans their immediate freedom by guaranteeing the rights of all Americans.

Lincoln grew up on the frontier of the America in Kentucky and Indiana. He was schooled by his mother, Nancy Hanks, who emphasized reading and learning despite having none herself. Unfortunately, she died when Lincoln was merely eight years old and he was devastated. His father remarried Sarah Johnson thereafter and the young Lincoln then had a stepmother who tried to civilize the family by establishing a strong household and home for him to be raised. Although she too was illiterate like his mother, she pushed him to academics and bought books for self-learning. Their relationship became so strong that Lincoln began calling his stepmother his “Angel-mother” and he considered her “his best friend in the world”. When his stepmother was widowed, it was Lincoln that supported her and bought her a homestead.

However, Sarah Johnson did not want her stepson to run for president because she feared something terrible would happen to him. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 in the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Further Reading:

http://www.history.com/news/the-two-mothers-who-molded-lincoln