Abe's Election And Presidency.

Hello! I am just so happy that it is my first full day and I already have 12 followers and 163 people that have visited my new blog.  Thank you to all of you for your support and kindness.  It means a lot.  Now to Abe.

Abe before his whiskers

While he was running for President, a girl around eleven named Grace Bedell wrote him a letter.  She told him to grow a beard. She thought it would help him win the election.  It did.  He was running against Stephen Douglas.  Abe won that election.  On March 4th 1861 he started four years of presidency. 

During the Civil War one of his most famous sayings was "A house divided against itself cannot stand."  In 1863 Abe issued the Emancipation Proclamation which abolished slavery in the United States.  Also in November 1863 he delivered a very famous speech called The Gettysburg Address at Soldier National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA.  Gettysburg was the site of a major battle in the Civil War.  Lincoln spoke about the equality of man and a new birth of freedom.



Five days before his death



Abe ran for a second term as president and he won.   On April 14th 1865, five days after the Civil War ended Lincoln and his wife attended a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C.  While they were watching the play "Our American Cousin", a crazed actor from the south that didn't like President Lincoln snuck into the presidential box after the guard left his post and shot the president in the back of his head.  Everyone thought it was part of the play but it wasn't.  A man in the crowd yelled, "The President is DEAD!"  John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln.  Booth jumped off the box and onto the stage.  He yelled some latin words and ran out the stage door. John had broken his leg from the fall so it was hard to run.  He jumped on his horse and road off.  The men that were searching for him found him in a barn in Maryland.  They set the barn on fire but they decided to get him out. They wouldn't be any better than him if they just let him die.  Unfortunately President Lincoln died on April 15th 1865 because he was badly wounded from being shot.  He was 56 years old.  There was a big memorial for him and his body was brought back to Illinois to be buried in his home town.

Fun fact: Abe's oldest son was saved by John W. Booth's brother. Abe's son fell on the train tracks when a train was coming and Booth's brother saved him.

My next post will be about Abe's actions and what we can learn from them.  Then I will be putting up a poll with the question "Who should I post about next?".