Abraham Lincoln

(Hodgenville, EE UU, 1809 - Washington, 1865)
American politician. Abraham Lincoln was born into a family of Quaker settlers. During his childhood and youth, marked by poverty of his family,traveled the Mississippi and lived from about the inhumane conditions endured by black slaves.

Abraham Lincoln was twenty years old when he left the farm where he worked to fight as a soldier in the waragainst the Indians. Meanwhile, he began his self-taught and achieved around 1836 graduating law. Two years earlier, his attitude against slavery had led him to intervene in politics, earning him hiselection as Member of Illinois for the period 1834-1842. Through its defense of better living conditions for blacks and his eloquence, achieved great popularity across the state.

In 1846 Lincolnreached Whig party leader, and as a Member of Congress supported the abolitionist federal Washington. However, his determined opposition to the war against Mexico, to be completed territories obtainedAlta California, New Mexico, northern Sonora, Coahuila and Tamaulipas and the annexation of Texas, he lost a lot of votes, and failed in the 1849 Senate elections. Disappointed, Lincoln retired frompolitics and worked for six years as a prosecutor. His return to public life came in 1854, when the issue of slavery came to political following the Kansas-Nebraska Act advocate extended to thenorthwestern states. Although he initially supported the abolition of slavery in the states where it already existed, especially in the South, opposed to instaurase in those where it was not warranted.Particularly famous for the vehemence of his word and the strength of their arguments was antislavery speech Peoria, in 1854.

Committed to the cause against slavery, Lincoln joined the Republican Partytwo years later. Defeated again in the Senate elections of 1858, the intensity of the anti-slavery campaign and dialectical duels he had with the Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, elected on the occasion,...