Abraham Lincoln Born: America's Great Emancipator
Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky with a dirt floor, taught himself to read by firelight, and lost his mother at 9. He failed in business twice, lost eight elections before winning the presidency, and suffered what appears to have been severe clinical depression throughout his adult life. He took office with seven states already seceded. He had no military experience. He fired five generals before he found Grant. The Emancipation Proclamation freed no enslaved people on the day it took effect — its reach was limited to Confederate states where Lincoln had no authority. He was shot on Good Friday, 1865, five days after Lee surrendered. He never saw the end of the war he'd held together.
February 12, 1809
217 years ago
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