Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led the United States through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. Before his election in 1860 as the first Republican president, Lincoln, reared in a family of modest means and mostly self-educated, had been a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and twice an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate. Lincoln was a dedicated, though often necessarily absent, husband, and father of four children. As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States, Lincoln won the Republican nomination and was elected president in 1860. His tenure in office was immersed in the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Six days after the large-scale surrender of Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee, Lincoln became the first American president to be assassinated.
