Abraham Lincoln, Emancipator: Quartz Character

The real history

Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, as the nation's first Republican president. Many Southerners saw his victory, decided by the votes of the free states, as a final blow, and seven states of the lower South seceded before he even took office. In his inaugural address he said he would not interfere with slavery where it already existed, but that secession was illegal.

The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers, and four more states left to join the Confederacy. Four border slave states stayed in the Union.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It declared enslaved people in the areas still in rebellion free, though it left out the loyal border states and parts of the South already under Union control. It also opened the Union Army to Black men as regular soldiers, and nearly 200,000 African Americans fought for the Union by the war's end.

Lincoln worried that courts might overturn a wartime order after the fighting stopped. After winning reelection in November 1864, he used the full power of his office to push a constitutional amendment through the House, which approved it on January 31, 1865. Ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment ended slavery everywhere in the United States.

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Five days later, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington. The president died at 7:22 the next morning.

Sources

1. Abraham Lincoln: Key Events, Miller Center, University of Virginia
2. Abraham Lincoln: Life in Brief, Miller Center, University of Virginia
3. 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Primary Documents in American History, Library of Congress

Checked against these sources on October 2, 2026. Spot a mistake? Report an error. How we check facts.