Abraham Lincoln Assassinio John Wilkes Cabina

Born in a log cabin, Lincoln grew up on the frontier (mainly in Spencer County, Indiana) in a poor family. Self-educated, he became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U. S. Congressman from Illinois. In 1849, he left government to resume his law practice, but angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act's opening of the prairie lands to slavery, reentered politics in 1854. He became a leader in the new Republican Party and gained national attention in the 1858 debates against national Democratic leader Stephen Douglas in the U. S Senate campaign in Illinois. He then ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North and winning. Southern pro-slavery elements took his win as proof that the North was rejecting the constitutional rights of Southern states to practice slavery. They began the process of seceding from the union. To secure its independence, the new Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter, one of the few U. S. forts in the South. Lincoln called up volunteers and militia to suppress the rebellion and restore the Union.