Download The Presidency Abraham Lincoln decided to run

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The Presidency
Abraham Lincoln decided to run for President of the United
States in the election of 1860. He won the Presidency running as the
leader of a brand new political party called the Republicans. Many slave
owners in the south were scared than Lincoln would abolish slavery
because they knew he did not like it and many Republicans were
abolitionists. Many states in the south declared that they were seceding
from the union and creating a new county called the Confederate States
of America. Lincoln said that secession was illegal and Americans fought
a long deadly Civil War from 1860 to 1865. Under Lincoln’s leadership,
the north won the war and America was reunited. Tragically, President
Lincoln was assassinated by a southern actor named John Wilkes Booth
that could not accept the loss.
Lincoln’s body was sent on a long train ride back to Illinois to be
buried. Hundreds of thousands of Americans lined the railways to see
his train and pay their final respects. The people of the United States
are still impacted today by both the life and death of Abraham Lincoln.
He refused to compromise on the issue of union when many other
leaders would have gladly allowed the south to stay separate from the
north. This stronger unified America became a major world power in
the 1900’s. His death lead to a difficult reconstruction period that was
only partially successful. Many of the racial issues of the civil rights
movement could have been settled a hundred years earlier under his
pragmatic leadership.