Abraham Lincoln once described his childhood as “the short and simple annals of the poor.” Born in a small log cabin in what was then the western frontier, Lincoln fell in love with books at a young age. He studied the law and built a successful law practice in Springfield, Illinois. After winning a seat in the Illinois legislature in 1835, he married Mary Todd, a Southern belle from Lexington, Kentucky.

Lincoln served one term in the U.S. House as a Whig and then became deeply involved with the emerging Republican Party. In 1858, he ran against Stephen Douglas for a U.S. Senate seat and lost. Two years later, he won the presidency. Soon after his election, seven Southern states seceded from the Union in protest.

The Civil War consumed Lincoln. He actively monitored his generals, firing them as he saw fit, until he gave Ulysses S. Grant his successful command of the Union Army. In his varied efforts to end slavery, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, liberating slaves in the Confederate States, then campaigned for the passage of the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery. Wanting to preserve the Union, Lincoln promoted a sympathetic approach to Reconstruction with the defeated Southern states.

In 1864, with the war still raging, Lincoln campaigned for re-election against one of his former generals, George McClellan. Lincoln prevailed, and a month into his second term, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered, ending the war. Just days later, on April 14, 1865, while attending a performance at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.