Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States.
He successfully led the country through its greatest
internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the
Union and ending slavery. As the war was drawing to a close,
Lincoln became the first American president to be
assassinated. Before his election in 1860 as the first
Republican president, Lincoln 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 U.S. Senate.