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Read the following about the historical figures Abraham Lincoln, and then write an essay about him.

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12th, 1809, in a one-room log cabin on a farm near Hodgeville, Kentucky, a state allowing slavery at the time. When he was just nine years old, his mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln died. A year later his father, Thomas Lincoln, remarried a woman named Sarah Bush, who had a tremendous influence on the young ten-year-old.

In order to support his family, he had to work at a neighboring farm so he never had the opportunity to go to school. The amount of formal education he received totaled less than a year. Although his formal education was minimal, his self-education was only just beginning.

He was an avid reader and by studying grammar, he acquired sound reading and writing skills. He discovered the rhythm and cadence of language. In speeches before the New Salem debating club, he honed his orator’s voice. In law and in politics, he discovered the vehicles through which his passion for language could be engaged and in which his talent could emerge.

He lost his first job as a clerk in Denton Offutt’s store. Shortly thereafter, Offut’s business enterprise collapsed. In 1833, he and partner, William Berry, purchase another local store. This store fails leaving other partners in debt. He spent the next seventeen years of his life paying off the money he borrowed from friends to start his own business.

In 1832, in his first campaign for the state legislature, he finished eighth out of thirteen candidates. In a campaign document, he stated that if he were to lose, he “was too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.”

In 1835 he was engaged to be married, but his sweetheart died and his heart was broken. In 1836, at the age of twenty-five, he had a nervous breakdown and spent six months confined to his bed.

The middle part of his life was spent in Springfield, Illinois. There he became a successful lawyer and made a brief foray into national politics.He still faced identity issues. He broke off his engagement to Mary Todd and, as a result, experienced profound depression. However, a year later he reconnected with Mary. He went on to marry her in November of 1842. He and Mary eventually had four children.

In 1836, he won election to Congress. After his term ended, he spent the next five years focusing on his law practice. In 1854, he came back to the political arena. One of the first things he did was to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which threatened to extend slavery to other states.

In 1855 he ran for the Senate but was defeated. The next year he ran for vice President and was also defeated.

Nonetheless, his years of persistence and hard work eventually paid off. In 1860, he was elected as the sixteenth President of the United States of America. However, failure characterized the first two years of his Presidency. The radicals pushed him to declare emancipation as a war issue. The conservatives tried to prevent him from making such a declaration. As a result, his party suffered losses in the mid-term elections.

Gradually, Abraham Lincoln grew into the President who saved America. But even in the summer of 1864, influential members of his party asked him to resign as the nominee for the November election. In August 1864, he wrote a sealed memorandum and sent it to his cabinet stating that, in all likelihood, he would be defeated. It wasn’t until his re-election that the issue of his continuing leadership was firmly resolved.

The one thing that set Abraham Lincoln apart from the ordinary man was that he possessed a powerful attitude of great perseverance. He chose an attitude that would never allow him to quit. That is why he will always be listed among the greatest leaders the world has ever known