Noun

Singular Abraham Lincoln

Plural Abraham Lincolns

Abraham Lincoln (plural Abraham Lincolns)

1. An emancipator or analogous reformer.
   • 1890, Thomas Wallace Knox, The Boy Travellers in Mexico: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to ..., Harper & brothers:

     (Table of contents, pg. viii) The Abraham Lincoln of Mexico

     (pg. 124-5) He has been called the Washington or the Lincoln of Mexico ; To him Mexico owes the Laws of the Reform and and the concessions that have brought railways into the country and opened it up to commercial relations with the rest of the world.

   • 1908, William Garrison, quoted in Annie Le Porte Diggs, The Story of Jerry Simpson, Jane Simpson (publisher), pg. 252:

     He was greatly beloved and regarded as the Abraham Lincoln of Kansas. When the history of reform is written; when we have a government administered by and for the people let it be said of Jerry Simpson that he gave the best of his life to free labor from the bondage of capital.

   • (Quoted passage) 1995, "Pakistanis silence youthful voice against child labor," 1995, April 1, Chicago Tribune, p. 6, in 2005, William A. Corsaro, The Sociology of Childhood, Pine Forge Press, pg. 25 ISBN 0761987517:

     In a seven-minute acceptance speech, Iqbal said he wanted to become a lawyer "'so he could become the Abraham Lincoln of his people'"

   • 2001, Barbara Olson quoted in Evelyn L. Damore, The Rattle and Hiss of the Tin Gods, iUniverse, ISBN 0595228445, pg. 180:

     In the words of Clinton's openly homosexual advisor David Mixner, 'Clinton became the Abraham Lincoln of our movement'

Derived terms

• Abraham Lincoln hat
• Lincoln rocker

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) 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. 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. As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States, Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president later that year. His tenure in office was occupied primarily with the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. As the civil war was drawing to a close, Lincoln became the first American president to be assassinated.

Lincoln closely supervised the victorious war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including Ulysses S. Grant. Historians have concluded that he handled the factions of the Republican Party well, bringing leaders of each faction into his cabinet and forcing them to cooperate. Lincoln successfully defused the Trent affair, a war scare with Britain, in 1861. Under his leadership, the Union took control of the border slave states at the start of the war. Additionally, he managed his own reelection in the 1864 presidential election.

Copperheads and other opponents of the war criticized Lincoln for refusing to compromise on the slavery issue. Conversely, the Radical Republicans, an abolitionist faction of the Republican Party, criticized him for moving too slowly in abolishing slavery. Even with these road blocks, Lincoln successfully rallied public opinion through his rhetoric and speeches; his Gettysburg Address is but one example of this. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to speedily reunite the nation through a policy of generous reconciliation. His successor in the White House, Andrew Johnson, also wanted reconciliation among white Americans, but failed to protect the rights of newly freed slaves. Abraham Lincoln has consistently been ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.