Meet the Author
Abraham Lincoln
American · 1809–1865 · 16th President of the United States
Portrait: Alexander Gardner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The 16th president, a largely self-taught lawyer who wrote his own speeches and made them short, plain, and exact.
2 StoryBites Editions2 Speeches & essays
Why read Abraham Lincoln?
Lincoln wrote his own speeches, and he could say a great deal in very few words. The Gettysburg Address runs under 300 words, yet it recasts the Civil War as a test of whether a nation built on equality can last. His Second Inaugural goes further, treating the war as a judgment on the whole country for slavery before closing ‘with malice toward none, with charity for all.’
A life in six dates
- 1809Born near Hodgenville, Kentucky
- 1846Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois
- 1858Debates Stephen Douglas in the Illinois race for the U.S. Senate
- 1860Elected president
- 1863Delivers the Gettysburg Address
- 1865Delivers his Second Inaugural Address
- 1865Dies after being shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Themes across the collection
The StoryBites Editions
Context that actually matters
The Civil WarBoth speeches on StoryBites come from the war years, when the survival of the Union and the end of slavery were still in question.
The Gettysburg cemeteryLincoln spoke at the dedication of a cemetery for Union soldiers months after the July 1863 battle, following a two-hour oration by Edward Everett.
The Emancipation ProclamationIssued on January 1, 1863, it declared enslaved people in the rebelling states free and changed what the war was being fought for.