Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, racism, mental illness, and addiction.

Abraham Lincoln was born to a poor family in Virginia. When he was eight years old, his family relocated to Indiana. Despite living a physically demanding life on the farm, Lincoln took the time to teach himself how to read and write. He became a lawyer and entered politics, but he was also “prone to bouts of deep depression” (129). He married Mary Todd, a woman who was “intelligent, eccentric, and self-absorbed” (129).

Lincoln began his political career as a Whig. After the collapse of the Whig Party, Lincoln joined the new Republican Party. His physical appearance was described by some as ugly. However, he was a talented speaker, and a speech in New York on the issue of slavery gave Lincoln national fame. In 1860, he was elected as president. He and his vice president, an anti-slavery politician from Maine named Hannibal Hamlin, won in a landslide in the Northern states, while votes from the Southern states were split between two other candidates. In response to Lincoln’s electoral victory, South Carolina seceded from the United States on December 20, 1860.

Mary Todd was viewed with suspicion in Washington because she came from a Southern family in Kentucky that enslaved people.