The 16th president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln served in office as a Republican from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Winning two terms and guiding the country through the Civil War, Lincoln is widely considering to be one of the greatest presidents in American history.

Born in rural Kentucky to a poor family, Lincoln was a self-educated man who embarked on a career as a lawyer before turning to politics, an endeavor in which he was unsuccessful at first, having failed for his initial bid House of Representatives and the Senate in 1856. Lincoln was a well-known “prairie lawyer” who rode a circuit through the rural parts of Illinois representing all who would hire him.

Politically, Lincoln belonged first to the Whig Party, and after its weakening, to the newly formed Republican Party. Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery in the United States and the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision which ruled that a black man did not have the right to sue in the court because he was not a citizen of the United States.

Lincoln rose to political prominence during a series of seven debates with Democrat Stephen Douglas of Illinois during the 1856 Illinois Senate campaign, and although Lincoln lost this fight, he was nonetheless seen as a viable option for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860.