Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born in a Kentucky log cabin, had less than a year of schooling, taught himself law, and served one term in Congress before the debates with Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Senate race made him a national figure. Elected president in 1860, he led the Union through the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and was shot five days after Lee’s surrender. The Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural are the shortest great political prose in English; the lists read them with the debates to see the argument about slavery and the Union at full length.