At age 7, he shoots a wild turkey but is so remorseful he never hunts game again. When Abraham was young he was kicked in the head by a horse and for a brief time is thought to be dead. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War in fighting the Sauk and Fox Indians. His strong urge to educate and succeed in life was a benefit to him in later years. Lincoln was strongly against slavery and wanted to limit the expansion of slavery in the west from the new territories acquired from Mexico in 1850. Lincoln thought secession was not lawful, and was would to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called for 75,000 volunteers. Soon after four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union.

The Civil War had officially begun. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, that declared forever free the slaves within the Confederacy. What began as a war to preserve the Union escalated into a battle for freedom and a war to end slavery. During Lincoln's term he left the nation a more perfect Union and in doing so earned the love and respect of most Americans as the country's greatest president. Among his personal tragedies Lincoln also suffered great loss over the death of his son and the deteriorating mental condition of his wife, Mary. In his Gettysburg Address, that was given after the Battle of Gettysburg, is acknowledged to be one of the great speeches in American history. On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, who believed he was helping the South.