Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865), 16th president of the United States (1861-1865) and one of the great leaders in American history. A humane, far-sighted statesman in his lifetime, he became a legend and a folk hero after his death. Lincoln rose from humble backwoods origins to become one of the great presidents of the United States. In his effort to preserve the Union during the Civil War, he assumed more power than any preceding president. If necessity …
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…the general store in nearby Gentryville. A neighbor recalled "Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk and crack jokes and tell stories all the time." The Pigeon Creek farm was near the Ohio River, and Lincoln often earned money ferrying passengers and baggage to riverboats waiting in midstream. In 1828, when he was 19, he was hired by the local merchant James Gentry to take a cargo-laden flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans