Abraham Lincoln
Memorial Statue

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) served as the 16th President of the United States and led the nation through the Civil War — the most devastating conflict in American history. Born in a Kentucky log cabin, Lincoln was largely self-educated, teaching himself law from borrowed books. He served as an Illinois state legislator and congressman before winning the presidency in 1860. His election on an anti-slavery-expansion platform prompted the secession of Southern states, triggering the war.

Lincoln's leadership during the Civil War was characterized by pragmatism, eloquence, and a moral evolution on the question of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared enslaved people in Confederate states free, transforming the war's purpose and allowing Black men to serve in the Union Army. Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865 — just days after the effective end of the war — by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.

Oregon was admitted to the Union in 1859, just two years before the Civil War began. As a free state on the Pacific Coast, Oregon supported the Union cause, though it also had its own complicated racial history — its original state constitution banned free Black people from living within its borders. Lincoln memorials across the country, including Oregon, reflect the complex national reckoning with his legacy: simultaneously honored as the Great Emancipator and critiqued for the limitations of his racial views by contemporary standards.