The Life And Characteristics Of Abraham Lincoln's Life

One would think that a successful, talented, and principled human being like Abraham Lincoln would have been born into the “ideal” life: with a sliver spoon in his mouth and slept in a cradle made of pure gold. However, the sixteenth president’s childhood was far from ideal. It is astonishing how a man who faced such adversity as a child became one of the most influential people in the history of the United States and guided the country through one of it’s darkest times. Losing both his mother, brother, and sister at a young age, being abandoned by his father who he had a horrible relationship with, and having very little education are all circumstances and events that shaped Abraham Lincoln into one of the most effective and successful leaders …show more content…
Losing three significant family members made Abraham Lincoln a compassionate, resilient, and empathetic human being, and we see these characteristics come up in his later life in all of his decisions as a leader. He shows his compassionate and empathetic personality when he wrote a letter of condolence to Fanny McCullough, a young girl who had lost her father in the civil war. In the letter he said, “It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father, and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases…” Losing his mother to milk sickness, a fatal ailment whose victims suffered dizziness, nausea, and an irregular heartbeat before slipping into a coma , his older sister, who died in childbirth, and his younger brother during infancy were all events that gave Abraham Lincoln a sense of resilience. He shows his resilience throughout the rest of his adulthood. This characteristic became a valuable one to have during his lifetime. Despite having lost his first election to enter congress, his election to be vice president in 1856, and his bid for political office, Lincoln refused to give up and in the end became the sixteenth president of the United States, and one of the world’s most influential …show more content…
To make the situation even more arduous, Lincoln and Thomas Lincoln, his father, had a horrible relationship. This atrocious relationship with his father taught Lincoln to be independent and also motivated him to get an education, since his father never did. Abraham Lincoln’s father was a rough carpenter who never got an education or learned how to read. His father also left him months after his mother died to go searching for another wife. There was one legacy that Thomas left his son, and that was the gift of storytelling. “Young Abe listened so intensely to these stories, crafted from experiences of every day life, that in other words were embedded in his memory.” This gift of storytelling served Lincoln in the future because it developed his orator talents. This served him well considering all of the speeches he had to give throughout his career as a member of the House of Representatives, and, of course, as president of the United States. The awful relationship he had with his father also gave Lincoln motivation to be better than his father ever was. Lincoln used this motivation to drive him to become a successful man. This incomparable drive and determination pushed Abraham Lincoln to become the impressive, effective, and successful leader he was. Despite the terrible relationship between the two, Lincoln’s father taught him two crucial life values, motivation and determination, and one crucial life skill,