Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865) was the 16th (1861-1865) President of the United States, and the first President from the Republican Party. He has often been praised for successfully restoring the federal unity of the nation by defeating the secessionist Confederate States of America in the U.S. Civil War and along the way, playing in an important role in ending chattel slavery in the United States. However, a number of states' rights supporters view Lincoln as a tyrant who suspended civil liberties and secrecy of the ballot, had anti-war protesters, including women and children, executed, and suppressed the legitimate right to secede for which Lincoln himself had argued in 1848. Other critics emphasize Lincoln's white-supremacist beliefs (see Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858) and official support for slavery.

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( Original text from the article in Wikipedia,The Free Encyclopedia: Abraham Lincoln)

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