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Abraham Lincoln: United States
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Lincoln ... signed legislation entitled the National Banking Act, which established a national currency for the whole country, not a different kind of money for each state like there used to be. It also provided for the creation of a network of national banks. Before this act, each state had its own currency and banks. This act is still in effect to this day. In addition to the National Banking Act, Lincoln signed tariff legislation that offered protection to large industries in the U.S. and signed a bill that chartered the first transcontinental railroad. This railroad helped the North to bring supplies to the areas where they were needed and it gave the Northern army another type of transportation.
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Warned by his law partner, William Herndon, that the damage was mounting and irreparable, Lincoln decided not to run for reelection. His statements were not easily forgotten, and would haunt him during the Civil War. These statements were ... held against him when he applied for a position in the new Taylor administration. Instead, Taylor's people offered Lincoln various positions in the remote Oregon Territory, primarily the governorship. Acceptance of this offer would have ended his career in the rapidly growing state of Illinois, so Lincoln declined the position. Returning to Springfield, Lincoln gave up politics for several years and turned his energies to his law practice.
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Lincoln's political career began in 1832 when he lost an election for the Illinois state legislature. Nevertheless, he was elected on the Whig ticket and served in the lower house from 1834-1842. In 1837, Lincoln passed the Illinois Bar and became a lawyer (he taught himself law). He became partner in a law firm in Springfield. Five years later, Lincoln married Mary Todd, and the couple had four sons. Lincoln's reputation as a skillful lawyer grew, and in 1846, he was appointed to the House of Representatives.
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Lincoln was born on Feb. 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Hardin (now Larue) County, Ky. Indians had killed his grandfather, Lincoln wrote, "when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest" in 1786; this tragedy left his father, Thomas Lincoln, "a wandering laboring boy" who "grew up, literally without education." Thomas... became a skilled carpenter and purchased three farms in Kentucky before the Lincolns left the state. Little is known about Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Abraham had an older sister, Sarah, and a younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy.
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In the campaign of 1848, Lincoln labored strenuously for the nomination and election of Gen. Zachary Taylor. He served on the Whig National Committee, attended the national convention at Philadelphia, and made campaign speeches. With the Whig national ticket victorious, he hoped to share with Baker the control of federal patronage in his home state. The juiciest plum that had been promised to Illinois was the position of commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington. After trying vainly to reconcile two rival candidates for this office, Lincoln tried to obtain it for himself. But he had little influence with the new administration.
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By the mid-1850s, Lincoln's caseload focused largely on the competing transportation interests of river barges and railroads. In one prominent 1851 case, he represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad in a dispute with a shareholder, James A. Barret. Barret had refused to pay the balance on his pledge to the railroad on the grounds that it had changed its originally planned route. Lincoln argued that as a matter of law a corporation is not bound by its original charter when that charter can be amended in the public interest, that the newer route proposed by Alton & Sangamon was superior and less expensive, and that accordingly, the corporation had a right to sue Barret for his delinquent payment. He won this case, and the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court was eventually cited by several other courts throughout the United States.[11]
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