4015 - Cincinati, Ohio, United States

Abraham Lincoln is considered by many American historians to be the best of the American presidents. He was the 16th president and took office at a time when the country was ready to split apart. The split had been coming for a couple of decades before but Lincoln's election victory in 1861 sparked many of the southern slave states to secede from the United States, calling themselves the Confederate States of America (CSA). The CSA then attacked Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Virginia, and American military fort, which started the American Civil War. 

Lincoln was "hands on" during the American Civil War, closely supervising strategy and tactics laid out by his generals. He implemented a naval blockade of CSA ports. Lincoln avoided war with Great Britain during the Trent Affair - when two Confederate envoys were captured on British Royal Mail steamers. 

On 1 January 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves in the states "in rebellion" to be free. On 19 November 1863, he delivered the Gettysburg Address, which is considered to be the most famous speeches in American history. He promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which would eventually abolish slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate in April 1864, by the House of Representatives in January 1965, and ratified after Lincoln's death in December 1865.

Lincoln was re-elected in 1865, with Andrew Jackson as his vice-president. On 14 April 1865, five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, Lincoln was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. During the performance, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the head, fatally wounding him. He would die nine hours later.