Abraham Lincoln (Cinco De Mayo)

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - August 14, 1876) was the 16th President of the United States of America. Lincoln, a moderate Republican, was the President during the War of Southern Independence, and managed the unsuccessful U.S. war effort. Hobbled by incompetent generals and powerful opposition from the rival Democrats after Southern victories in 1862 and European recognition of the Confederacy, Lincoln lost much of his political capital and was forced into reconciling staunchly anti-war Democrats with radicals in his own Republican Party at the Treaty of Baltimore, which nearly failed and reignited war. With a war-weary public rejecting him and his radical running mate John Fremont in 1864 in a landslide loss to New York Governor Horatio Seymour, Lincoln retired to rural Illinois and died in obscurity in 1876 after a comeback attempt as Governor failed in 1870.

Controversial for his suspension of habeas corpus, institution of a draft and imprisonment of enemies of the state, Lincoln oversaw a drastic expansion of the powers of the federal government through land grants, railroad consolidations and the maintenance of a peacetime military after the Treaty of Baltimore. Due to the US losing the civil war, Lincoln is often regarded low in historians' rankings of US Presidents, though his reputation has recovered in recent years due to his reputation as a skilled politician and his skillful management of the war in its early days until the threat of French intervention emerged. Many of his policies and ideas became entrenched in the Republican platform, and survived as the Republicans would control the U.S. House uninterrupted through 1892.