Abraham Lincoln (photo) was a president who has left his mark on the United States history not only because he was involved in the U.S. Civil War but mainly because he is one of the first to have made laws to improve the black slaves' condition at the time when the triangular trade was booming.

I- Path in life 1) Childhood

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin (photo) in Hardin County, Kentucky (photo), in 1809. He is the son of two uneducated farmers. His father Thomas, a descendant of weavers who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1637, was a pioneer (someone who ventures into unknown territory to settle). On June 12th 1806, Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks. Abraham lived a difficult childhood, following his father through the Indiana wilderness. They moved to the South West of Indiana because of a trial. He had very little formal schooling and was mostly self-educated, with a taste for jokes, hard work, and books. When Lincoln was nine, his 34-year-old mother died. His father married Sarah Bush Johnston, with whom Lincoln became very close.

2) Adulthood

Though Lincoln attended only 18 months of schooling, he was a voracious reader. Abraham Lincoln was soon driven by a desire for social success. He served for a time as a soldier in the Black Hawk War, against the Amerindians. He had various jobs like grocer, mailman ... He do wanted to become lawyer and though books were scarce, at first, he studied law by himself. Lincoln moved to Springfield, in the Illinois, where he became lawyer, and a Republican politician. He married Mary Todd (photo) in Springfeild in 1842. She was from a wealthy slave-holding family in Lexington, Kentucky. They had four boys, only one of them lived to maturity. He began a political career whereas he was not thirty.

II- Politics and struggle against Black Slavery 1) His debut in politics

From 1828, Abraham Lincoln made a journey in the Mississippi - as he was boatman -, he was