Lincoln, Abraham BrE AmE
(1809–65) a US politician in the ↑ Republican Party who was President of the US from 1861 to 1865. He won political support in the Northern US states because of his speeches against ↑ slavery , but this made him unpopular in the Southern states, where slaves did most of the farm work. The American ↑ civil war started soon after he became President, when the Southern states decided to leave the US. In 1863 he announced the ↑ Emancipation Proclamation , by which all slaves in the US became free people. He also gave a famous speech known as the ↑ Gettysburg Address in 1863. A few days after the war ended, he was shot and killed in a theatre by an actor called John Wilkes ↑ booth . Lincoln is considered to be one of the most important US presidents, and was sometimes called ‘Honest Abe’ because everyone admired his honesty. His picture appears on the US five-dollar ↑ bill and on the one-cent coin.