Abraham Lincoln: a life

"I have seen a good deal of the back side of this world" : childhood in Kentucky (1809-1816)

"I used to be a slave" : boyhood and adolescence in Indiana (1816-1830)

"Separated from his father, he studied English grammar" : New Salem (1831-1834)

"A Napoleon of astuteness and political finesse" : frontier legislator (1834-1837)

"We must fight the devil with fire" : slasher-gaff politico in Springfield (1837-1841)

"It would just kill me to marry Mary Todd" : courtship and marriage (1840-1842)

"I have got the preacher by the balls" : pursuing a seat in Congress (1843-1847)

"A strong but judicious enemy to slavery" : Congressman Lincoln (1847-1849)

"I was losing interest in politics and went to the practice of law with greater earnestness than ever before" : mid-life crisis (1849-1854)

"Aroused as he had never been before" : reentering politics (1854-1855)

"Unite with us, and help us to triumph" : building the Illinois Republican Party (1855-1857)

"A house divided" : Lincoln vs. Douglas (1857-1858)

"A David greater than the Democratic Goliath" : The Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858)

That presidential grub gnaws deep : pursuing the Republican nomination (1859-1860)

"The most available presidential candidate for unadulterated Republicans" : The Chicago convention (May 1860)

"I have been elected mainly on the cry 'honest old Abe'" : the presidential campaign (May-November 1860)

"I will suffer death before i will consent to any concession or compromise" : president-elect in Springfield (1860-1861)

"What If I appoint Cameron, whose very name stinks in the nostrils of the people for his corruption?" : Cabinet-making in Springfield (1860-1861)

"The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am, but it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly" : From Springfield to Washington (February 11-22, 1861)

"I am now going to be master" : inauguration (February 23-March 4, 1861)

"A man so busy letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning in the other": distributing patronage (March-April 1861)

"You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors" : the Fort Sumter Crisis (March-April 1861)

"I intend to give blows" : the hundred days (April-July 1861)

Sitzkrieg : the phony war (August 1861-January 1862)

"This damned old house" : The Lincoln family in the executive mansion

"I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till i die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me" : From the Slough of Despond to the gates of Richmond (January-July, 1862)

"The hour comes for dealing with slavery" : playing the last trump card (January-July 1862)

"Would you prosecute the war with elder-stalk squirts, charged with rose water?" : The soft war turns hard (July-September 1862)

"I am not a bold man, but i have the knack of sticking to my promises!" : The Emancipation Proclamation (September-December 1862)

"Go forward, and give us victories" : from the mud march to Gettysburg (January-July 1863)

"The signs look better" : victory at the polls and in the field (July-November 1863)

"I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause" : Reconstruction and renomination (November 1863-June 1864)

"Hold on with a bulldog grip and chew and choke as much as possible" : the grand offensive (May-August 1864)

"The wisest radical of all" : reelection (September-November 1864)

"Let the thing be pressed" : victory at last (November 1864-April 8, 1865)

"This war is eating my life out; I have a strong impression that i shall not live to see the end" : (April 9-15, 1865).