When thinking of American presidents, Abraham Lincoln often comes to mind. Whether for his top hat, the Civil War, or his regrettable assassination at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., Lincoln remains one of the most memorable presidents our country has ever known.

Shortly after Lincoln became the sixteenth president of the United States in 1860, the Confederacy formed. It was a collection of Southern states who left the Union because of the tensions between the North and the South related to economic differences and slavery. Lincoln made it his top priority during his presidency to bring the Union back to its former borders.

Mrs. Faris, Bob Jones’s AP US History teacher, says that Abraham Lincoln “was president during our nation’s most difficult time,” and he “took the opportunity to abolish slavery.” Not only did he win the Civil War for the Union and pave the way for bringing the Confederate states back; Lincoln also made significant progress in African American rights. Starting with the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he made sure that the slaves in America would be freed. His reconstruction plans made the U.S. an officially freed nation.

During black history month, it is important to honor President Lincoln for all that he did for this country and for the United States’s African American citizens, whose predecessors were freed from bondage by him. Mrs. Faris says that we “honor him for saving the Union,” and “ending the horrible institution of slavery despite the cost,” the cost being his life.