ABRAHAM LINCOLN
1861 - 1865
Arizona Timeline
1861 - Civil War begins and U. S. Military posts are abandoned in the Arizona portion of the New Mexico Territory.
1863 - Fort Mojave is re- garrisoned by two companies of Fourth California Volunteers. John Moss discovers a rich gold deposit near Oatman.
1863 - Arizona segregated from New Mexico Territory and Mohave County is one of the first counties to be established.
1864 - The incorporation of the Mohave and Prescott Toll Road is approved by the Legislative Assembly.
1864 - Territorial capital moves from its provisional site at Camp Whipple to Prescott. John N. Goodwin is the first territorial governor.
Abraham Lincoln was born in
Kentucky in 1809. He had little
formal schooling, but taught
himself to read. He worked as a
storekeeper, rail splitter, and
surveyor. He entered politics in
1834, practiced law for twenty
years, and joined the Republican
party in 1855.
Mary Todd Lincoln was born in
1818 in Kentucky. She was an
attractive young woman, just 5
feet 2 inches tall to Lincoln's 6
feet 4 inches. She met Abraham
Lincoln in 1838 in Springfield,
Illinois, where she had gone to
live with her sister. They were
married in 1842. They had four
sons; only Robert Todd lived to
adulthood.
President Abraham Lincoln gained national prominence in 1858 in a series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas. He was elected president in 1860,
before the start of the Civil War, and from the outset made it clear he believed the national government had the power to preserve the Union. He soon
realized the war could not be ended without freeing of the slaves. Re- elected in 1864, he urged leniency toward the South. On April 14, 1865, he was
shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, and died the next morning.
Mary Todd Lincoln was a misunderstood and tragic figure. Her marriage was often turbulent and unhappy, but Lincoln was known to say he had never
fallen out of love with her. During the Civil War, she was scorned by southerners as a traitor and suspected by northerners of treason. Lincoln's
assassination shattered Mary Lincoln and she never recovered. She died in 1881 in Springfield.
Mohave Museum - U.S. Presidents and the History of Arizona
