text: He managed the factions by exploiting their mutual enmity, carefully distributing political patronage, and by appealing to the American people.Anti-war Democrats (called "Copperheads") despised Lincoln, and some irreconcilable pro-Confederate elements went so far as to plot his assassination.His Gettysburg Address came to be seen as one of the greatest and most influential statements of American national purpose.Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the South's trade.He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere, and averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair.In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states "in rebellion" to be free.It also directed the Army and Navy to "recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons", and to receive them "into the armed service of the United States." Lincoln pressured border states to outlaw slavery, and he promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.Constitution, which abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime.Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign.He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation.On April 14, 1865, just five days after the war's end at Appomattox, he was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Mary, when he was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for his wartime leadership and for his efforts to preserve the Union and abolish slavery.Lincoln is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history.Family and childhood Early life Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky.