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He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign. 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 also pressured border states to outlaw slavery, and he promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which upon its ratification abolished slavery. In 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states "in rebellion" to be free. He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland, and he averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. 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. His Gettysburg Address appealed to nationalistic, republican, egalitarian, libertarian, and democratic sentiments. 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 irreconcilable pro-Confederate elements plotted his assassination. His allies, the War Democrats and the Radical Republicans, demanded harsh treatment of the Southern Confederates. Lincoln, a moderate Republican, had to navigate a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from both the Democratic and Republican parties. Following the bombardment, Lincoln mobilized forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the Union. Just over one month after Lincoln assumed the presidency, the Confederate States attacked Fort Sumter, a U.S. During this time the newly formed Confederate States of America began seizing federal military bases in the south. Pro-slavery elements in the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding from the Union. Lincoln ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North to gain victory. He reentered politics in 1854, becoming a leader in the new Republican Party, and he reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen Douglas. In 1849, he returned to his law practice but became vexed by the opening of additional lands to slavery as a result of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky and was raised on the frontier, primarily in Indiana. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War and succeeded in preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. Abraham Lincoln ( / ˈ l ɪ ŋ k ən/ Febru– April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865.