Abraham Lincoln

Sinks into a depression so severe his friends hide his razors. He calls it "the hypo." He writes to his law partner: "I am now the most miserable man living." He is 31. He will battle these episodes the rest of his life, sometimes unable to work for weeks.

Receives a patent for a device to lift boats over shoals using inflatable bellows. He whittled the model himself. No one ever built the thing, but he remains the only U.S. president to hold a patent.

Delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, accepting the Republican nomination for Senate. "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." He loses the Senate race to Stephen Douglas. He wins something bigger: a national audience.

Elected president with just 40% of the popular vote in a four-way race. He isn't even on the ballot in ten Southern states. Within weeks of his election, South Carolina votes to secede.

Signs the Emancipation Proclamation. It frees enslaved people only in Confederate states, where Lincoln has no enforcement power. It frees no one in border states loyal to the Union. But it transforms the war. Union soldiers are now fighting to end slavery, and 180,000 Black men will enlist before the war ends.

Delivers the Gettysburg Address. Two hundred and seventy-two words. The main speaker that day, Edward Everett, talked for two hours. Lincoln spoke for two minutes. Everett later wrote to him: "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

Shot by John Wilkes Booth while watching Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. The bullet entered behind his left ear. He never regained consciousness. He died the next morning at 7:22 a.m. in a boarding house across the street, in a bed too short for his frame. His Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, reportedly said: "Now he belongs to the ages."

Pushes the 13th Amendment through the House of Representatives. The Senate passed it months ago. The House is the fight. He twists arms, trades favors, makes promises. The amendment abolishing slavery passes by two votes. He calls it "the great event of the nineteenth century."

The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. Thirty-six columns, one for each state in the Union at the time of his death. Robert Todd Lincoln, his only surviving son, attends the ceremony. He is 78 years old.