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'Abraham Lincoln was born in rural Kentucky in 1809, to parents of low social standing and little education. During his childhood and early youth, the family would move several times, first to Indiana and later to Illinois. Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, died when Lincoln was still a boy, and the next year his father, Thomas remarried to Sarah Bush Johnston, who helped raise the young Lincoln.
Lincoln got his start in life after a pair of flatboat journeys to New Orleans. Soon afterward, he moved to New Salem, Illinois and set up as a store clerk there. When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832, he became the captain of his volunteer company, serving for three months but seeing no active duty.
Lincoln's first bid for elected office came in that same year, when he ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois state legislature. Two years later, he ran again and was victorious, becoming a fixture of the Whig party in the General Assembly for the next eight years. At the same time, Lincoln's law career began to flourish. He was admitted to the bar in 1837, and moved to Springfield, the new state capital, later that same year.