Sample Fifth-Graders' Cooperative Biography

The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln

A Cooperative Biography Written by Kelsey A. Florence, Peter J. Goldman, Dana M. Goverman, Molly C. Mulally, and Craig T. Waterhouse

Fifth Graders at Lake Ridge Elementary School, Paradise Island, Washington

Dedications

Kelsey dedicates this book to Abraham Lincoln and Bugs Bunny.

Peter dedicates this book to Abraham Lincoln and his family. Peter also dedicates this to his own family.

Dana dedicates this book to her family.

Molly dedicates this book to the Whales Foundation.

Craig dedicates this book to the city of Mercer Island.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Early Life, by Molly Mulally

Chapter Two: Family Life, by Craig Waterhouse

Chapter Three: Law and Political Life, by Peter Goldman

Chapter Four: Presidential Life, by Kelsey Florence

Chapter Five: Death and What His Life Means to Us, by Dana Goverman

Chapter One: Early Life

On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks gave birth to a baby boy. Thomas Lincoln, father, and Nancy Hanks named the boy Abraham, for his grandfather. He was born in a one-room cabin in Hodgenville, Kentucky. Most people called him "Abe" but Abraham hated it.

When he was two years old, he moved with his family to Knob Creek Farm. His first teachers were at Knob Creek Farm. The school-teachers were very strict. Children didn't go to school a lot. They went a couple of weeks a year. The schools were called "blab" school, because the children just shouted out their lessons. Abraham's first teacher was Zachariah Riney. Abraham never forgot him, because he was so strict. Fair, but strict.

He moved again when he was eight years old with his family to Little Pigeon Creek. There he was old enough and strong enough to hold an axe. Dennis Hanks was Abraham's cousin, and he was the first boy that Abraham had ever seen.

Soon, Abraham's mother, Nancy, died of mild sicknesss. Abraham helped build his mother's coffin out of cherry wood. Thomas went back to Kentucky to find a new wife. He finally married Sarah Bush Johnston, who had three children of her own.

Whenever you saw him, Abraham was always reading a book. He borrowed books and newspapers to read.

When Abraham was seventeen, he left home and went to work as a ferryman's helper. A year later his sister died while giving birth to her first child. So now you know a little bit about Abraham Lincoln's early life.

Chapter Two: Family Life

When Abraham was twenty-one he moved away to New Salem, Illinois, from his family in Indiana. He arrived in July 1831. He got a job chopping wood and other jobs he was good at. Then he got a job at the general store in New Salem. He liked this job because he had lots of time to read because the store wasn't busy. One day Jack Armstrong, the town wrestling champion, challenged Abraham to a match, Abraham won. The general store went out of business.

A war agaist Chief Black Hawk started. Abraham joined the militia for three months but never sighted any Indians, only mosquitos.

Abraham decided to start a general store with his friend William Berry. The store soon went belly-up. Then William Berry died and left Abe with $1,100 in debts. He had lots of different jobs but it still took him fifteen years to pay off the debts. He became the post-master of New Salem. People began to call him Honest Abe, which he hated. He moved to Vandalia, the capital of Illinois, because of his job. Then he had to move to Springfield, which was the new capital of Illinois. Abraham was lonely.

After living in Springfield for a short while, Abraham was trying to get out of a current romance with Mary Owens. Abraham was rejected. Soon Abraham met Mary Todd and knew he shouldn't marry her, yet he couldn't withstand her. But on January 7, 1841, Abraham broke the engagement with Mary Todd. On November 4, 1842, Abe and Mary Todd were married. Nine months later, their first son, Robert, was born in 1943. Then Eddie was born in 1846. Then Willie was born in 1850. Abraham liked him the most. Eddie died in Springfield at the age of four. But soon after than, the last child, Tad, was born in 1853. In 1862, Willie died at the White House at age eleven. Then Tad died in Chicago. Soon after Lincoln's assassination, Mary Todd went insane because of all the deaths, and her son Robert put her in a mental institute for a couple of months.

Chapter Three: Law and Political Life

Abraham Lincoln was a very happy man when it came to his law and political life. He started out by borrowing law books from John T. Stuart, he future law partner. He studied them for two years and then was ready. When he moved from New Salem to Springfield, he rode into town on a borrowed horse and had $7 in his pocket. He was a junior partner to Stuart and slept on a couch in their law office.

Then he met Joshua Speed, who offered to share a room above his general store. Speed's store was a kind of meeting place for men to come and swap stories and argue politics. One of those men was Stephen R. Douglas.

Once he and Lincoln started talking, they both knew that they were rivals. Lincoln was a Whig and Douglas, a Democrat. The Whigs were a group that soon died down and became Republicans. Lincoln wanted to get ahead of Douglas a lot.

In law his partner taught him how to talk in court because all he knew was what was in thebooks. Soon Lincoln and Stuart were very busy. In politics he rose in the Whig party and got reelected to legislature four times. He also started coaching Young Whigs. Douglas was also coaching: Young Democrats. After about five years, he started his own law office and invited a young man to be his junior partner. That man was William Herndon.

Back to politics. Lincoln got elected to a seat in the House of Representatives in 1846. He took his wife, Mary, and their two sons, Robert and Eddie, to Washington. But soon Mary decided that she was bored and unhappy in Washington D.C. After three months, she stuffed her suitcase and she, plus the two boys, moved in with her family until Lincoln's term was over. He constantly wrote to them so they wouldn't forget him. After his term, which was a disappointment, the Whigs tried to get him out in a nice way. It worked. Now Lincoln was out of politics for the time. He was a full-time lawyer. But the worst wasn't over yet. Eddie, their second son, grew very ill for two months, then died. Mary shut herself in her room for weeks and Lincoln buried himself in his work.

Lincoln and Herndon, his partner, both didn't care about neatness so you could find orange seeds sprouting in dusty corners of the office. But they were neat enough to handle one hundred cases a year. Lincoln was now one of the most sought-after attorneys in the state and mastered every detail before going to court. He was a very good lawyer and always addressed the court with wit and humor. When he was picking a jury he would try to pick fat men because he believed they were jolly and easily swayed. He could also translate the most complicated sentence into the simplest terms.

Chapter Four: Presidential Life

On November 6, 1860, fifty-one-year-old Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln had 1,865,593 votes, Douglas had 1,382,713 votes, and Breckinridge had 848,356 votes. A young girl named Grace Bedell suggested that Abraham should grow a beard, and he did.

March 4, 1861: Lincoln took the oath of office that day in front of the unfinished U.S. Capitol. Washington looked like an armed camp. All morning the cavalry and artillery had been clattering through the streets. Troops were scattered everywhere. There were rumors of assassination plots. The southern plans were to seize the capital and prevent the inauguration. That had put the army on alert. Lincoln was nervous. He wore a black suit and held a silk stovepipe hat in one hand. Lincoln was a six-foot-four-inch, 180-pound, black-haired, absentminded, high-pitched-voiced man who told jokes or anecdotes to people when they called or visited him.

Lincoln, who was the tallest president, ranks as one of the greatest leaders in American history. He was the first U.S. president born outside of the thirteen original colonies. The schooling he had added all together was a little more than one year. The rest of it he taught himself. He was a most eloquent speaker. Also he was the finest writer of all the presidents. A couple of names tha people called him were Savior of the Union and the Great Emancipator. Lincoln, who was against slavery since he was a little boy and saw a slave auction, signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 that freed all the slaves. They were to be freed on January 1, 1863, in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.

The Civil War started right after Lincoln became president. When Abraham and Mary moved into the White House, they moved in with their two sons, Tad and Willie. One year later Willie died. Lincoln went to Gettysburg and made a speech called the Gettysburg Address. The part of the Gettysburg Address that most people know by heart is "Fourscore and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The Civil War ended April 9, 1865.

The secret to all his success was his character– honesty, love, justice, kindness, perseverance, humor, and according to Lincoln, "the providence of God."

Chapter Five: Death and What His Life Means to Us

Mr. Lincoln had a nightmare that he was waling in the White House and he heard people weeping. He was looking everywhere, but he couldn't find them. Finally, he entered a large room, the East Room. He saw a coffin with a body that was wrapped up inside. There was a stillness in the room and he asked, "Who's dead in the White House?" A Union soldier answered, "The president. He was killed by an assassin." Then he woke up. Mr. Lincoln was very troubled by his dream.

Mr. Lincoln went with Mary Todd to see a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. That play was called "Our American Cousin." The lead role was played by Laura Keene. She had played the role one thousand times. It was written my Tom Taylor. John F. Parker was supposed to be guarding the president's box, but turned out to be unreliable. He couldn't see the play so he went and sat in the dress circle. The box was unprotected when John W. Booth crept in. There is some confusion about Abraham Lincoln's last words. Some think they were, "How I should like to visit Jerusalem sometime," while others believe Mrs. Lincoln said, "What will Mrs. Harris think of me hanging on you so?" and Mr. Lincoln replied, "She won't think any thing about it."

John Wilkes Booth was a young, handsome man with a mustache. He stopped to pick up his mail at Ford's Theater because he was an actor there and he used it as his mailing address. While he was there, he heard that President Lincoln would be attending the play that night. He thought that this would be a n perfect time to carry out his plans and try to kill Lincoln as well as Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward. Booth was an actor from the South and he hated Lincoln. About 10:15 on April 14, he walked to the president's box. He drew his single-shot, muzzle-loading derringer, .44 caliber. When Booth fired, the bullet pierced Lincoln's skull near his left ear and stopped behind the right eye. The president slumped down in his seat and Mrs. Lincoln screamed out in horror.

When the Civil War ended, most northerners wanted to treat the southerners badly. Lincoln's reaction was that they should treat hem as brothers. He said "With malice toward none and charity for all." This made some people mad. He had a lot of enemies.

The president was carried across the street and put on a bed. He was too big for it so they laid him diagonally. There were lots of doctors trying to save Lincoln, but on April 15, 1865, President Lincoln was dead. He died at an age of fifty-six. He was buried next to his son Willie.

Lewis Paine and some others filed to kill Seward. The people who were supposed to kill Johnson got too scared and didn't even try. Most of them were arrested shortly after. After her husband's death, Mary Todd Lincoln became mentally unstable. She had to live like a homeless person with no money and a bad home for three years because Mr. Lincoln died without a will. The judge didn't like Mary, so it took a long time to get her fair share of money.

Mr. Lincoln's life means a lot to us today. It might have taken us a long time to get rid of slavery if we hadn't had Mr. Lincoln as a president. The war could have lasted longer and cost our country more money. Abraham Lincoln was a very important person in United States history because he was a good leader and a wonderful person. He kept the union from splitting into two different countries and that would have severely cut the economy. Without Lincoln our country could be a very different place.

Bibliography

Encarta Encyclopedia. 1996. Microsoft: Bellevue, WA.

Freedman, Russell. 1987. Lincoln: A Photobiography. Clarion Books: New York.

Gross, Ruth B. 1973. True Stories About Abraham Lincoln. Scholastic Inc.: New York.

Hayman, Leroy. 1968. The Death of Lincoln. Scholastic Inc.: New York.

Lawless, Chuck. 1991. The Civil War Source Book. Harmony Books: New York.

McGovern, Ann. 1992. If You Grew Up with Abraham Lincoln. Scholastic Inc.: New York

About the Authors

Kelsey enjoys riding horses and playing soccer in her spare time. She also likes to ride jet skis. She wrote the presidential life chapter.

Peter likes to play football and baseball in his spare time. He has a dog, two cats, a bird, and also fish. He wrote the chapter on law and political life.

Dana plays soccer and reads. She has two cats, a hamster, and a tank full of fish (too many to count). She wrote the chapter on death.

Molly enjoys playing soccer and dancing. She also plays on the computer in her spare time. She wrote the chapter on early life.

Craig likes to play football, basketball, and soccer. He has one pixie bobcat. He wrote the chapter on family life.

Reviews

The best book ever written, and I'm not kidding! – Gumby

Way cool, man!!! – Bart Simpson

Excellent!!! – Bill and Ted

As fun to read as eating a carrot!!! – Bugs Bunny

!! – Aliens from planet Zorb

Source: Tarry Lindquist. (1997). Ways that work: Putting social studies standards into practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, pp. 114-121.