Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin on the frontier, rose from labourer to lawyer, and finally to President of the United States. In doing so, he confronted the great questions of his age: slavery, democracy and nationalism and wrote speeches that echo through the ages. This biography explains how Lincoln's life and career were shaped by rapid economic transformation in North America, and by the international antislavery movement and the wave of democratic nationalism that swept through the mid-19th century world. It is the story of an ambitious, in some ways brilliant and rather stra.