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Abraham Lincoln was an American statesman and politician, the 16th President of the United States (March 4, 1861 - April 15, 1865).
The son of a frontiersman and a Kentucky farmer, Lincoln worked hard from an early age and struggled to learn. He was a militiaman in the Indian War, practiced law, and sat in the Illinois legislature for eight years. He was an opponent of slavery and gradually gained a national reputation that earned him victory in the 1860 presidential election.
After becoming the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln turned the Republican Party into a strong national organization. In addition, he drew most Northern Democrats to the Union side. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared permanently free those slaves who were in Confederate territory. Lincoln considered secession illegal and was prepared to use force to defend federal law and the Union. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy, but four remained in the Union, and the Civil War of 1861-1865 began.
Lincoln personally directed the military action that led to victory over the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln was reelected in 1864, and on April 14, 1865, he was fatally shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. by actor John Wilkes Booth.
Abraham Lincoln is a national hero of the American people, he is considered one of the best and most famous presidents of the United States until today.
Charles Dickens, full name Charles John Huffam Dickens, is the most famous British writer of the Victorian era, a classic of world literature.
From childhood the future writer learned all the hardships of life in poverty: his father in prison for debts, hard work in a factory. Then service stenographer in court and reporter developed in him a strong attachment to journalism and contempt for both the law and parliament.
Dickens had many talents: in addition to literary work, he was an actor, published periodicals, arranged numerous literary readings, where he reveled in the admiration and love of the public. Fecund and versatile, Charles Dickens wrote many brilliant and often comic works. His novels cover a wide range of social, moral, emotional and other aspects. As a subtle psychologist, he is also very interested in the most ordinary people, but also the eccentric, the flawed, and even the insane.
Dickens was immensely popular around the world during his lifetime. His intellect, worldview, and deep reflections on society and its faults enriched his novels and made him one of the great figures of nineteenth-century literature, an influential spokesman for the conscience of his time.
Dickens' best-known and most popular novels are The Pickwick Club Posthumous Notes, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Cold House, A Tale of Two Cities, Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Nathaniel Hawthorne is an American writer and author.
Hawthorne is a recognized short story writer and a master of allegorical and symbolic narrative. One of the first fiction writers in American literature, he is best known for his works The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of Seven Gables (1851). Hawthorne's artistic works are considered part of the American Romantic movement and, in particular, of so-called dark Romanticism, a popular mid-19th-century fascination with the irrational, the demonic, and the grotesque.
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for contributing to the understanding of evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American philosopher, lecturer and poet, one of the most prominent thinkers and writers in the United States, and the originator of transcendentalism.
Ralph studied at Boston State Latin School and then at Harvard College (later Harvard University), began to preach, but soon doubted his chosen path and resigned his ministry. Emerson went to Europe, where new acquaintances and knowledge led him to new thoughts, and, returning to the United States in 1833, he began writing his famous book "Nature", where he first formulated a philosophy called transcendentalism. Soon other thinkers rallied around him, forming a group of like-minded thinkers.
In the essay "Nature," published in 1836, and in the following works, "The American Scholar" and "An Address in the School of Theology," Emerson consistently developed his ideas. Emerson's doctrine of the self-sufficiency and self-reliance of the individual stems from his view that a person need only look into his own heart to receive the spiritual guidance that has hitherto been the prerogative of the official churches. One must then have the courage to be oneself and trust the inner power within oneself, living one's life according to the commandments one has intuitively derived. These thoughts are not new, but Emerson put them in imaginative and accessible language.
Emerson's speeches led to his being ostracized at Harvard for many years. However, the informal Transcendental Club, founded in 1836, was joined and supported by his young students. The world fame of the brilliant thinker Emerson brought his "Essays" in two volumes, published in 1841 and 1844. As the main representative of transcendentalism, Emerson gave direction to the religious, philosophical and ethical movement, which above all emphasized belief in the spiritual potential of each person.
A later work of confession, The Conduct of Life (1860), demonstrates the author's developed humanism and full awareness of human limitations. The voluminous collection of poems cemented Emerson's reputation as a major American poet.
