Currency - USA - 5 Dollar - Year 2013

Item Code: 158/us-2

Year	2013
Obverse	Abraham Lincoln (16th U.S. President).
Reverse	Lincoln Memorial.
Size	156 x 67 mm

Obverse description

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12 1809 – April 15 1865) was the 16th President of the United States. He served as president from 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War. Just five days after most of the Confederate forces had surrendered and the war was ending, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln. Lincoln was the first president of the United States to be assassinated. Lincoln has been remembered as the "Great Emancipator" because he worked to end slavery in the United States.

Life: Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S... His parents were Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. His family was very poor. Abraham had one brother and one sister. His brother died in childhood. They grew up in a small log cabin house, with just one room inside. Although slavery was legal in Kentucky at that time, Lincoln's father, who was a religious Baptist, refused to own any slaves.  In 1842, Lincoln married Mary Todd Lincoln. They had four children, but three of them died when they were very young.

Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, age 28

Early political career: Lincoln started his political career in 1832 when he ran for the IGA Illinois General Assembly, but he lost the election. He served as a captain in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War, a war with Native American tribes. When he moved to Springfield in 1837, he began to work as a lawyer. After he moved to Illinois, he worked as a shopkeeper and postmaster. He rode the circuit of courts for many years. When he was 21, he worked on a flatboat that carried freight. He joined the Independent Spy Corp. Later he joined the Republican Party, which had recently been formed in opposition to the expansion of slavery. The Republican Party nominated him for the Presidential election of 1860. Lincoln won the election in 1860, and was made the 16th President of the United States. 

Emancipation Proclamation: With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, Lincoln ordered the freedom of all slaves in those states still in rebellion during the American Civil War.

Gettysburg Address: Lincoln made a famous speech after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 called the Gettysburg Address. The battle was very important, and many soldiers from both sides died. The speech was given at the new cemetery for the dead soldiers. It is one of the most famous speeches in American history.

Assassination: On April 14th, Lincoln went to attend a play with his wife at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.. During the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland, entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln at point-blank range, mortally wounding him. An unconscious Lincoln was carried across the street to Petersen House. He was placed diagonally on the bed because his tall frame would not fit normally on the smaller bed. He remained in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. According to some accounts, at his last drawn breath, on the morning after the assassination, he smiled broadly and then expired. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated. Booth escaped, but died from shots fired during his capture on April 26.

Shown in the presidential booth of Ford's Theatre, from left to right, are assassin John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Clara Harris, and Henry Rathbone.

Reverse description

Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial was built to remember Abraham Lincoln, who was the 16th President of the United States and led the nation during the American Civil War. It is in the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and is a popular site for tourists.

Design: The Lincoln Memorial was built to look like the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, Greece. The main focus of the memorial is Daniel Chester French's sculpture of Lincoln, seated on a throne. It is surrounded by thirty six columns which are 37 feet (11 m) high. There is a large reflecting pool right outside the steps.

Inside: A sculpture of Lincoln sitting on a chair is inside the Memorial. The statue shows the President looking towards the reflecting pool and the Washington Monument. The statue is 19 feet 9 inches (6 m) tall and 19 feet (6 m) wide, and was carved from 28 blocks of white marble.

Lincoln's famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, is written into one of the walls at the Memorial. There are also several murals on the other walls. One of the murals shows an angel, and another one shows a slave being freed.

Famous Events: Due to Lincoln being associated with freeing the slaves, the Memorial has been a center for civil rights protests in the United States. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow the African-American contralto Marian Anderson to perform before an integrated audience at the organization's Constitution Hall. At the suggestion of Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harold L. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, arranged for a performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday of that year, to a live audience of 70,000, and a nationwide radio audience.

Marian Anderson at Lincoln Memorial, April 9, 1939

The Obamas wave at the crowd at the We Are One concert held at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009.

The Memorial has been used many times for famous events. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech was given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. President Richard Nixon once met with protesters of the Vietnam War, who were at the Memorial. A concert was given for President Barack Obama at the Memorial before he took office.

Depictions on U.S. currency: From 1959 (the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth) to 2008, the memorial, with statue visible through the columns, was depicted on the reverse of the United States one cent coin, which bears a bust of Lincoln on its front.

The memorial also appears on the back of the U.S. five dollar bill, the front of which bears Lincoln's portrait.

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