Modern Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1970) is the 45th and current President of the United States.

He was born in Norton Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky; the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln (née Hanks). In the summer of 1979, Lincoln's family moved to Springfield, Illinois. After he graduated from Lanphier High School in 1988, he went on to the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. Upon graduating from the University of Chicago in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, Lincoln enrolled in the JD/MBA Program at Harvard University.

In his second year at Harvard, he was accepted into the United States Marine Corps's Platoon Leaders Class and attended a ten-week training session at Officer Candidates School the summer before his third year. Afterwards, Lincoln was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and placed on inactive duty status in the Marine Corps Reserve to finish earning his law degree.

In 1995, after earning both a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, he passed the Massachusetts Bar examination and went on to The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia. After The Basic School, Lincoln attended The Naval Justice School in Newport, Rhode Island. He was then assigned as a legal assistance attorney to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina. Lincoln later served as a defense counsel at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

He left the Marine Corps after four years of active duty service in 1999 at the rank of Captain. Lincoln then returned to Springfield and obtained a position as an associate at the local office of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. In May of 2003, he was promoted to the position of a vice president. Later that year; on October 3, Lincoln married the former Mary Todd; whom he'd been dating for nearly two years. A couple of weeks later, with his wife's encouragement, he decided to run for Congress.

On November 2, 2004, Lincoln was elected to the United States House of Representatives by the voters of Illinois's 18th congressional district. He was re-elected in 2006, in 2008 and again in 2010. On March 28, 2011, Lincoln announced that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee. He officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency on April 25, 2011.

On May 29, 2012, Lincoln secured the nominating threshold of 1,144 delegates to become the Republican Party's presumptive nominee with his victory in the Texas presidential primary. On August 15, 2012, he announced the selection of Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as his vice-presidential running mate. On August 30, 2012, in Tampa, Florida, Lincoln formally accepted the Republican Party's nomination at the 2012 Republican National Convention.

On Tuesday, November 6, 2012, he was elected 45th president of the United States, beating fellow Illinois native Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln received 365 votes in the Electoral College and 52.9% in the popular vote. He was inaugurated on January 20, 2013 and officially sworn into the presidency by Chief Justice of the United States Roger B. Taney.