On November, 6th 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th American President. Born in 1809 in Kentucky , he worked in his father’s farm (fattoria), attended (frequentò) school for less than a year and taught himself to read and write. Before graduating (prima di laurearsi) in law (legge), he did different jobs. Soon he was drawn (fu attratto dalla)to politics. His main concern (preoccupazione) was the practice of slavery (schiavitù) : Blacks were brought from Africa to work on the farms of the southern states on North America as slaves (schiavi) . The people of northern states wanted to abolish this practice because the American Constitution is based on equality. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the USA in 1860 he wanted to solve this problem, but the southern states who wanted slavery, were prepared even to form a new country. Abraham Lincoln declared : “A Nation cannot exist half free and half slave” and wanted to preserve the unity of the country at any cost. Finally (alla fine) a civil war broke out and the northern states won: the union was preserved. Lincoln was elected president for a second term (una seconda volta) and made honest efforts (sforzi) to heal (curare) the people’s wounds (ferrite) caused by the war. In spite of (nonostante) his popularity he was assassinated in 1865 at Ford’s Theatre, during the performance of Our American Cousin on April 14 by John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland. In 2012 his life was adapted into two films: the horror fantasy Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Timur Bekmambetov – about the President ‘s mission to defeat a horde of vampires – and Lincoln by Steven Spielberg, inspired to his true life, starring Daniel Day-Lewis who won the Academy Award as best Actor.