The Civil War did not start as a result of a dispute over slavery. It began due to Lincoln’s election, the secession of eleven slave states, and the attack on Fort Sumter. Abraham Lincoln was a member of the Republican Party who became President of the United States in 1860. He believed that slavery was “a moral, a social, and a political wrong.” He did not however, believe that slavery should be abolished in the states it had already existed. Lincoln only wanted to stop slavery from spreading to new territories. Even though he stated that he did not wish to end slavery in the southern states, many states still feared that if Lincoln won, they would lose their slaves, whom their economy depended on for picking the cotton on their plantations.