December 20, 1860 marked a pivotal moment in the history of the United States, it was a day in which South Carolina seceded from the Union, a day that came to a head after the election of Abraham Lincoln. It marked the beginning of the American Civil War. A war that was the bloodiest and most divisive conflict for the American people, one that took the lives of more than 650,000 people and injured thousands more in the span of 4 years. The justification behind the Civil War was the doctrine of states' rights, which asserted that states have the authority to nullify federal laws if they deemed them unconstitutional. Quite frankly though, the preservation of the institution of slavery was the main reason behind the secession of South Carolina …show more content…
Lincoln held firm to this idea for a couple of years because of his fear about the border states seceding if he made his policy in the war exclusively about abolishing slavery (Lecture, 02/07/2024). Border states remained slave states but also stayed as a part of the Union, and they were an essential part to the Union’s forces in the Civil War, and Lincoln’s connection to Kentucky made this mission all the more significant. It is important to add, Lincoln was not entirely concerned about enslaved people, only reuniting his country. In a personal letter to Horace Greeley in August 1862 he explains that his only goal was to “save the Union”, whether that came at the cost of “[saving] or [destroying] slavery” he did not care about (Lincoln, 75). To sum up, during the first two years of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln was attempting to reunite the Union without making it a conflict about slavery. This approach would change though after 2 years of bloodshed and the key Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September