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Lincoln First Inaugural Address Analysis

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“Slavery is the cause of this whole war!” –General Grant probably because you shouldn’t take the cause of anything for Grant-ed “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” (Lincoln, “House Divided Speech”) Shortly after Lincoln spoke these words in 1858, the Confederate states officially seceded in 1860. This divided the nation in two and began a civil war that would last until May of 1865. Although the cause of the war was later twisted into looking like states’ rights, the actual cause of the Civil War was slavery. Two years before the Civil War officially began, people were already wary of the problems that slavery could cause in the nation. In his “House Divided” Speech at the Republican Convention in …show more content…

Referring to South Carolina’s declaration of secession, Lincoln says “All profess to be content in the Union, if all constitutional rights can be maintained.” (Lincoln, First Inaugural Address) He is addressing the Fugitive Slave Law here, and South Carolina’s claim of the Northern States violated it, which they did, albeit sneakily. He then follows with a long message about how he can see “no party [that] can reach to the audacity of doing this” (Lincoln, First Inaugural Address) and that “any document of reasonable length [can] contain express provisions for all possible questions.” (Lincoln, First Inaugural Address) Lincoln then goes on to name the only major dispute that he sees in the country as “[o]ne section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.” (Lincoln, First Inaugural Address) Clearly, Lincoln sees the dispute over slavery as the cause of the Confederate States seceding, and the cause of the Civil …show more content…

In his Secession Message to Congress in which he got permission to pay for the war, Lincoln defines the war as being “essentially a people’s contest” (Lincoln, Special Secession Message) with two sides. He defines the first side as the Union, which struggles “to elevate the condition of men” (Lincoln, Special Secession Message) by lifting weights (of slavery) from all shoulders, by making all paths clear for all men, and giving everyone an unfettered (with the chains of slavery) start. Lincoln leaves the other side as the direct opposite of this: the Confederacy, which wishes to keep certain men enslaved and unequal. Lincoln also blames slavery as the cause of the war in his second inaugural address by saying “slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.” (Lincoln, Special Secession Message) After the Civil War, the opinions on the cause of the Civil War began to change. Many Southerners started to argue, against the evidence, that the Confederate States had seceded because of the issue of states’ rights, not the issue of slavery. This idea about the cause of the Civil War became the “Lost Cause” movement, which gained popularity in movies such as Gone with the Wind. Eventually, many people believed the misconception that the Civil War had started over states’ rights, when, in reality, it had started over

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During Abraham Lincoln’s presidency at the start of the 1860, an issue that had divided the nation was slavery. Lincoln’s election to presidency as a republic was not received well by the Southern slave states, as they thought that as a republican he was out to abolish slavery. In an effort to calm southern states and keep them from seceding from the United States, he attempts to ease them with his First Inaugural Address. In his First Inaugural Address his key points are to clam southern leaders of slave states, keep the states from seceding, and make them at ease as he enters presidency.

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The primary cause of the Civil War was the election of 1860, which caused divides within the country. There is a lot of evidence that supports this claim, coming from the textbook and online. President Lincoln was elected in 1860, before and after Lincoln was elected, he directly spoke out of the crime of slavery. He said that slavery was a sin but it was out of his power to ban or pass in the US. Lincoln only managed to get elected because his opponents were split three ways and with all of the North voting for Lincoln, despite him not even being on 10 of the Southern ballots won with 40 percent of the votes.

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Throughout all of history, it has been perceived that slavery was at the forefront of the causes of the Civil War. Slavery may be the common perception of why the war was fought, but in reality

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Lincoln argued the true cause of the war was slavery, a moral evil that not only belonged to the South, but the nation in its entirety. The unavoidable war served as punishment from God for the institution of American

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Lincoln urges the people to “strive on to finish the work we are in,” “to bind up the nation's wounds,” he is trying to get the United Sate Citizens to become one again to unite and be one strong country, showing that even after a huge war that the country can remain strong and unified and that this war will allow for a strong brotherhood in the US. Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address is significant because Lincoln offered and objective point of view. Lincoln did not speak of the unloyalty of the South nor did he praise the North. Rather, Lincoln used multiple points to show that the Unification should be the main focus of his speech not that the states should be divided because of

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In the summer of 1862, Lincoln said himself, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” However this was before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The same summer he said this, the border states had rejected compensated emancipation. This was when he realized that the emancipation of slaves was important. He stressed that emancipation would “strike at the heart of the rebellion.’’

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President Lincoln stated that: “if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it,..., and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do it.”. This quote clearly shows that the freedom of slaves was not his concern and unnecessary if it did not help the Union; as the result, slavery still exists if there is no war. Free slave from bondage should be a Great Emancipator’s primary goal and he will do his best to achieve it no matter what, but president Lincoln’s thought differed from that because all he cares was the Union. Although he had many times admitting himself an anti-slavery but his words and thoughts obviously prove that he is

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President Abraham Lincoln claimed the reason why the Confederate States were still able to fight in the Civil War was because of their slaves. He used his grant of wars power to help abolish slavery. Who freed the slaves? Abraham Lincoln did when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed all the slaves in the sates that were fighting against the Union. It did not necessarily free all the slaves at that time, but this emancipation was the turning point of the Civil War and paved the way for the passing of the 13th Amendment into the Constitution.

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The passage states, “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction” (Coates 2). The real reason why the states had started seceding was because they wanted to keep slavery not because Lincoln became president. If Lincoln had not become president then there would have been many other people who would have tried to end slavery and the same thing would have happened. The Civil War started because of slavery being an issue to

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I agree with the statement: Slavery was the primary cause of the American Civil war, because some politicians wanted to abolish slavery in fear of the separation of the Union, also citizens in the northern states also were affected by slavery, and slavery also affected other races other that the blacks and the whites. The issue of slavery became a priority of the united states congress and thus the civil war began. The fear of the separation of the union was in the minds of many of the northern congressmen. For example in John C. Calhoun states in document A, “The agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion.”

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"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” this is one of the most famous speeches in United States history. On November 19, 1863 President Lincoln at the dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg delivered speech of the Gettysburg Address that told of the ripples that tore through the Civil War like a hurricane. Nonetheless the Civil War did not just happen all of once it was a conflict that built up over time between two rival groups of states the North and South. It was the differences between the North and South that led to the Civil War and all of the destruction that followed. Economics and political differences between the North and South were big riffs that separated the Union, but the inconsistency that was the foundation for all these problems were different views of slavery between the two.

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Jimmy le There have been numerous debates over the cause of the civil war. James Ford Rhodes concluded the American Civil War can be correlated to a “single cause, slavery.” The majority will contend about states’ rights, economic factors, political differences, however, the basic cause in every one of these issues is the question of slavery. The issue was essentially shelved through the balance of political power between the northern and southern states in the post-revolutionary United States. The only cause of the American Civil war was basically slavery.

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Whilst the Northern faction was against slavery, the Southern faction was for, this and some other contributing factors caused the civil war which changed America for the better. However so, this was not without causalities, many white and black men died and the south was littered with battlefields and cemeteries. As Abraham Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg Address, “The world will little note nor remember what we said here, but it can never forget what they did here” (27). In this statement, Lincoln stated that not everyone will remember what we have done for the United States but they will never forget what events occurred here. Even though we might not remember the exact details of the civil war, we cannot allow the memories of the dead to fade into the deep abyss, but finish their unfinished work (Lincoln

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Therefore, slavery was the main cause of the Civil War. It wasn 't just the fact that slavery itself existed and some people were against it, but it was also that there had been so many disputes on whether or not slavery should

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In conclusion, the primary cause of the civil war was not slavery instead was the issue of states rights. The Northern armies won the Civil War and the the South returned to the Union. “The Civil War started because of differences between free slaves states and the power of the government that said if slavery was correct or incorrect. ”(The Civil War in America Prologue). Slavery was right at that time but now it is wrong.

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