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Lincoln's Role In The Civil War Essay

1119 Words5 Pages

The South’s succession in 1861 thrust the United States into a bloody civil war that divided the nation on the issue of slavery and its future role in American history. The serving President, Abraham Lincoln faced the difficult task of restoring the Union, and settling the question of slavery that had plagued the nation since its founding in 1776. History has dubbed Lincoln with an extensive amount of titles that have romanticized his role in the emancipation of the slaves. Popular history has portrayed Lincoln as waging a war against slavery with the single purpose of eradicating it from all U.S. states and territories, but ignoring the fact that his main goal was to reunite the union and was willing to forgo the possibility of emancipation …show more content…

Lincoln wanted to make it clear that his party did not intend to interfere with slavery’s constitutional right to exist within the nation and supported article four, section two, clause three of the constitution that contained the fugitive slave clause. Prior to the running for president, Lincoln challenged senatorial incumbent, Stephan Douglass to a series of debates. These debates have gone down in history as the famous Lincoln-Douglass senate debates. During the 1858 Freeport, Illinois debate, Lincoln reiterated his belief that Congress had “the right and duty…to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories”, but that government could not interfere with slavery where it already existed. While Lincoln personally believed that slavery was morally wrong, and that a, “house divided against itself cannot stand”; he also felt that the Constitution obliged him from taking any action against the institution where it existed. For instance, Lincoln wrote a letter to Georgia congressional representative Alexander H. Stephens, which stated, “It is wrong and ought to be restricted” . Lincoln wanted to reassure the southern states that he would take no action against slavery and just wanted to restrict it from spreading into future territories. Attempting to interrupt slavery would have resulted in the succession of the Boarder States which would have proved detrimental to the

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