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Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States. He was our president during the Civil War. Almost entirely self-educated, he worked as a lawyer and a representative before running for president in 1860. His win, with a minority of the popular vote, set off the avalanche of successions of the Southern States from the Union. Therefore, preserving the Union became Lincoln's main thrust during his term in office. His passion for the Union is evident in the short eloquent speech he delivered at the site of the battle of Gettysburg, called the Gettysburg Address. But the Union was not Lincoln's only concern. A year earlier, he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which legally freed the slaves in the rebel states. Although his Proclamation is often regarded as a political tool which Lincoln used to throw more righteous force to the Union, and although the Proclamation did not immediately break many bonds of slavery, it is representative of Lincoln's fierce personal abhorrence of the practice of slavery.
"Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature-opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow." -- Abraham Lincoln, 16 Oct. 1854, Peoria, Ill., during a debate with Stephen Douglas. |
