Early Adulthood Philosophy:
Abolitionist?
Congressman 1847-49:
Running for Senator:
Running for President, 1860
States begin to withdraw from the Union:
War or Peace?
Emancipation With Compensation:
Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution
REMEMBER! YOUR ASSIGNMENT IS TO SAVE LINCOLN'S LIFE!!!
Complete this exercise: Compare and contrast President Lincoln's writings with John Wilkes Booth's writings. Pick ten quotes for each person, analyze amd compare their ideologies; get "inside the heads" of both men. Then organize your data using a Ven diagram or a T-chart.
The young Lincoln was a free thinker and somewhat a skeptic. He believed in the "doctrine of necessity," "That is the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power over which the mind itself has no power."
After he became president, in later life, he developed a profound sense of religion. He more and more personalized the "necessity" as God. He came to view all history as God's enterprise and he viewed himself humbly as an "instrument of Providence."
In the legislature he opposed slavery, but was not an active abolitionist. In 1837 he delcared that slavery was "founded on both injustice and bad policy" and on the other that "the promulgation of abolition of abolitionist doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils."
Lincoln was the only Whig from Illinois. He proposed a bill for the gradual and compensated emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia. Because only free white men could vote, it was never taken seriously by the abolitionists.
Lincoln had several years out of politics. During this time he became a Republican, as did many thousands of the defunct Whig party. In 1858 he challenged Steven Douglas for a seat in the US Senate. Lincoln believed that in the new US Territory, the Louisiana purchase, Congress must exclude slavery. In one of his most famous speeches he said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe the government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Click Here to Read the Complete Speech
His “main object,” he had written, was to “hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks,” and he counseled party workers to “say nothing on points where it is probable we shall disagree.” With the Republicans united, the Democrats divided, and a total of four candidates in the field, he carried the election on November 6. Although he received no votes from the Deep South and no more than 40 out of 100 in the country as a whole, the popular votes were so distributed that he won a clear and decisive majority in the electoral college.
After Lincoln was elected, but before his inauguration, the State of South Carolina seceded from the Union. Congress began proposing various compromises. The most famous of these was the Crittenden Compromise.
Click Here to Study the Compromises
As President, Lincoln was determined to preserve the Union. Stopping the war was secondary to his goal of keeping the Nation as one.
In 1863, during the middle of Civil War, President Lincoln came forth with a plan for emancipation. Click Here to Study the President's Emancipation Plan
In 1864, Lincoln was elected for a second term. The Republican platform included abolishing slavery by amending the US Constitution. Lincoln pushed the bill through Congress in with the lame duck sesson of the old Congress during the winter of 1864-65. Though Lincoln did not live to see the ultimate ratification of all states, he did rejoice to see his home state of Illinois be the first to accept the Amendment.
