Abraham Lincoln Wanted A Unified Country Essay, Research Paper

Abraham Lincoln: Moral, Just, and Practical

Today in the United States one of the most controversial issues is race relations. Mainstream America would like to exist in an environment of integration and race independent societal construct. However, one cannot negate the existence of racially motivated problems. Slavery, which is a primary component of the development of what we call modern American culture and its abolition could be considered the moment where race relations started to become an issue in the US.

Slavery was abolished after the civil war by President Abraham Lincoln. The question becomes, was the blood shed in the civil war motivated by a moral imperative to end slavery, or was there some other primary causal factor? Was President Lincoln a man driven by a moral agenda or was he an adept statesman who knew that he needed a moral high horse to justify the war which was being fought for other reasons? These questions lie at the center of events which in reality can be considered the start to the shaping of modern day race relations in the United States. By answering them we can understand the intentions and identify the core of the cultural problem we have today.

To understand the motivation of the man, initially we have to understand the man. This paper will begin by describing president Lincoln and the emancipation proclamation and then come to some conclusion with regard to the questions aforementioned.

Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States from 1861 until 1865. He was born in 1809 and died, assassinated by a madman while still in office. His father was a pioneer, who lived on what he caught by hunting or grew himself, and Abraham Lincoln was brought up in the Indiana backwoods, with little formal education. His working life began early, and was varied and picturesque. He built his own flatboat, navigated it to New Orleans, and then settled for a time to manage a store and a mill, and act as Post Master, as well as studying Law. In 1836 he was licensed to practice as an attorney, and settled in the following year in Springfield, Illinois, where he married Mary Todd. Though clashes of temperament between the high tempered Mary and her sincere but often inconsiderate husband meant that the marriage was never an easy one, it was not the tragedy that legend has made it.

In 1847 Lincoln was elected to congress as a Whig, but he did not particularly distinguish himself in his one term of office, which was chiefly valuable for the formation of political associations and the establishment of a reputation for sincerity and honesty. He was not reelected, and it was an ebb-period of his career. It was not until 1854 that he began to stand out from the hundreds of provincial lawyer-turned-politician. In the last year the Bilk to reopen the Louisiana purchase to slavery gave rise to much northern opposition, and to the birth of the new Republican party. Lincoln’s speech at Peoria was the first occasion on which he stated clearly his personal attitude to the slavery issue. “Slavery is founded in the selfishness of mans nature — opposition to it is his love of justice.”

In 1856 he joined the Republican party, and fairly launched himself on his new career in 1858 when he stood (unsuccessfully) for the Senate against the Democrat Stephen Douglas. In speeches up and down the land he proved his ability as a speaker, and emerged as a national figure, rising rapidly to leadership of his party. He remained as noncommittal as possible on the issue of policy towards slavery where it was established, in an attempt to avoid rousing unnecessary disruptive opposition.

For Lincoln the unity of the United States came first, whether we were slave or free, though he stated his own belief that the country would eventually become all one or the other. He took his stand, however, on opposition to slavery in the new territories, and it was this stand that later helped to precipitate the Civil War.

In 1860 Lincoln was chosen as the compromise Republican candidate for president, and his strong electoral appeal as a fatherly, simple man of humble origin, honest and yet a great speaker, lead to his election to the presidency. Lincoln swept the North with 180 electoral votes, while the other three candidates between them secured a 123 electoral votes from the South, Border States and New Jersey. In his inaugural address he confirmed his insistence on unity, and his belief that “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the union of these states is perpetual”

Before his inauguration, however, seven states had combined to form the Confederate States of America. Bogged down in unfamiliar duties and problems, Lincoln was at first indecisive. He denounced secession but refused to interfere with slavery in established States. Civil War was finally precipitated almost by accident when he decided to send fresh supplies to Fort Sumter, held by Unionist troops in Confederate territory. For a long time Cabinet friction, confusion in army control, and Lincoln’s own military blunders under constant pressure of Congressional interference, lead to a period of Unionist defeat. But Lincoln’s discovery and support of Ulysses S. Grant helped to turn the tide of war, while his own tact, equability, and sheer persistence maintained some degree of harmony and morale.

On January 1st 1863 Lincoln finally committed himself to the symbolic Emancipation Proclamation, applicable only to slaves in the Confederate states. Doubtful of its constitutional propriety, he persuaded the Republicans to add the Thirteenth Amendment to there electoral platform. On that issue he was reelected as president in 1864 with 55% of the popular vote, though the amendment itself was not ultimately adopted until after his death.

In 1865 when the war was virtually over, Lincoln was already busy dealing with faction fights in his party and in Congress over “reconstruction” in the South. He aroused considerable opposition by his tolerant and generous attitude to the Southerners, but all friction was cut short by his assassination on April 14th 1865 by John Wilkes Boothe.

The history of this segregation of the North and the South can be traced to one man who personified the democratic spirit of the United States, Andrew Jackson. A frontier fighter, he became President in 1829. Jackson believed passionately in the equality of man, and he brought to politics a hatred of privilege and big-business monopoly. Jackson was truly the moral man Lincoln is thought to be.

Such ideas appealed strongly to factory workers in the mushrooming industrial north east. A great textile industry was developing, and a new anthracite-smelting technique was laying the foundations for a great iron industry. Communications were being extended. First canals, then railroads breached the old North/South trade pattern of the Mississippi river system. By 1840, nearly three thousand miles of track radiated from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore. Soon trains were carrying new immigrants to new lands and bringing back wheat and meat. Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago and other cities boomed. Eventually these sections and the North East merged into one economic system.

But these developments had one tragic effect: The intensified the division between the industrial North and the South, which remained fixed in old aristocratic ways. In the westward expansion, the Southerners had simply – though vastly – extended the area of plantations worked by African American Slaves. Southern slave labor produced cheap tobacco, rice, sugar, and – most important – cotton, which was in great demand elsewhere. Although the North wanted cotton prices kept low, many Northerners despised the slave system that made the low prices possible. There was rising criticism and a growing campaign to end slavery in the country.

Was it possible for the expanding United States to have two economic and social systems, one slave and one free? This question involved political power. At first politicians tried to maintain a balance by admitting equal numbers of free and slave states to the Union. But by the time Abraham Lincoln took office, inflamed passions had made civil war inevitable. Though Lincoln opposed slavery, he insisted that he had no desire to interfere with it in the South. But there his presidential victory was taken as a challenge. South Carolina lead the Southern states in seceding from the Union, and in April 1861 the Civil War began.

The question of slavery marked the gulf between the South and North; but the war was fought primarily over the issue of succession. From the beginning, Lincoln’s major aim had been to keep the Union from disintegrating. He achieved his goal, but the four-year struggle reduced the south to utter exhaustion.

From this history we can clearly see several things, Lincoln was a moral man, as a matter of fact a man who was driven by a sense or justice. HE was led by his own sense of justice and was not tinted by the views of others. However, Lincoln’s primary concern was not to abolish slavery, but the abolition was unavoidable after the North won the war. Lincoln’s dream was to have a unified country. He was not a freedom fighter. Lead by his ethics to keep the country as a whole, Lincoln did whatever possible to unify America. Along his quest, he abolished slavery. While this was important, it was obviously not his primary agenda.

Furthermore, President Abraham Lincoln said in 1858, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races.” As we can see and has been previously proven, Lincoln showed time and time again that he only cared about the fate of blacks as it served him and the interests of his administration.

The major objective of President Lincoln’s administration was to preserve and sustain the Union. The southern states’ insurgence started as a result of disputes over states rights and representation in Congress; it was coincidence that most of the disputes in congress revolved around slavery. The Civil War actually had little to do with slavery.

Also, as previously stated, during the Civil War President Lincoln wrote and delivered the Emancipation Proclamation. It is true that this document freed slaves, however, it did not free all of the slaves. It left the slaves of the boarder states in bondage. The Emancipation Proclamation ordered only the slaves released that were in areas still in rebellion.

Lincoln had no intention of changing relations between the races, circumstances dictated that he needed to change them to a certain extent. He was, in fact, a moral man, and it is thanks to him that there was an emancipation proclimation. However, I do not think that Lincoln’s morality coincided with his political agenda. Freeing the slaves was a coincidence, because it was in his fvor to do so. Had Lincoln not been a Politicia,, he would not have been concerned with the agenda of the black people in America.

This man fought a practical battle while feeling morally justified, because his cause was for the better good of the country, not the slaves. He used the moral stance to gain international support, and this combined moral/practical approach is what lead to the victory of the industrial North. Although the union which was created was now indestructible bitterness was bound to remain high for many years, and it is the remnants of this bitterness which set the stage for affirmative action requirements in the 60’s and the strained race relations today.