All the World Around. It's Not Worth It. Unequal in the Eyes of Society. Teen Courts. This article has 0 comments. Post comment. Share this on. Your name. Your email address. Friend's name. Friend's email address. Send by email. Tell my friends. Choose what to email Which of your works would you like to tell your friends about?
Fan art. Send your email To. Add a personal note. Send this message. Delete My Account. We hate to see you go! Please note as per our terms and conditions, you agreed that all materials submitted become the property of Teen Ink. By the s, the railroad industry was moving west and Illinois found itself becoming a major hub for various companies. Lincoln served as a lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad as its company attorney.
Success in several court cases brought other business clients as well — banks, insurance companies and manufacturing firms. Lincoln also worked in some criminal trials. In one case, a witness claimed that he could identify Lincoln's client who was accused of murder, because of the intense light from a full moon. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the night in question had been too dark for the witness to see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.
As a member of the Illinois state legislature in , Lincoln supported the Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This political understanding led him to formulate his early views on slavery , not so much as a moral wrong, but as an impediment to economic development. In , Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which repealed the Missouri Compromise , allowing individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery.
The law provoked violent opposition in Kansas and Illinois, and it gave rise to the Republican Party. This awakened Lincoln's political zeal once again, and his views on slavery moved more toward moral indignation.
Lincoln joined the Republican Party in In , the Supreme Court issued its controversial Dred Scott decision , declaring African Americans were not citizens and had no inherent rights. Though Lincoln felt African Americans were not equal to whites, he believed America's founders intended that all men were created with certain inalienable rights. Lincoln decided to challenge sitting U. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his nomination acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court , and President James Buchanan for promoting slavery and declared "a house divided cannot stand.
Senate campaign against Douglas, he participated in seven debates held in different cities across Illinois. The two candidates didn't disappoint the public, giving stirring debates on issues ranging from states' rights to western expansion, but the central issue was slavery. Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often times with partisan commentary. In the end, the state legislature elected Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.
With his newly enhanced political profile, in , political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for the presidency. Chase of Ohio.
Lincoln's nomination was due in part to his moderate views on slavery, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the protective tariff. In the general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival, Stephen Douglas, this time besting him in a four-way race that included John C.
Lincoln received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote, but carried of Electoral College votes, thus winning the U. Following his election to the presidency in , Lincoln selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P.
Chase, Edward Bates and Edwin Stanton. Formed out the adage "Hold your friends close and your enemies closer," Lincoln's Cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office, and he would need them as the clouds of war gathered over the nation the following year.
In the early morning hours of April 12, , the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort signaling the start of the U. Crushing the rebellion would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil War, after decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. Faced with secession, he decided to resupply Fort Sumter, though there was reason to believe the Confederacy would respond with force, initiating armed conflict. And faced with the likelihood that the war would be prolonged excruciatingly or even lost, he at last, in , decided on partial emancipation.
And when he finally found the right generals and gave up his efforts to bribe the border states, he also discovered the courage, born of desperation, to commit himself to black manpower to strengthen his army and weaken the Confederacy. For John Quincy Adams, all this would have seemed a recognition of the inevitable.
That he would not have arrived there had he not been forced by circumstances beyond his control to confront the abyss does not, however, detract from the courage it took to do it.
White America had no desire to shed blood or pay money to emancipate slaves. Lincoln had to find ways, halting, difficult, and indirect as they were, to take white America down the road of what became total war and, eventually, total emancipation. At the end, he well knew that this extraordinary accomplishment had left the country with a damaging reality, an almost fatal wound: the difficulty of reconciliation between North and South, between anti-black racism and white America.
Eight million bitterly resentful white Southerners would be forced to co-exist with four million ex-slaves whose freedom they deplored and whose liberators they detested.
The result: the failure of reconstruction; the virtual re-enslavement of most Southern blacks; Jim Crow; the civil rights movement; and the still existing post-Civil War hangover of widespread racial prejudice. When he died, he had no solution for this reality, and he knew that his beloved country had entered into a century and more of racial misery.
The racist alt-right and white nationalist movements would have arisen. Of course, happiness was not in his nature, but it was not in the historical reality, either. From Lincoln and the Abolitionists. Used with permission of Harper Perennial. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. Via Harper Perennial. By Fred Kaplan. His most recent book is Lincoln and the Abolitionists. He lives in Maine. Previous Article Visible Empire.
Close to the Lithub Daily Thank you for subscribing! Just Because You're Paranoid The document also allowed black soldiers to fight for the Union. Abraham Lincoln was a strong supporter of the Thirteenth Amendment that formally ended slavery in the United States. Legislation Abraham Lincoln signed into law included the Homestead Act , the Morrill Act , the National Banking Act , and a bill that chartered the first transcontinental railroad.
Abraham Lincoln set an example of strong character, leadership, and honesty which succeeding presidents tried to emulate. Barack Obama stated during his campaign that he would look to Lincoln as a model.
Abraham Lincoln's quotes are among the most famous quotes in the world. His faith in the righteousness of his pro-Union policies kept the Union alive during the darkest days of the Civil War. He was a charismatic, moral leader who had a broad strategic vision of his goal reuniting the nation like it was before the war started; later, freeing the slaves became a second goal. He had great political skill in settling disputes among his Cabinet members and generals, especially when they were dealing with adverse circumstances.
His leadership style was at the same time shrewd and disarming. He could handle the most outspoken of his opponents in a classic diplomatic manner. He came from a humble background but, over the years, he grew into a master politician who made no unnecessary enemies. He had a great method of telling stories in an effort to manipulate people into seeing things his way. Lincoln's "story telling technique" was his most distinct and creative leadership method in comparison to other presidents.
For much of the Civil War, Lincoln was forced to serve as both commander in chief and chief of staff. This was because when the Civil War began the USA had no organization of high command suited to the vast size of the war operations. Lincoln supplied a good deal of the strategic thinking for the nation's armies despite his lack of technical military knowledge; Lincoln made his fair share of mistakes including an early-on inability to pick the right man to head the armies.
Also, some were fooled by Lincoln's reputation for granting clemency to soldiers and thus felt him too tenderhearted to wage the kind of war necessary to defeat the South. This is not the correct way to analyze Lincoln. He could be plenty tough when it came to plans to defeat the Confederacy. Let the plan for making the Blockade effective be pushed forward with all possible despatch [ sic ].
Butlerbe constantly drilled, disciplined, and instructed without more for the present. Let Baltimore be held, as now, with a gentle, but firm, and certain hand. Let the forces in Western Virginia act, till further orders, according to instructions, or orders from Gen.
Fremont push forward his organization, and opperations [ sic ] in the West as rapidly as possible, giving rather special attention to Missouri. Let the three months forces, who decline to enter the longer service, be discharged as rapidly as circumstances will permit.
July 27, When the foregoing shall have been substantially attended to 1. Let Manassas junction, or some point on one or other of the railroads near it; ; and Strasburg, be seized, and permanently held, with an open line from Washington to Manassas; and and [ sic ] open line from Harper's Ferry to Strasburgthe military men to find the way of doing these. McClellan's; and will, at once devote all my efforts to your views, and his.
McClellan's letter to you. For my own views, I have not offered, and do not now offer them as orders; and while I am glad to have them respectfully considered, I would blame you to follow them contrary to your own clear judgmentunless I should put them in the form of orders. As to Gen. McClellan's views, you understand your duty in regard to them better than I do.
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