Lincoln and Slavery
1
Lincoln and Slavery
HIS/115
05/17/2015
David Glauber
Lincoln and Slavery
2
Lincoln and Slavery
Before Abraham Lincoln was elected the president, he made it clear that he opposed
slavery but would respect the rights of the Southern states and their slaves. However, he said that
he would not allow slavery to expand into the western states, thus making him an enemy of the
South. Lincoln became an enemy of the South the moment he became a candidate for president
and, in fact, the Southern states did not vote for him. Despite the fact that he was against slavery,
Lincoln tried not to interfere with the Southern way of life. The only thing he did do was
preventing the Southern slave owners from expanding to the new western states.
When the lower Southern states seceded from the Union, he tried to reassure them that
they could keep their slaves and rejoin the union, but the Confederacy wanted nothing to do with
Abraham Lincoln. Several other people in Congress tried getting the Confederacy to rejoin the
United States by changing the Compromise of 1850 to suit the needs of the South. However,
even that did not succeed in bringing the Confederacy back to the United States. Despite the fact
the that Lincoln was trying his hardest to get on the Confederacy's good side, there were some
things he did that only made them dislike him more.
One thing he did was declared that all federal property in the now Confederate States was
still the property of the Union. It is understandable as to why he would not want to surrender
control over this, but he could have tried dealing with this issue in a different way. When a Fort
in South Carolina was running out of food, Lincoln wanted to send them supplies. He told the
governor of South Carolina that the supply ship for the Fort would only contain food, but the
president of the new Confederacy declared that if they sent supplies, it would mean war.
Lincoln could have tried reasoning with them more and tried to get them to cooperate.
He could have come to an agreement with the Fort in order to avoid conflict. Instead, when the
Lincoln and Slavery
3
Confederacy became aggressive, he sent a group of volunteers to stop the Southern rebellion,
only to succeed in getting both the Union and the Confederacy ready for a fight. Only this ended
up leading the divided country to Civil War.
Lincoln and Slavery
4
References:
Schultz, K. M. (2012). HIST2, Volume 1 (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.