Abraham Lincoln was born 206 years ago this week on February 12, 1809. He served as our 16th President from 1861-1865, during the Civil War and the darkest days of our history. Lincoln led the country to victory in the war, which saved the Union and ended slavery. For these momentous accomplishments, we are forever indebted to him.
From 1854 to 1865, Lincoln was one of the most important leaders in the movement against slavery, but he wasn’t an abolitionist. Lincoln and most Americans considered abolitionists too radical (e.g., John Brown). In fact, Lincoln never advocated the abolishment of slavery before he was elected president. While he always viewed slavery as wrong and evil, Lincoln saw no easy remedy for eliminating slavery in the south.
In 1854, political events took a dramatic turn when the settlers of Kansas and Nebraska applied for territorial status. By existing law, known as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, both Kansas and Nebraska were outside the boundaries where slavery was allowed. But later that year, pro-slavery factions had succeeded in pushing the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law, which effectively nullified the Missouri Compromise and allowed the potential expansion of slavery in these two new territories.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act outraged Northerners and splintered both the Democratic and Whig parties, the two major parties of the day. It also divided the country, gave rise to the antislavery Republican Party, and hastened the coming of civil war.
The author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was Senator Stephen Douglas. Both Douglas and Lincoln were from Illinois. Ironically, for Douglas, who wanted to be president, his actions propelled Lincoln to become his greatest political adversary. Douglas had inadvertently awoken Lincoln to his seminal cause – preventing the spread of slavery.
Prior to this, Lincoln’s hope was that slavery was on a slow path to extinction. At that time he had been out of politics for several years. Although Lincoln did not believe abolition of slavery in slave states was then possible, the threat of expanding slavery spurred Lincoln to re-enter politics and gave him a cause worth fighting for.
Consequently, later in 1854, Lincoln became a candidate for the U.S. Senate (not Douglas’ seat), and began giving speeches against the spread of slavery. Although defeated in this election, he continued giving speeches in the state and surrounding region. Lincoln kept refining and honing his message. He worked at phrasing and rephrasing key points, constantly clarifying and improving his message. His speeches were getting noticed and he was gaining national acclaim.
The next year, Lincoln joined the new Republican Party. At the Republican national convention in 1856, he finished second in the nomination balloting for Vice-President.
In 1857, the Supreme Court decided the infamous Dred Scott case. The court’s ruling stated that under the U.S. Constitution: Persons of African descent cannot be, nor were ever intended to be, citizens; the Property Clause only applied to the states in existence at the time of ratification in 1787; and the Due Process Clause of the fifth amendment prohibited the government from freeing slaves brought in to the territories.
Most Northerners were infuriated by the ruling, which ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, and had the effect of affirming the Kansas-Nebraska Act. While this decision is widely regarded as one of the worst ever made by the court, it further galvanized the antislavery movement, and moved the country closer to civil war.
In 1858, Lincoln ran for the U.S. Senate again, this time against Stephen Douglas, a Democrat. After being nominated at the Illinois Republican convention, Lincoln gave his acclaimed House Divided speech. The speech electrified the audience and caused a sensation across the country, and it set the stage for the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates.
The Lincoln-Douglas debates were a series of seven debates and the most famous in U.S. History. The primary topic in every debate was slavery. They were well attended and drew thousands of people. The atmosphere of the debates was charged and intense, and they were covered by the national press.
Lincoln focused his arguments on the moral injustice of slavery. He claimed that Douglas was part of a conspiracy to spread slavery, and that Douglas’ role in the Kansas-Nebraska Act proved it.
Douglas argued for the popular sovereign approach specified in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which let the people of each new state decide whether to be free or slaveholding. He accused Lincoln of being an abolitionist, and of defying the authority of the Supreme Court and its Dred Scott decision.
At that time, U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures, so both Lincoln and Douglas were trying to help their parties to win control of the Illinois state legislature, which would elect one of them to the senate. In November’s election, Illinois voters cast more votes for Republican legislative candidates, but the Democrats won more seats in the state legislature, and subsequently elected Douglas to the U.S. Senate.
Although Lincoln had lost the election, the publicity of the debates and his eloquent articulation of slavery issues had won him national acclaim. This experience helped Lincoln gain the Republican nomination for President in 1860, and get elected President in November that year.
In the four-month period between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration on March 4, 1861, southern states began seceding from the Union. By February 1, 1861, seven slave states in the deep-south had broken off and formed the Confederate States of America. At that time, eight other slave states decided to stay in the Union. During this interregnum, political leaders fought mightily to keep all eight of these states in the Union, and to coax the seven Confederate States back into the fold. Several compromise proposals were put forth, and a Peace Convention was held to try and save the Union.
However, within a few weeks of Lincoln taking office, the Confederates attacked and captured Fort Sumter in South Carolina. This rebel attack on a Union fort started the Civil War, and led four of the eight remaining slave states in the Union to secede and join the Confederacy.
At the beginning of the war, Lincoln continued to hope for a political settlement to end the rebellion, re-unite the Union, and prevent the spread of slavery – these were his objectives, not the abolishment of slavery. His views on ending slavery would slowly evolve as the war dragged on and intensified.
He didn’t know it then, but the journey Lincoln was starting on would last four bloody years. It would be a path of untold carnage, suffering and despair. Initially, no one expected the war to go on that long, or be so costly.
Lincoln’s task was enormous. While trying to keep the rest of the country united during a brutal war and extreme hardship, he would have to overcome political intrigue, insubordination, incompetence, and more. It would require all of his many talents and abilities, and ultimately cost him his life.
Next Blog: Lincoln – the Reluctant Emancipator