Abraham Lincoln (February 12 1809 – April 15 1865), sometimes called Abe Lincoln and nicknamed Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter, and the Great Emancipator, was the 16th President of the United States (1861 to 1865), and the first president from the Republican Party. Lincoln opposed expansion of slavery and oversaw the Union war effort during the American Civil War. He selected the generals and approved their strategy; selected senior civilian officials; supervised diplomacy, patronage and party operations; rallied public opinion through messages and speeches such as the Gettysburg Address; and took personal charge of plans for the abolition of slavery and the Reconstruction of the Union. He was assassinated as the war ended.

Summary

Lincoln was a self-made man from the frontier. Self-taught, he became a leading lawyer in Illinois. He was a leader of the Whig party (which sent him to Congress for one term). When the slavery issue exploded in 1854, he helped form the new Republican party and became its leader in Illinois. Lincoln was opposed to the Slave Power and staunchly opposed its efforts to expand slavery into federal territories. His debates with Democratic leader Stephen Douglas in 1858 gave him national visibility, and as a western moderate he won the 1860 presidential nomination. His victory in the 1860 presidential election was the final straw in the deep South, where seven states seceded, formed the Confederate States of America, and took control of U.S. forts and other properties within their boundaries, setting the stage for the American Civil War.

Lincoln is often praised for his work as a wartime leader; his public statements, most notably the Gettysburg Address, defined the war issues and helped redefine America's self image. He proved adept at replacing mediocre generals with better ones until he finally found a winner in Ulysses S. Grant. In leading the Republican party he kept all factions together and added new support from War Democrats, even as his Copperhead enemies were lambasting him as a ruthless dictator. Lincoln had to negotiate between Radical and Moderate Republican leaders, who were often far apart on issues of slavery. He personally directed the war effort, in close cooperation (1864-65) with General Grant, who in April 1865 accepted the surrender of Robert E. Lee's main army.

His leadership qualities were evident in his first diplomatic handling of the border slave states at the beginning of the fighting, in his defeat of a congressional attempt to reorganize his cabinet in 1862, in his many speeches and writings which helped mobilize and inspire the North, and in his defusing of the peace issue in the 1864 presidential campaign. Copperheads criticized him for violating the Constitution, overstepping the bounds of executive power, refusing to compromise on slavery, declaring martial law, suspending habeas corpus, ordering the arrest of 18,000 opponents including public officials and newspaper publishers, and killing hundreds of thousands of young men who were soldiers in the war. Radical Republicans criticized him for going too slow in the abolition of slavery, and not being ruthless enough toward the conquered South.

Lincoln is most famous for his roles in preserving the Union and ending slavery in the United States with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Historians have argued that Lincoln had a lasting influence on U.S. political and social institutions, importantly setting a precedent for greater centralization of powers in the federal government and the weakening of the powers of the individual state governments.

Lincoln spent most of his attention on military matters and politics, but with his strong support, his administration established the current system of national banks with the National Bank Act. He increased the tariff to raise revenue and encourage factories, imposed the first income tax, issued hundreds of millions of dollars of bonds and paper money, encouraged immigration from Europe, started the transcontinental railroad, set up the Department of Agriculture, encouraged farm ownership with the Homestead Act of 1862, and set up the modern system of state universities with the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. During the war, his Treasury department effectively controlled all cotton trade in the occupied South—the most dramatic incursion of federal controls on the economy. Breakaway West Virginia and underpopulated Nevada were admitted as states in order to bolster the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.

Lincoln is always ranked as one of the two or three greatest presidents. His importance comes from his roles in defining the great issues, in organizing and winning a huge war, in destroying slavery, in redefining national values, in building a new political party, and in saving and redefining the Union. His assassination made him a martyr to millions of Americans.

Early Life


Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12 1809, in a one-room log cabin on the 348 acre (1.4 km²) Sinking Spring Farm in the southeast part of Hardin County, Kentucky, then considered the frontier (now part of LaRue County, in Nolin Creek, three miles (5 km) south of Hodgenville), to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Lincoln was named after his deceased grandfather, who was scalped in 1786 in an Indian raid. He had no middle name. Lincoln's parents were uneducated, illiterate farmers. When Lincoln became famous, reporters and storytellers often exaggerated the poverty and obscurity of his birth. However, Thomas Lincoln was a respected and relatively affluent citizen of the Kentucky backcountry. He had purchased the Sinking Spring Farm in December 1808 for $200 cash and assumption of a debt. The farm site is now preserved as part of Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site. His parents belonged to a well that had pulled away from a larger church because they refused to support slavery. From a very young age, Lincoln was exposed to anti-slavery sentiment. However, he never joined his parents' church, or any other church, and as a youth he ridiculed religion.

Three years after purchasing the property, a prior land claim filed in Hardin Circuit Court forced the Lincolns to move. Thomas continued legal action until he lost the case in 1815. Legal expenses contributed to family difficulties. In 1811, they were able to lease 30 acres (0.1 km²) of a 230 acre (0.9 km²) farm on Knob Creek a few miles away, where they then moved. Being in a valley of the Rolling Fork River, it was some of the best farmland in the area. At this time, Lincoln's father was a respected community member and a successful farmer and carpenter. Lincoln's earliest recollections are from this farm. In 1815, another claimant sought to eject the family from the Knob Creek farm. Frustrated with litigation and lack of security provided by Kentucky courts, Thomas decided to move to Indiana, which had been surveyed by the federal government, making land titles more secure. It is possible that these episodes motivated Abraham to later learn surveying and to become an attorney.

In 1816, when Lincoln was seven years old, he and his parents moved to Spencer County, Indiana; he would state "partly on account of slavery" and partly because of economic difficulties in Kentucky. In 1818, Lincoln's mother died of "milk sickness" at age thirty four, when Abe was nine. Soon afterwards, Lincoln's father remarried to Sarah Bush Johnston. Sarah Lincoln raised young Lincoln like one of her own children. Years later she compared Lincoln to her own son, saying "Both were good boys, but I must say — both now being dead that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or ever expect to see." (Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald, 1995)

In 1830, after more economic and land-title difficulties in Indiana, the family settled on government land on a site selected by Lincoln's father in Macon County, Illinois. The following winter was especially brutal, and the family nearly moved back to Indiana. When his father relocated the family to a nearby site the following year, the 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, canoeing down the Sangamon River to Sangamon County, Illinois, in the village of New Salem. Later that year, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods from New Salem to New Orleans via flatboat on the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers. While in New Orleans, he may have witnessed a slave auction that left an indelible impression on him for the rest of his life. Whether he actually witnessed a slave auction at that time or not, living in a country with a considerable slave presence, he probably saw similar atrocities from time to time.

His formal education consisted of perhaps 18 months of schooling from unofficial teachers. In effect he was self-educated, studying every book he could borrow. He mastered the Bible, William Shakespeare's works, English history and American history, and developed a plain style that puzzled audiences more used to grandiloquent oratory. He avoided hunting and fishing because he did not like killing animals even for food and, though unusually tall and strong, spent so much time reading that some neighbors thought he must be doing it to avoid strenuous manual labor. He was skilled with an axe (hence the nickname "rail splitter"), and he was a good wrestler.

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Early Career:


Lincoln began his political career in 1832 at the age of 23 with a campaign for the Illinois General Assembly as a member of the Whig Party. The centerpiece of his platform was the undertaking of navigational improvements on the Sangamon River in the hopes of attracting steamboat traffic to the river, which would allow sparsely populated, poor areas along and near the river to grow and prosper. He served as a captain in a company of the Illinois militia drawn from New Salem during the Black Hawk War, although he never saw combat. He wrote after being elected by his peers that he had not had "any such success in life which gave him so much satisfaction."

He later tried and failed at several small business ventures. He held an Illinois state liquor license and sold whiskey. Finally, after coming across the second volume of Sir William Blackstone's four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England, he taught himself law and was admitted to the Illinois State Bar Association in 1837. That same year, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and began to practice law with Stephen T. Logan. He became one of the most respected and successful lawyers in the prairie state and grew steadily more prosperous.

Lincoln served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives, as a representative from Sangamon County, beginning in 1834. He became a leader of the Whig party in the legislature. In 1837, he made his first protest against slavery in the Illinois House, stating that the institution was "founded on both injustice and bad policy". [1]

In 1841, Lincoln entered law practice with William Herndon, a fellow Whig. In 1856, both men joined the fledgling Republican Party. Following Lincoln's assassination, Herndon began collecting stories about Lincoln from those who knew him in central Illinois. He eventually published a book called Herndon's Lincoln. Lincoln never joined an antislavery society and denied he supported the abolitionists. He married into a prominent slave-owning family from Kentucky and allowed his children to spend time there surrounded by slaves. Several of his in-laws became Confederate officers. He greatly admired the science that flourished in New England and was perhaps the only father in Illinois at the time to send a son to an elite eastern school. (Lincoln sent Robert Todd Lincoln to Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College).

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Illinois Politics:

In 1846, Lincoln was elected to one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. A staunch Whig, Lincoln often referred to party leader Henry Clay as his political idol. As a freshman House member, Lincoln was not a particularly powerful or influential figure in Congress. He spoke out against the war with Mexico, which he attributed to President Polk's desire for "military glory — that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood". Besides this rhetoric, he also directly challenged Polk's claims as to the boundary of Texas. [1] Lincoln was among the 82 Whigs in January 1848 who defeated 81 Democrats in a procedural vote on an amendment to send a routine resolution back to committee with instructions for the committee to add the words "...a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States". The amendment passed, but the bill never reemerged from committee and was never finally voted upon. [2]. Lincoln damaged his reputation by an intemperate speech in the House. He announced, "God of Heaven has forgotten to defend the weak and innocent, and permitted the strong band of murderers and demons from hell to kill men, women, and children, and lay waste and pillage the land of the just." Two weeks later, Polk sent a peace treaty to Congress. No one in Washington paid any attention to Lincoln, but the Democrats orchestrated angry outbursts from all over his district, where the war was popular and many had volunteered. In Morgan County, resolutions were adopted in fervent support of the war and in wrathful denunciation of the "treasonable assaults of guerrillas at home; party demagogues;" slanderers of the President, defenders of the butchery at the Alamo, traducers of the heroism at San Jacinto. Lincoln's law partner William Herndon warned Lincoln that the damage was mounting and irreparable; Lincoln himself was despondent, and he decided not to run for reelection. In the fall 1848 election he campaigned vigorously for Zachary Taylor, the successful general whose atrocities he had denounced in January. Lincoln's attacks on Polk would come back to haunt him during the Civil War. [Beveridge 1: 428-33] The incoming Taylor administration offered Lincoln the governorship of remote Oregon Territory. Acceptance would end his career in the fast-growing state of Illinois, so he declined. Returning instead to Springfield, he gave up politics and turned most of his energies to making as an attorney, which involved extensive travels on horseback from county to county.

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Prairie lawyer


By the mid-1850s, Lincoln faced competing transportation interests — both the river barges and the railroads. In 1849, he received a patent related to buoying vessels. Lincoln represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad in an 1851 dispute with one of its shareholders, James A. Barret. Barret had refused to pay the balance on his pledge to the railroad on the grounds that it had changed its originally planned route. Lincoln argued that as a matter of law a corporation is not bound by its original charter when that charter can be amended in the public interest, that the newer proposed Alton & Sangamon route was superior and less expensive, and that accordingly the corporation had a right to sue Mr. Barret for his delinquent payment. He won this case, and the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court was eventually cited by several other courts throughout the United States.

Another important example of Lincoln's skills as a railroad lawyer was a lawsuit over a tax exemption that the state had granted to the Illinois Central Railroad. McLean County argued that the state had no authority to grant such an exemption, and it sought to impose taxes on the railroad notwithstanding. In January 1856, the Illinois Supreme Court delivered its opinion upholding the tax exemption.

Lincoln's most notable criminal trial came in 1858 when he defended William "Duff" Armstrong, who was on trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker. The case is famous for Lincoln's use of judicial notice, a rare tactic at that time, to show an eyewitness had lied on the stand, claiming he witnessed the crime in the moonlight. Lincoln produced a Farmer's Almanac to show that the moon on that date was at such a low angle it could not have produced enough illumination to see anything clearly. Based upon this evidence, Armstrong was acquitted.



Republican politics 1854–1860


The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which expressly repealed the limits on slavery's spread that had been part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, drew Lincoln back into politics. Illinois Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the most powerful man in the Senate, proposed popular sovereignty as the solution to the slavery impasse, and he incorporated it into the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglas argued that in a democracy the people of a territory should decide whether to allow slavery and not have a decision imposed on them by Congress.

It was a speech against the act, on October 16 1854 in Peoria, that caused Lincoln to stand out among the other free soil orators of the day. He helped form the new Republican Party, drawing on remnants of the old Whig, Free Soil, Liberty and Democratic parties. In a stirring campaign, the Republicans carried Illinois in 1854 and elected a senator. Lincoln was the obvious choice, but to keep party unity he allowed the election to go to his colleague Lyman Trumbull.

In 1857-58, Douglas broke with President Buchanan, leading to a fight for control of the Democratic Party. Some eastern Republicans even favored the reelection of Douglas in 1858, since he led the opposition to the administration's push for the Lecompton Constitution which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state. Accepting the Republican nomination for the Senate in 1858, Lincoln delivered a famous speech [3] in which he stated, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." The speech created a lasting image of the danger of disunion because of slavery, and rallied Republicans across the north.

The 1858 campaign featured the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a nationally noticed discussion on the issues that threatened to split the nation in two. Lincoln forced Douglas to propose his Freeport Doctrine, which lost him further support among slave-holders and speeded the division of the Democratic Party. Though the Republican legislative candidates won more popular votes, the Democrats won more seats, and the legislature reelected Douglas to the Senate. Nevertheless, Lincoln's eloquence transformed him into a national political star.

During the debates of 1858, the issue of race was often discussed. During a time period when racial egalitarianism was considered politically incorrect, Stephen Douglas would inform the crowds, “If you desire negro citizenship… if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves… then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro.” (Official records of debate) On the defensive, Lincoln countered that he was “not in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” (Official records of debate) Historians generally remained mixed on what Lincoln’s actual views were on race. However, many tend to doubt that the highly political nature of these debates offer reliable evidence about his personal views. (Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, 2005) (Lincoln: In Text and Context, by Donald Fehrenbacher, 1987) As Frederick Douglass observed, “[Lincoln was] the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color.” (Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass, 1895)

Lincoln's opposition to slavery was opposition to the Slave Power, and he was not an abolitionist in 1858. But the Civil War changed many things, including Lincoln's beliefs in race relations.

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Elections of 1860:


Entering the presidential nomination process as a distinct underdog, Lincoln was eventually chosen as the Republican candidate for the 1860 election for several reasons. His expressed views on slavery were seen as more moderate than rivals William H. Seward and Salmon Chase. His "western" origins also appealed to the newer states. Other contenders, especially those with more governmental experience, had acquired enemies within the party, specifically Seward, who had run afoul of newspaperman Horace Greeley. During the campaign, Lincoln was dubbed "The Rail Splitter" by Republicans to emphasize the power of "free labor", whereby a common farm boy could work his way to the top by his own efforts.

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th President of the United States, beating Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckenridge of the Southern Democrats, and John C. Bell of the new Constitutional Union Party. Lincoln was the first Republican president. He won entirely on the strength of his support in the North: he was not even on the ballot in nine states in the South — and won only 2 of 996 counties there. Lincoln gained 1,865,908 votes (39.9% of the total,) for 180 electoral votes, Douglas 1,380,202 (29.5%) for 12 electoral votes, Breckenridge 848,019 (18.1%) for 72 electoral votes, and Bell 590,901 (12.5%) for 39 electoral votes. There were fusion tickets in some states, but even if his opponents had combined in every state, Lincoln had a majority vote in all but two of the states in which he won the electoral votes, and would still have won the electoral college and the election.



Secession winter 1860–1861


As Lincoln's election became more and more probable, secessionists made it clear that their states would leave the Union. South Carolina took the lead followed by six other cotton-growing states: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The upper South (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas) listened to and rejected the secessionist appeal. They decided to stay in the Union, though warning Lincoln they would not support an invasion through their territory. The seven Confederate states seceded before Lincoln took office, declaring themselves an entirely new nation, the Confederate States of America. President Buchanan and president-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy.

President-elect Lincoln survived an assassination threat in Baltimore, and on February 23, 1861 arrived in disguise in Washington. At Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, the Turners formed Lincoln's bodyguard; and a sizable garrison of federal troops was also present, ready to protect the capital from Confederate invasion or insurrection from Confederates in the capital city.

In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln declared, "I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments", arguing further that the purpose of the United States Constitution was "to form a more perfect union" than the Articles of Confederation which were explicitly perpetual, and thus the Constitution too was perpetual. He asked rhetorically that even were the Constitution a simple contract, would it not require the agreement of all parties to rescind it?

Also in his inaugural address, in a final attempt to unite the Union and prevent the looming war, Lincoln supported the proposed Corwin Amendment to the constitution, of which he had been a driving force. It would have explicitly protected slavery in those states in which it already existed, and had already passed both houses. Lincoln adamantly opposed the Crittenden Compromise, however, which would have permitted slavery in the territories, renewing the boundary set by the Missouri Compromise and extending it to California. Despite support for this compromise among some Republicans, Lincoln declared that were the Crittenden Compromise accepted, it "would amount to a perpetual covenant of war against every people, tribe, and state owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del Fuego."

Because opposition to slavery expansion was the key issue uniting the Republican Party at the time, Lincoln is sometimes criticized for putting politics ahead of the national interest in refusing any compromise allowing the expansion of slavery. Supporters of Lincoln, however, point out that he did not oppose slavery because he was a Republican, but became a Republican because of his opposition to the expansion of slavery, that he opposed several other Republicans who were in favor of compromise, and that he clearly thought his course of action was in the national interest. By the time Lincoln took office the Confederacy was an established fact and not a single leader of the insurrection ever proposed rejoining the Union on any terms. No compromise was found because no compromise was possible. Lincoln perhaps could have allowed the southern states to secede, and some Republicans recommended that. However conservative Democratic nationalists, such as Jeremiah S. Black, Joseph Holt, and Edwin M. Stanton had taken control of Buchanan's cabinet around January 1, 1861, and refused to accept secession. Lincoln, and nearly all Republican leaders, adopted this nationalistic position by March, 1861: the Union could not be broken.

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War begins: 1861–1862


After Union troops at Fort Sumter were fired on and forced to surrender in April, Lincoln called on governors of every state to send 75,000 troops to recapture forts, protect the capital, and "preserve the Union," which in his view still existed intact despite the actions of the seceding states. Virginia, which had repeatedly warned Lincoln it would not allow an invasion of its territory or join an attack on another state, then seceded, along with North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.

The slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware did not secede, and Lincoln urgently negotiated with state leaders there, promising not to interfere with slavery in loyal states. After the fighting started he had rebel leaders arrested in all the border areas and held in military prisons without trial; over 18,000 were arrested. None were executed; one — Clement Vallandingham — was exiled; all were released, usually after two or three months.


Emancipation Proclaimation:

Congress in July 1862 moved to free the slaves by passing the Second Confiscation Act. It provided:

That if any person shall hereafter incite, set on foot, assist, or engage in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States, or the laws thereof, or shall give aid or comfort thereto, or shall engage in, or give aid and comfort to, any such existing rebellion or insurrection, and be convicted thereof, such person shall be punished by imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten years, or by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars, and by the liberation of all his slaves, if any he have; or by both of said punishments, at the discretion of the court.
....
SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all slaves of such person found on [or] being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.
Thus everyone who 60 days after July 17, 1862 supported the rebellion was to be punished by having all their slaves freed. The goal was to weaken the rebellion, which was led and controlled by slave owners. This did not abolish the legal institution of slavery (the XIII Amendment did that), but it shows Lincoln had the support of (and was even somewhat pushed by) Congress in liberating the slaves owned by rebels. Lincoln implemented the new law by his "Emancipation Proclamation".

Lincoln is well known for ending slavery in the United States and he personally opposed slavery as a profound moral evil not in accord with the principle of equality asserted in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, Lincoln's views of the role of the federal government on the subject of slavery are more complicated. Before the Confederate states seceded, Lincoln had campaigned against the expansion of slavery into the territories, where Congress did have authority. However, he maintained that the federal government could not constitutionally bar slavery in states where it already existed. During his presidency, Lincoln made it clear that the North was fighting the war to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery. Freeing the slaves was a war measure to weaken the rebellion by destroying the economic base of its leadership class. Lincoln was criticized both at home and abroad for his refusal to take a stand for the complete abolition of slavery. On August 22 1862, a few weeks before signing the Proclamation, and after it had already been drafted, Lincoln responded by letter to an editorial by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune which had urged abolition:

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.[4]
With the Emancipation Proclamation issued in two parts on September 22, 1862 and January 1, 1863, Lincoln made the abolition of slavery a goal of the war. Lincoln addresses the issue of his consistency (or lack thereof) between his earlier position and his later position on emancipation in an 1864 letter to Albert G. Hodges[5]

Lincoln is often credited with freeing enslaved African Americans with the Emancipation Proclamation. However, border states that still allowed slavery but were under Union control were exempt from the emancipation because they were not covered under any war measures. The proclamation on its first day, January 1 1863, freed only a few escaped slaves, but as Union armies advanced south more and more slaves were liberated until hundreds of thousands were freed (exactly how many is unknown). Lincoln signed the Proclamation as a wartime measure, insisting that only the outbreak of war gave constitutional power to the President to free slaves in states where it already existed. He later said: "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper." The proclamation made abolishing slavery in the rebel states an official war goal and it became the impetus for the enactment of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery; Lincoln was one of the main promoters of that amendment.

Although some Northern conservatives recoiled at the notion that the war was now being fought for the slaves instead of for preserving the Union, in the end the Emancipation Proclamation did much to help the Northern cause politically. Lincoln's strong abolitionist stand finally convinced the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and other foreign countries that they could not support the Confederate States of America. This move remains one of the great seizures of private property by the federal government, restoring the ownership of the blacks to themselves,

Lincoln had for some time been working on plans to set up colonies in Africa and South America for the nearly 4 million newly freed slaves. He remarked upon colonization favorably in the Emancipation Proclamation, but all attempts at such a massive undertaking failed.

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Important Domestic Measure of First Term:

Lincoln believed in the Whig theory of the presidency, which left Congress to write the laws while he signed them, vetoing only bills that threatened his war powers. Thus he signed the Homestead Act in 1862, making available millions of acres of government-held land in the west for purchase at very low cost. The Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, also signed in 1862, provided government grants for agricultural universities in each state. Lincoln also signed the Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864, which granted federal support to the construction of the United States' first transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869. The most important legislation involved money matters, including the first income tax and higher tariffs. Most important was the creation of the system of national banks by the National Banking Acts of 1863, 1864 and 1865 which allowed the creation of a strong national financial system.

Lincoln sent a senior general to put down the "Sioux Uprising" of August 1862 in Minnesota. Presented with 303 death warrants for convicted Santee Dakota who had massacred innocent farmers, Lincoln affirmed 39 of these for execution (one was later reprieved).

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1864 election and second inauguration


After Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga in 1863, many in the North believed that victory was soon to come after Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant General-in-Chief on March 12 1864. Although no president since Andrew Jackson had been elected to a second term (and none since Van Buren had been re-nominated), Lincoln's re-election was considered almost certain.

However, when the spring campaigns, east and west, all turned into bloody stalemates, Northern morale dipped and Lincoln seemed less likely to be re-nominated. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase strongly desired the Republican nomination and was working hard to win it, while John Fremont was nominated by a breakoff group of radical Republicans, potentially taking away crucial votes in the November elections.

Fearing he might lose the election, Lincoln wrote out and signed the following pledge, but did not show it to his cabinet, asking them each to sign the sealed envelope. Lincoln wrote:

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.
The Democrats, hoping to make setbacks in the war a top campaign issue, waited until late summer to nominate a candidate. Their platform was heavily influenced by the Peace wing of the party, calling the war a "failure," but their candidate, former General George McClellan, was a War Democrat, determined to prosecute the war until the Union was restored, although willing to compromise on all other issues, including slavery.

McClellan's candidacy was soon undercut as on September 1, just two days after the convention, Atlanta was abandoned by the Confederate army. Coming on the heels of David Farragut's capture of Mobile Bay and followed by Phil Sheridan's crushing victory over Jubal Early's army at Cedar Creek, it was now apparent that the tide had turned in favor of the Union and that Lincoln may be reelected despite the costs of the war.

Still, Lincoln believed that he would win the electoral vote by only a slim margin, failing to give him the mandate he'd need if he was to push his lenient reconstruction plan. To his surprise, Lincoln ended up winning all but two states, capturing 212 of 233 electoral votes.

After Lincoln's election, on March 4 1865, he delivered his second inaugural address, which was his favorite of all his speeches. At this time, a victory over the rebels was within sight, slavery had effectively ended, and Lincoln was looking to the future.

Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether".
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

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Civil War and reconstruction

Conducting the war effort

The war was a source of constant frustration for the president, and it occupied nearly all of his time. Lincoln had a contentious relationship with General George B. McClellan, who became general-in-chief of all the Union armies in the wake of the embarrassing Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run and after the retirement of Winfield Scott in late 1861. Lincoln wished to take an active part in planning the war strategy despite his inexperience in military affairs. Lincoln's strategic priorities were two-fold: first, to ensure that Washington, D.C., was well-defended; and second, to conduct an aggressive war effort in hopes of ending the war quickly and appeasing the Northern public and press, who pushed for an offensive war. McClellan, a youthful West Point graduate and railroad executive called back to military service, took a more cautious approach. McClellan took several months to plan and execute his Peninsula Campaign, which involved capturing Richmond by moving the Army of the Potomac by boat to the peninsula between the James and York Rivers. McClellan's delay irritated Lincoln, as did McClellan's insistence that no troops were needed to defend Washington, D.C. Lincoln insisted on holding some of McClellan's troops to defend the capital, a decision McClellan blamed for the ultimate failure of his Peninsula Campaign.

McClellan, a lifelong Democrat who was temperamentally conservative, was relieved as general-in-chief after releasing his Harrison's Landing Letter, where he offered unsolicited political advice to Lincoln urging caution in the war effort. McClellan's letter incensed Radical Republicans, who successfully pressured Lincoln to appoint fellow Republican John Pope as head of the new Army of Virginia. Pope complied with Lincoln's strategic desire for the Union to move towards Richmond from the north, thus guarding Washington, D.C. However, Pope was soundly defeated at the Second Battle of Bull Run during the summer of 1862, forcing the Army of the Potomac back into the defenses of Washington for a second time. Pope was sent to Minnesota to fight the Sioux.

Panicked by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's invasion of Maryland, Lincoln restored McClellan to command of all forces around Washington in time for the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. It was the Union victory in that battle that allowed Lincoln to release his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln relieved McClellan of command shortly after the 1862 midterm elections and appointed Republican Ambrose Burnside to head the Army of the Potomac, who promised to follow through on Lincoln's strategic vision for an aggressive offensive against Lee and Richmond. After Burnside was stunningly defeated at Fredericksburg, Joseph Hooker was given command, despite his idle talk about becoming a military strong man. Hooker was routed by Lee at Chancellorsville in May 1863 and also relieved of command.

After the Union victory at Gettysburg, Meade's failure to pursue Lee, and months of inactivity for the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln decided to bring in a western general: General Ulysses S. Grant. He had a solid string of victories in the Western Theater, including Vicksburg and Chattanooga. Earlier, reacting to criticism of Grant, Lincoln was quoted as saying, "I cannot spare this man. He fights." Grant waged his bloody Overland Campaign in 1864, using a strategy of a war of attrition, characterized by high Union losses at battles such as the Wilderness and Cold Harbor, but by proportionately higher losses in the Confederate army. Grant's aggressive campaign would eventually bottle up Lee in the Siege of Petersburg and result in the Union taking Richmond and bringing the war to a close in the spring of 1865.

Lincoln authorized Grant to use a scorched earth approach to destroy the South's morale and economic ability to continue the war. This allowed Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan to destroy farms and towns in the Shenandoah Valley, Georgia, and South Carolina. The damage in Sherman's March to the Sea through Georgia totaled in excess of $100 million.

Lincoln had a star-crossed record as a military leader, possessing a keen understanding of strategic points (such as the Mississippi River and the fortress city of Vicksburg) and the importance of defeating the enemy's army, rather than simply capturing cities. However, he had little success in his efforts to motivate his generals to adopt his strategies. Eventually, he found in Grant a man who shared his vision of the war and was able to bring that vision to reality with his relentless pursuit of coordinated offensives in multiple theaters of war.

Lincoln, perhaps reflecting his lack of military experience, developed a keen curiosity with military campaigning during the war. He spent hours at the War Department telegraph office, reading dispatches from his generals through many a night. He frequently visited battle sites and seemed fascinated by watching scenes of war. During Jubal A. Early's raid into Washington, D.C., in 1864, Lincoln had to be told to duck his head to avoid being shot while observing the scenes of battle.

Home Front:

Lincoln was more successful in giving the war meaning to Northern civilians through his oratorical skills. Despite his meager education and “backwoods” upbringing, Lincoln possessed an extraordinary command of the English language, as evidenced by the Gettysburg Address, a speech dedicating a cemetery of Union soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg that he delivered on November 19, 1863. While the featured speaker, orator Edward Everett, spoke for two hours, Lincoln's few choice words resonated across the nation and across history, defying Lincoln's own prediction that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Lincoln's second inaugural address is also greatly admired and often quoted. In these speeches, Lincoln articulated better than any of his contemporaries the rationale behind the Union effort.

During the Civil War, Lincoln exercised powers no previous president had wielded; he used his war powers to proclaim a blockade, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, spent money without congressional authorization, and imprisoned 18 thousand of Confederate sympathizers without trial. Congress approved his actions. There is a fragment of uncorroborated evidence that someone in his administration made contingency plans to arrest Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney; (see the Taney Arrest Warrant controversy).

At one point in summer 1864 pessimists warned that defeat in the November elections appeared likely. Lincoln ran under the Union party banner, composed of War Democrats and Republicans. General Grant was facing severe criticism for his conduct of the bloody Overland Campaign that summer and the seemingly endless Siege of Petersburg. However, the Union capture of Atlanta, Georgia in September changed the situation dramatically. The Democratic Party was bitterly split, the Union party was united and energized, and Lincoln was easily reelected.

Reconstruction

Lincoln was the leader of the "moderates" regarding Reconstruction policy, and usually was opposed by the Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Charles Sumner and Benjamin Wade in the Senate. (But he cooperated with those men on most other issues.) Lincoln was determined to find a course that would reunite the nation as soon as possible and not permanently alienate the Southerners, and throughout the war Lincoln urged speedy elections under generous terms in areas behind Union lines. One of Lincoln's few vetoes during his term was of the Wade-Davis Bill, an effort by congressional Republicans to impose harsher Reconstruction terms on the Confederate areas. Radical Republicans in Congress retaliated by refusing to seat representatives elected from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee during the war under Lincoln's generous terms.

"Let 'em up easy," he told his assembled military leaders Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (a future president), Gen. William T. Sherman and Adm. David Dixon Porter in an 1865 meeting on the steamer River Queen. When Richmond, the Confederate capital, was at long last captured, Lincoln went there to make a public gesture of sitting at Jefferson Davis's own desk, symbolically saying to the nation that the President of the United States held authority over the entire land. He was greeted at the city as a conquering hero by freed slaves, whose sentiments were epitomized by one admirer's quote, "I know I am free for I have seen the face of Father Abraham and have felt him."

On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. This left only Joseph Johnston's forces in the East to deal with. Weeks later Johnston would defy Jefferson Davis and surrender his forces to Sherman. Of course, Lincoln would not survive to see the surrender of all Confederate forces; just five days after Lee surrendered, Lincoln was assassinated. He was the first President to be assassinated, and the third to die in office.

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