With the election of Lincoln came a deadly strife. By February of 1861, the states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had all left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Northerners, including Lincoln, were dead set against secession and believed that it was illegal. Thus, the newly inaugurated President Lincoln vowed to use military force in order to preserve the nation. Yet, he seemed to skip over an equally big issue dividing the North and South: slavery. Lincoln simply confronted the subject by stating that the Union wouldn’t try to end slavery where it already existed;rather, it would simply stop the spread of the long preserved practice. President Lincoln was trying to appease
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At the start, President Lincoln and the federal government attempted to appease slave states still in the Union by keeping slavery legal. Even when President Lincoln revealed the Emancipation Proclamation, it vowed to keep slavery still within the border states such as Maryland and Missouri. This initial union policy kept the focus of the war on preserving the union and rather disregarded slavery. However, the shift did begin with the Emancipation Proclamation, which moved the focus of the war away from preserving the union to the abolition of slavery. Although it did not fully show a shift, it was the beginning of one. The Emancipation Proclamation was able to be passed due to the victories at Vicksburg and most famously, Gettysburg. Without these victories, Lincoln wouldn’t have had enough support to shift the focus and would’ve also lost a lot of support. The victories bolstered the North’s moral and thinking. By 1865, with the end of the devastating war nearing, Lincoln as well as the National Equal Rights League pushed Congress into ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, which would completely abolish slavery within all the states permanently. This was the final action before the end of the war that the union took that really signified the end of slavery not just ideologically but politically as
At the start, President Lincoln and the federal government attempted to appease slave states still in the Union by keeping slavery legal. Even when President Lincoln revealed the Emancipation Proclamation, it vowed to keep slavery still within the border states such as Maryland and Missouri. This initial union policy kept the focus of the war on preserving the union and rather disregarded slavery. However, the shift did begin with the Emancipation Proclamation, which moved the focus of the war away from preserving the union to the abolition of slavery. Although it did not fully show a shift, it was the beginning of one. The Emancipation Proclamation was able to be passed due to the victories at Vicksburg and most famously, Gettysburg. Without these victories, Lincoln wouldn’t have had enough support to shift the focus and would’ve also lost a lot of support. The victories bolstered the North’s moral and thinking. By 1865, with the end of the devastating war nearing, Lincoln as well as the National Equal Rights League pushed Congress into ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, which would completely abolish slavery within all the states permanently. This was the final action before the end of the war that the union took that really signified the end of slavery not just ideologically but politically as