Abraham Lincoln is perhaps this nation’s most successful and most beloved president, according to a poll taken in 1997, in which he was rated first out of every other U.S. President up to that point. “Seven hundred nineteen professors, elected officials, historians, attorneys, authors, etc. participated in the poll and rated the presidents. The categories in which the various presidents were rated included leadership qualities, accomplishments and crisis management, political skill, appointments, and character and integrity” (Norton). The reason President Lincoln was so loved during his presidency is how he handled the secession of the Confederate States from the Union during the Civil War and how, by means of strategy and law, he used slavery
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If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel” (Lincoln). This shows plainly Lincoln’s aversion to slavery that he harbored ever since his childhood, assuredly due to his moral and religious upbringing. Throughout his life he held the belief that the institution of slavery was corrupting the nation, but slavery took the backburner when Lincoln was made President of the United States. Though this may appear strange, it was because there were more pressing matters at hand in the form of the U.S. Civil War. In the same letter, Lincoln goes on to say, “And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” (Lincoln). What Lincoln means by this is that by taking up the mantle of Presidency, he agreed to put the Constitution before all else, and even goes on to say that his Presidential oath practically forbids him to outlaw slavery because it would constitute as despotism, which the Declaration of Independence opposes, saying that, “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing…absolute Despotism, it is [the people’s] right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security” (Jefferson
If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel” (Lincoln). This shows plainly Lincoln’s aversion to slavery that he harbored ever since his childhood, assuredly due to his moral and religious upbringing. Throughout his life he held the belief that the institution of slavery was corrupting the nation, but slavery took the backburner when Lincoln was made President of the United States. Though this may appear strange, it was because there were more pressing matters at hand in the form of the U.S. Civil War. In the same letter, Lincoln goes on to say, “And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” (Lincoln). What Lincoln means by this is that by taking up the mantle of Presidency, he agreed to put the Constitution before all else, and even goes on to say that his Presidential oath practically forbids him to outlaw slavery because it would constitute as despotism, which the Declaration of Independence opposes, saying that, “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing…absolute Despotism, it is [the people’s] right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security” (Jefferson