Abraham Lincoln
It was in Illinois where Lincoln entered into politics. In 1832, he ran for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives, but he lost the election. Politically, Lincoln supported the Whig Party. He sought election to the Illinois legislature again in 1834. He was successful in his bid and served in this capacity until 1842. In 1836, Lincoln successfully passed the Illinois bar exam. From 1842 to 1846, he practiced law. In 1846, Illinois voters elected Lincoln to the United States House of Representatives. He was an opponent of the U.S.-Mexican War. He also supported the Wilmot Proviso, which, if implemented, would have prohibited slavery in any territory that the United States acquired from Mexico in the war. While many Illinois residents agreed with Lincoln on slavery's expansion, they disagreed with his views on the Mexican War. He failed to win reelection in 1848.
For the next several years, Lincoln practiced law. He became one of the most respected attorneys in Springfield, the capital of Illinois. National events brought Lincoln back to the political arena during the mid 1850s. He strongly opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Because of his views on slavery's expansion, the Whig Party members selected Lincoln as their candidate for the United States Senate in 1855. The Illinois legislature chose the Democratic Party's candidate instead, although this man also shared Lincoln's views of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In 1856, Lincoln declared himself a member of the newly established Republican Party. Lincoln's old party, the Whig Party, had collapsed in the early 1850s over the slavery issue.
Lincoln emerged as a household name across the nation in 1858. This year, Lincoln was the Republican Party's candidate for the United States Senate. The Democratic Party nominated the incumbent senator, Stephen Douglas. The two men participated in seven debates. Lincoln argued that the United States could not survive with half of the nation allowing slavery and the other half opposing this institution. Lincoln contended that African Americans were human beings and that they deserved their freedom, but he never claimed that blacks were as intelligent as or should have equal rights with whites. Douglas championed popular sovereignty, which would allow residents of individual states to decide if slavery would exist within their respective states, and accused Lincoln of believing African Americans were equal to whites. He even suggested that Lincoln supported equality between whites and blacks. By inspiring fear in Illinois voters and mischaracterizing Lincoln's views, Douglas won the election.
Douglas and Lincoln met again on the political battlefield in the presidential election of 1860. In this election, Lincoln represented the Republican Party, while Douglas represented the Northern Democratic Party. By the late 1850s, the Democratic Party was in disarray over slavery. Northern members opposed slavery's expansion, while Southern members believed that slavery should exist across the United States. Douglas refused to endorse the Southerners' view, and the Democratic Party split in two. John C. Breckinridge represented the Southern Democratic Party. A fourth party, the Constitutional Union Party, also existed in this election. Its candidate, John Bell, hoped to compromise the tensions between the North and South by extending the Missouri Compromise line across the remainder of the United States. If the compromise was enacted, slavery would be permitted in new states established south of the line, while the institution would be illegal in new states formed north of the line.
Lincoln won the election against the other three candidates. Many Northern voters agreed with him that African Americans deserved their freedom but that blacks were not equal to whites. Many of these people also agreed with Lincoln that the federal government could not end slavery where it already existed but that it could prohibit slavery in new territories and states. In 1860, the North enjoyed a population of approximately twenty-three million people to the South's nine million. Southerners divided their support between Breckinridge and Bell, while Northerners rejected these two candidates outright. Douglas provided the only real opposition to Lincoln in the North, but most Northern voters preferred Lincoln's views than Douglas's platform. With such a wide advantage in population totals, the North controlled the Electoral College, giving Lincoln the victory in the election.
Upon Lincoln's election, Southern states began to secede from the Union. Many Southerners believed that Lincoln would end slavery within the United States. Eleven Southern states seceded from the Union between December 1860 and June 1861, creating the Confederate States of America and resulting in the American Civil War. The newly elected president was unwilling to let the nation dissolve.
For the first two years of the war, Lincoln struggled to find military officers to his liking. Generals such as George McClellan and Ambrose Burnside proved reluctant to fight or were poor battlefield commanders. The Union faced numerous setbacks, especially in the East. The North did achieve an important victory at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. This victory stopped the Confederacy's first invasion of the North in the East. It also permitted Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which would make slavery one of the North's war aims.
Lincoln refused to end slavery during 1861 and the first half of 1862 for several reasons. First, he believed that the United States Constitution prevented the president from seizing the property—slaves—of the country's citizens without due process. Second, Lincoln feared alienating the residents of border states—slave states that had remained in the Union. These people included residents of Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, and Maryland. If these people joined with the South, hundreds of thousand more men could have swelled the Confederacy's ranks. Lincoln wanted to solidify the North's control over these slaveholding states before acting against slavery. Third, Lincoln realized that many white Southerners and Northerners were racist and would not support slavery's termination, because it might result in equality for the African Americans with white people. Lincoln hoped to persuade prominent African-American leaders that the black population should move from the United States if slavery ended. The president also had to negotiate with other nations, to convince these countries to accept African-American immigrants. Finally, Lincoln worried that ending slavery would alienate any Unionist sympathizers currently in the South, further strengthening the Confederate war effort.
By the summer of 1862, Lincoln had become convinced that slavery had to end. Many of his concerns about ending the institution had been alleviated. Northern troops now had firm control over the border states and would be able to prevent these states from seceding from the United States. White Southerners remained committed to the war effort, convincing Lincoln that any Unionist support in the Confederacy could not succeed in convincing secessionists to rejoin the United States. While many Northern whites remained racist, a growing number of these people realized that slavery was a brutal institution. As Northern soldiers marched into the South, many of these men realized for the first time the true brutality of slavery. Many of these men informed their loved ones in the North of the injustice of the institution. Support among white Northerners for slavery's termination was increasing because of the firsthand experiences of Northern soldiers. Finally, Lincoln had determined that the federal government did have the right to hamper its enemy's ability to wage war. Slaves grew crops and produced other supplies for the Confederate military. The United States Constitution allowed the president to adopt measures during times of war to help guarantee a military victory. Lincoln determined that ending slavery would hamper the Confederate war effort and was, thus, legal under the United States Constitution.
Lincoln drafted an initial copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in July 1862, but he did not issue it to the public until September 22, 1862. Lincoln feared that American citizens and governments of other nations might view the proclamation as a desperate attempt by the United States to build support for the war effort. Before September 1862, the North had attained several important victories in the war, such as at the Battles of Shiloh, Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson in the West, but the Union military had not attained any significant victory east of the Appalachian Mountains. Following the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, Lincoln had his important Union victory in the Eastern Theater.
The Emancipation Proclamation declared that slavery would end in any areas still rebelling against the United States on January 1, 1863. Lincoln hoped that white Southerners would rejoin the United States before the deadline to keep their slaves. These Southerners refused to recognize Lincoln's conciliatory gesture, and slavery, in theory, ended in areas in rebellion on January 1, 1863. Slavery did not end everywhere within the United States on that date. The Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the border states. It also did not end slavery in areas in the South that Union forces had conquered. These areas included several coastal areas along the Atlantic Ocean, as well as parts of northern Virginia and Louisiana. Nevertheless, the Civil War had become a war to end slavery. Slavery did not end everywhere in the United States until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.
During 1863, Lincoln found military commanders that he found acceptable. Generals like Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, both Ohioans, believed that the quickest way to reunite the nation was to destroy the Southerners' ability to wage war. Grant believed the best way to accomplish this was to continuously attack Confederate soldiers. He realized that the North had dramatically more men available to fight and that the Union should be able to overwhelm the Confederates. Sherman also waged war against the civilian population, realizing that it was Southern civilians who were supplying the Confederate military. Thanks to the strategies of these two men, the North emerged from the Civil War victorious. Their numerous victories on the battlefield helped Lincoln win reelection against George McClellan in the election of 1864. Unfortunately for Lincoln, he did not live to see the war's end. On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the back of his head. Lincoln was attending a play,Our American Cousin, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. He died the next day from his wound.
For the most part, Ohioans had supported Lincoln and his views. In the election of 1860, Lincoln received 231,000 votes from Ohioans to Douglas's 187,000. People originally from the South or with Southern leanings tended to vote for Douglas while those people originally from Northern states endorsed Lincoln. Bell and Breckinridge, the other two candidates, received just over twenty-three thousand votes combined. As civil war gripped the nation, a majority of Ohioans also agreed with Lincoln that the nation had to be reunited. A total of 310,654 Ohioans served in the Northern army for varying lengths of time. The federal government required each state to supply a set number of soldiers determined by the state's population. Ohio exceeded the government's call for men by 4,332 soldiers. This number does not reflect the 6,479 men who paid a monetary fine to the government to escape military duty. It also does not include the 5,092 African-American soldiers who served in the United States Colored Troops or in units from other states, including the infamous Fifty-Fourth and Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts Infantry Regiments. In theory, Ohio exceeded the federal government's requirements by more than fifteen thousand men, clearly illustrating Ohioans' support of the war effort.
Not all Ohioans, however, supported Lincoln and his views. Numerous Ohioans, especially those who had migrated from the South, opposed the war effort. They also opposed the Emancipation Proclamation. Ohioans greeted the Emancipation Proclamation with differing outlooks. Radical Republicans, like Senator Benjamin Wade, welcomed the document, as did the state's abolitionists and the Quaker populace. Irish and German Ohioans, especially those from working-class backgrounds, were not as welcoming. Many of these people feared that African Americans would flee the South, moving to Northern states and taking jobs away from working-class whites. Clement Vallandigham argued that Lincoln did not have the power to end slavery and that the president was in clear violation of the United States Constitution. Some white Ohioans serving in the Union military refused to fight a war that now was to end slavery. They deserted from the armed services, returning home.
source: Oldhistorycentral