Nation As Lincoln example essay topic

408 words
more joined when hostilities began between the North and South. A bloody civil war then engulfed the nation as Lincoln vowed to preserve the Union, enforce the laws of the United States, and end the secession. The war lasted within more than four years with a staggering loss of over 600,000 Americans dead. Midway through the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all the slaves within the Confederacy and changed the war from a battle to a preserve the Union into a battle for freedom.

He was the first Republican president, and Union victory ended forever the claim tha In the 1860 campaign for president, Lincoln firmly expressed his opposition to slavery and his determination to limit the expansion of slavery westward into the new territories acquired from Mexico in 1850. His election victory created a crisis for the nation as many southern Democrats feared that it would just be a matter of time before Lincoln would move to kill slavery in the South. Rather than face a future in which black people will become free and equal citizens, much of the white south supported secession. This reasoning was based upon the doctrine of states rights, which placed ultimate sovereignty with the states. t state sovereignty superseded Lincoln vowed to preserve the union even if it meant war. He eventually raised an army and navy of nearly 3 million northern men to face the southern army of over 2 million soldiers. In battles fought from Virginia to California, but mainly in Virginia, in Mississippi river valley, and along border states, the great civil war tore apart the United States apart.

In pursuing victory, Lincoln assumed extra-legal powers over the press, virtually ignored the supreme court, declared martial law in areas where know military action was justified it, quelled draft riots with armed soldiers, and drafted soldiers to fight for the union cause. No president in history had ever exerted so much executive authority, but he did so not for personal power but in order to preserve the union. In 1864, as an example of his limited ambitions, Lincoln refused to call off national elections, preferring to hold the election even if he lost the vote rather than destroy the democratic basis upon which he rested his authority. With the Lincoln vowed to preserve the union even if it meant war. With the.