Thus, Lincoln changed both the aims of the war and his own opinion on slavery in the United States. The 13th Amendment called for the immediate abolition of slavery in all states and territories without compensation to slave owners. Some owned huge plantations, such as Senator Edward Lloyd V of Maryland, who enslaved 468 people on the same estate where abolitionist Frederick Douglass was enslaved as a child in 1832. Many exerted great influence on the issue of slavery, such as Senator Elias Kent Kane, who enslaved five people in Illinois in 1820 and attempted to formalize slavery in the state. This political cartoon, depicting the Emancipation Proclamation as Lincoln`s last warning to the South, appeared in Harper`s Weekly in October 1862. If the rebel does not descend (surrender), then Lincoln will destroy the tree of slavery with the proclamation. You may be wondering about the terms used in the slavery initiative in the President`s Quarter, as they may be different from what you`ve heard before. Although there is debate among historians about how best to discuss those who were forced to participate in the institution of slavery, today most choose to use the term “slave” instead of “slave.” The word “slave” is a noun. Because of the historical implications of slavery, the word often reduces the slave to an object. In order to give the slave free will and recognition, and to remind us of the violence and inhumanity of slavery, this initiative uses “slave” wherever possible.
These terms help us remember that people have been forced into servitude against their will and that they deserve to be recognized as individuals and not by their legal status. Lincoln`s political hero was Henry Clay. Clay was a Kentucky slave owner and congressman who ran for president three times but never won. The leader of the Whig party, Clay, was best known as the “Great Compromise.” This referred to his role in drafting the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. These compromises led to a disturbed balance between the northern and southern states, which sparked a war between these parties over slavery. When Abraham Lincoln became president in 1861, the United States faced the serious challenges of slavery and a possible civil war. Many doubted that American democracy would survive. What did Lincoln believe about these difficult challenges? Lincoln hoped that Southern states where legalized slavery prevailed could introduce “systems of progressive emancipation.” And in general, he believed that the best way to get rid of slavery should include “three main characteristics—gradual emancipation—compensation—and popular vote.” These demands, he acknowledged, would make the process slow, but the slowness could have the advantage that “both races” “gradually live off their old relationship with each other and are better prepared for the new one.” Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860, and almost immediately, 11 of the 15 states in the American Union where slavery was legal began making threats and preparations for secession.
Between December 1860 and February 1861, seven of them seceded to form an alternative government, the Confederate States of America. Lincoln struggled to calm the storm, reminding slave owners that as president, he had no power “to intervene, directly or indirectly, in the institution of slavery in states where it exists.” But when Confederate forces bombed the U.S. Army installation at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Lincoln condemned the attack as outright rebellion and invoked “the war power of the government” to suppress secessionists. It was to this last question of racial equality that Lincoln had the hardest time answering Douglas. Lincoln could not simply declare that slavery was immoral and that African Americans were endowed with God-given rights as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, without being vulnerable to Douglas` racist attacks. Either African Americans were equal to white Americans, Douglas proclaimed, or they were not. Lincoln responded by trying to claim that there were physical and social differences between the races that would “probably forever prohibit their coexistence on the basis of perfect equality.” On the other hand, true to his Republican ideology of “free labor,” Lincoln insisted that “there is no reason in the world why the Negro should not be entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence—the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Nevertheless, he saw limits to what this meant.