Was He Really “The Great Emancipator”? A Look at Lincoln’s Presidency

Without a doubt, the early 1860s was an era of great importance in the United States. It was a time of war and strife as the country tore itself apart over the issue of slavery. Heading the charge to abolish slavery and to reunite the Confederacy with the Union was President Abraham Lincoln.

He was a strong-willed man with a solid sense of justice who steered the country through its most tumultuous episode. His beliefs were shaped by his upbringing and grew stronger as he matured. They also earned him many enemies, and despite the freedom that they brought the citizens of the United States, they also ended up being his undoing.

This is the story of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, beliefs, and policies that shaped the nation.

The election of 1860 was very much a three-way race. Formerly representing the Whig Party that had faded away, Abraham Lincoln stood at the head of the newly founded Republican Party, created to combat slavery. Opposing him was the Democrats, who had split into two opposing groups and ran two nominees. The Democratic National Convention had elected Stephen A. Douglas to run as the presidential candidate on a proposal that each state be able to decide its own laws regarding slavery.

For radical pro-slavery Democrats in the South, this wasn’t good enough. Although the implementation of the law would likely increase slavery in the United States, the Southern Democrats, as they became known, wanted slavery to be legal everywhere. They held their own convention and elected John C. Breckinridge as their candidate.

With the Democratic split, Lincoln’s road to the White House became a lot easier. Three hundred and three Electoral College votes were available, with 152 needed to win. Lincoln secured 180 votes, carried 18 States, and won 39.8% of the popular vote. Breckinridge won 72 Electoral College votes and 18.1% of the popular vote, while Stephen A. Douglas won just 13 Electoral College votes and 29.5% of the popular vote. John Bell of the Constitutional Union won 39 Electoral College votes and 12.6% of the popular vote.

The election was held on November 6, 1860, and on March 4 of the following year, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th president of the United States.

When Abraham Lincoln took his Oath of Office, the country was already being torn apart by sentiments over slavery. Lincoln sought to avoid further conflict, and this desire characterized his opening address. Despite this, however, he issued stern words on the need to keep the Union together.

His message was tough yet conciliatory. The nature of his speech was also informed by many of his friends and colleagues whom he asked for input. It was also reviewed by his former opponent, William Seward, whom Lincoln would name as Secretary of State.

That same night, March 4, Lincoln began forming his cabinet. Many of the men he chose were strong-willed individuals who had been rivals within the Republican Party, but all held one notion dear—they were all opposed to the expansion of slavery.

Forming the cabinet was filled with difficult choices. One such choice was for the position of Secretary of War. The post was filled by Simon Cameron, a controversial figure because he was known to be corrupt. Cameron, a businessman from Pennsylvania, had helped Lincoln win the election in Chicago in 1860, and in return, Lincoln’s floor managers had promised Cameron a seat in Lincoln’s cabinet. Cameron, however, proved to be incompetent, and in 1862, Cameron was replaced by Edwin Stanton.

Given the nature of the development of hostilities between the Union and the secessionist states, it has been suggested that Cameron’s appointment was an indication that Lincoln did not expect war to actually break out, despite the fact that when he took office, seven states had already declared their secession from the Union.

Lincoln wasn’t entirely shocked by the start of the war, however. He hoped he could avoid it and stated that the Union would not go to war unless attacked first. As events unfolded, this turned out to be the unfortunate case.

The first evidence that war was nearing an inevitability was the situation at Fort Sumter, an island fortress built off the coast of South Carolina, a state that had announced its secession. The fort needed to be resupplied and was effectively cut off from the Union by a hostile state. There was much debate within Lincoln’s cabinet over whether to resupply the fort or abandon it. Any effort to resupply the fort was risky in that it may have initiated conflict with Confederate forces.

As it happened, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, ordered the fort to capitulate on April 10. An attack was carried out two days later, and on April 13, the fort fell to the Confederates. The effort to resupply came too late. The American Civil War had begun.

One of Lincoln’s first acts was to call up 75,000 militiamen to serve three-month contracts. Men in the north flocked to fill these positions. Lincoln then asked Robert E. Lee to command the new Union Army, but not only did Lee refuse, he decided to serve the Confederacy instead. By May 20, the Confederacy consisted of 11 states.

Although the war was undeniably over the issue of slavery, there were those sympathetic to slavery in the Union. Lincoln tried to downplay the issue of slavery and focused on claiming the war was about preserving the Union. As time went on, however, this attempt at a façade fell away. It became clear to everyone involved that slavery was the overriding issue of the conflict.

There were many other issues, however, that were connected to the economic and political repercussions brought about by slavery, and these issues were also called upon as reasons for the conflict. Sometimes taken out of context, these issues, such as the “Southern Way of Life” and states’ rights, were also used to justify the conflict, and there is still debate as to how interconnected they were to the economic and social structure brought about by the institution of slavery.

It is certainly true that for individual soldiers, slavery was not the overriding cause for fighting. For these young men, there was an urgent need for employment, which the military provided, and sympathies towards or against the political and social issues were, in many cases, not a concern.

The beginning of the war did not look good for Lincoln. His counterpart, President Jefferson Davis, was a decorated war hero, a graduate of the US Military Academy, and had served as Secretary of War. Lincoln, by contrast, had very little military experience. As a young man, he had participated in the Black Hawk War but had seen no action.

Despite the advantage in numbers and the widespread groundswell of support for Lincoln’s efforts to keep the Union together, the first few months of Lincoln’s presidency saw little success. Many engagements took place, and the Confederates won several significant victories.

Nevertheless, Lincoln was an intelligent, quick learner and willing to take supreme responsibility for his duties. He took control of the situation with confidence, learning the intricacies of battlefield strategy and tactics, as well as logistical factors, and appointed his generals carefully.

Lincoln’s ability as a wartime leader, combined with his skills in statecraft, was unparalleled, and many have recognized his efforts as being far beyond expectations. In this, he has been labeled a genius.

In the early years of the war, the Union leadership had no coherent overall strategy for fighting battles. Ulysses S. Grant was one of the few leaders willing to sustain immense casualties, as he realized the nature of the war to be one of attrition, a reality already understood by the Confederates in the opening stages of the conflict. He believed in complete victory, not just defeating the enemy but destroying the entire force in the process.

Others did not believe in such tactics, and Confederate forces were able to disengage and threaten other parts of the Union line. As such, the Confederates were able to go on the offensive despite being vastly outnumbered and with about nine times less industrial capability than their northern rivals.

Amid the Union struggling to convert its advantages into significant victories, the Lincoln family suffered tragedy on February 20, 1862. William Lincoln, just 11 at the time, died of typhoid fever.

“My poor boy. He was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so much. It is hard, hard to have him die!”

Abraham shut himself in his room after his son’s burial and wept alone. His wife, Mary, spent three weeks in bed.

From April 1862, the tide of the war began to shift in favor of the Union. New Orleans was captured that month, and in September, the Union won a significant victory at Antietam. Although the battle was close-run, it caused enough damage to Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army that had struck deep into Union territory that the Confederates had to withdraw their forces. This gave the Union a much-needed morale boost.

Lincoln’s focus was not solely on the war effort. His presidency dealt with many other issues. He passed the Pacific Railway Act, which became law in July 1862 and called upon able-bodied workers to build the country’s first transcontinental railway line. He also established the Revenue Act of 1862, America’s first income tax, largely to pay for the cost of the war.

As a man dedicated to learning, Lincoln was also focused on education, and he established the Morrill Act of 1862, which laid the groundwork for the American state university system. In addition, he enacted the Homestead Act of 1862, which encouraged settlers to move westwards.

In addition, Lincoln established the Department of Agriculture on May 15, 1862, and ensured the Union was well-fed. Despite the fact that the vast majority of American cultivated land lay in the South, modernization meant that the northern states actually became more productive than the farms in the South.

Following the series of military victories, Lincoln decided that now was the time to publicly issue a statement on abolition. This resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation. On January 1, 1863, he declared,

“All persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

This opened the door for formerly enslaved people to join the Union army, and the ranks swelled even further. Later that year, the Union won two important victories, Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Deep in the South, The victory at Vicksburg cut the Confederates off from vital supplies via the Mississippi River, and the victory of Gettysburg ended the Confederate ability for another offensive. The Union now had a clear upper hand.

Following this, Lincoln made his famous Gettysburg Address, one of the most quoted speeches of all time:

“Four Score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…”

Meanwhile, things were not easy for Lincoln’s administration. The president was tasked with finding a middle ground between radical Republicans declaring the Confederate states had lost all rights by seceding from the Union and Democrats who wanted amnesty for Confederates. Navigating these waters was incredibly challenging for Lincoln, and the reconstruction and reintegration of the South had to be done with a very careful hand.

In 1864, Lincoln faced a battle of his own as he had to campaign for re-election. During the campaign, Union victories continued, and the capture of Atlanta swung public sentiment heavily in favor of Lincoln against his Democratic opponent George B. McClellan, a general Lincoln had placed in charge of Union troops in 1861.

Upon his victory, Lincoln urged Southerners to end the war and join him in reuniting a fractured country. He stressed the need for friendship and an end to hostilities. Exhausted from the war, Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops on April 9, although the final Confederate surrender would only come in November. Despite the war’s lengthy conclusion, it was clear the Confederates had lost any hope of victory the moment Lee signed the articles of surrender.

Lincoln was also aware of the fact that his Emancipation Proclamation only covered slavery in the states that had rebelled against the Union. There were still enslaved people in the border states that did not abolish slavery but did not join the Confederacy. Thus, Lincoln proposed a bill to completely abolish slavery throughout the United States once and for all. This bill became the 13th Amendment, but Lincoln would not live to see it ratified.

Death

Lincoln would not live long to enjoy the relief of Lee’s surrender and the victory of Union forces. Five days after Lee surrendered, Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. At 7:22 on the morning of April 15, Lincoln passed from his wounds.

The assassination sent shockwaves through the country, and the thrill of victory turned into nationwide mourning.

Lincoln is remembered as the president who steered the Union to victory over the Confederacy and for his important work in ending slavery in the United States. It was a hard-fought and bitter conflict that required uncommon strength in leadership. There is no doubt that Lincoln possessed the rare qualities needed to endure the trials that befell the nation. Never before had the country suffered such losses as the American Civil War brought. Six hundred thousand Americans lost their lives, but by the end of Lincoln’s life, he had ensured the continuation of a stronger union and stopped the country from splitting apart.

As such, Lincoln is remembered with reverence not just in the United States but the world over by those who respect justice and equality.