Unit_5

It put the Confederate states in the position of fighting for slavery -- even though most of the soldiers were too poor to own slaves. And it increased the military strength of the Union by making it possible for free blacks to serve in the northern army. Political opponents and the press criticized actions taken by President Lincoln. The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees free speech and a free press. Yet Lincoln briefly closed some newspapers.
Lincoln read the first draft of the document to his cabinet in July of eighteen sixty-two, five months after Willie's death. A new stage play has been written about those five months in Lincoln's life. "The Heavens Are Hung In Black" by James Still is the first play being presented in the newly redecorated Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. That is the same theater where President Lincoln was shot in eighteen sixty-five.
I believe the declaration that "all men are created equal" is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest; that negro slavery is violative of that principle; but that, by our frame of government, that principle has not been made one of legal obligation; that by our frame of government, the states which have slavery are to retain it, or surrender it at their own pleasure; and that all others — individuals, free states and national government — are constitutionally bound to leave them alone about it.
Unit 5 Biography
Lincoln in History
A Portrait of LincolnBiblioteka Statue of Lincoln
Lincoln Memorial
Story of Abraham Lincoln and How He Saved the Union： America's 16th president, born 200 years ago this Thursday, opposed slavery and led a civil war that ended it. Yet he originally thought slaveholding southern states should be left alone. Abraham Lincoln is the only president in American history to lead a nation divided by civil war.
After his son's death, Lincoln decided that one of his purposes was to be an emancipator -- to begin the process of freeing the slaves. A few months later, he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. Many people think the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. It did not. It only declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. In other words, only slaves in the southern states that did not recognize Lincoln as president.
But Lincoln changed his mind. Some historians think the death of his eleven-year-old son Willie had an influence. The president and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, had four children, all sons. Three got sick and died. Only one lived past the age of eighteen. Tom Schwartz is the Illinois state historian and an expert on Abraham Lincoln. He says the president began to think seriously about the meaning of life after Willie died in eighteen sixty-two. Lincoln never joined a church, but he believed in a supreme being who created every person with a purpose in life.
Abraham Lincoln was born into a poor family in Kentucky. He grew up in Indiana and later moved to Illinois. He loved to learn. He was a self-taught lawyer who served for eight years as an Illinois state representative. But he also suffered from depression all his life. Doctors at that time called it melancholia(忧郁症). He wrote letters about killing himself and saying that he was the "most miserable man alive."
Historians say that by writing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln established a moral purpose for the war. No longer was the purpose simply to bring the southern states back into the Union. Now his declaration made freeing the slaves a long-term goal of the conflict.
Lincoln fought to keep the Union together. He led a civil war in which more than six hundred thousand Americans were killed. And, in leading that war, he took the first steps that would destroy the institution of slavery. Most whites did not consider blacks -- or negroes, as they called them -- to be their equal. Lincoln was no different. But he believed that slavery was wrong.
South Carolina was the first to leave. It did so shortly after Lincoln's election in November of eighteen sixty. Six other states followed by the time he took office in March of eighteen sixty-one. In his inaugural speech, Lincoln begged southern states not to leave the Union. Abraham Lincoln did not receive a majority of the popular vote in the eighteen sixty election. But he won enough electoral votes to become president.