Existing comment:
Freedom Road:
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." -- Abraham Lincoln
Legal Slavery:
At the time of Lincoln's election to the presidency, there were 4,000,000 slaves in the United States. Lincoln's position on slavery was clear. He hated it as an institution. He did not believe however that he had the legal authority to attack it -- much less abolish it -- in those parts of the Union where it was most deeply entrenched.
The Road to Emancipation:
For Abraham Lincoln, the road to Emancipation began as an infant, when he parents joined an abolitionist church in Kentucky. His family's subsequent move to Indiana was at least partly influenced by Thomas Lincoln's disdain for slavery.
As a 19-year-old flatboatman, Abraham saw human beings bought and sold in a New Orleans slave market. The sight haunted him for years. If slavery wasn't wrong, Lincoln would assert, then nothing was wrong. But it how could he constitutionally rid America of this moral stain? It was a question that challenged and, ultimately, defined his presidency. |