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Lincoln's Views on Slavery

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery throughout the United States. While this was a politically controversial act, for its time, it was a necessary and appropriate culmination of an evolving policy concerning the problem of slavery.

In present-day America, the idea that slavery was an inherently unjust and immoral institution is almost universally understood and accepted. In the mid 1800s, however, slavery was an established tradition that played an integral role in the agriculturally-based economy of the southern United States. As a growing number of people recognized its immoral nature and actively sought its abolition, the problem of slavery emerged as a bitter point of contention which would eventually escalate into a civil war.

LincolnÆs views concerning slavery were formed and expressed when he was still quite young. He often stated that he was ônaturally anti-slaveryö. In 1837, as a newly elected member of the Illinois State Legislature, Lincoln and fellow legislator Dan Stone recorded a formal protest against the strong anti-abolitionist resolutions presented by their colleagues. The protest stated that ôThe institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policyö (Donald 134). Years later, he would argue against slavery from a logical point of view. His argument stated that ôIf A can prove that he may enslave B, then B can use that same argument to prove that he may enslave A. If A is white and B is black, then it is color that gives one the right. By this rule you may be legally enslaved by the first person you meet whose skin is fairer than your own. If the argument is that whites are intellectually superior and therefore justified, then take care again, by this rule you are to be slave of the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your ownö (Sandburg 115).

LincolnÆs nearly-religious regard for the inherent m...

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Lincoln's Views on Slavery. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:25, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1713081.html