The Presidential Patience of Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln is considered one of the greatest presidents the United States has seen. He has been immortalized in stone, on our currency, and is forever celebrated as the president who brought about the end of slavery.

The way in which Lincoln approached this goal was genius. Prior to the Civil War, and during its early stages, many Northerners were apathetic about slavery. They felt that it did not directly affect them, therefore the South could do what they wanted. However, when the South took steps to expand their control on slavery, such as reaching into the Northern states to take African Americans as slaves, the North began fighting against it. 

As the president, Abraham Lincoln wanted the North and the South to be one, making the Union and Confederacy a united nation. Leading to his course of action was the Dred Scott case held before the Supreme Court in 1857. Scott was born a slave but his master Dr. John Emerson, a surgeon in the U.S. Army, was transferred to different states, including free ones and by law, living in those states made Scott a free man. After Emerson died, Scott sought his freedom from Emerson’s widow, who denied it. When the case was brought before the Supreme Court, they ruled that they were powerless to regulate slavery in U.S. territories.

Abolitionists were outraged by this decision, pointing to the unlawful power of the South over Northern states. With slavery being one of the main causesof the Civil War, President Lincoln sought a means to end it. In 1862-63 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves in the Confederate States of America were free and enumerated the states it applied to. It was singularly issued by Lincoln without consent of Congress.

Unfortunately, it was attacked as freeing only slaves the Union didn’t have power over. What it began was a solid effort by the Union to abolish slavery, which had not been a unanimous goal in the North. Lincoln wanted complete freedom, but knew the goal was lofty considering the circumstances, therefore small steps had to be taken. This ensured that progress would be made while convincing reluctant Northerners. The first slaves who had escaped to the Union side were free then thousands per day were freed in the South as the Union armies were defeating the Confederacy. Originally it did not affect the border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia, just the southern ones under Union control.

When the war ended concern spread that the Emancipation Proclamation would hold no peace-time weight because it was a measure taken during war. But this was wiped out when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in December of 1865 abolishing and prohibiting all slavery. A long road lie ahead, but Lincoln had led the achievement of the United States in freedom.