Abraham Lincoln’s view on slavery, his approach and solution to this are ideas that have greatly been discussed within the historical books. Studying through the political life of Abraham Lincoln, it is quite evident that he was against slavery and tried to find it using all means possible. His view was that slavery was retrogressive and bad hence did not have to expand. However, despite holding this anti-slavery view, Abraham Lincoln was quite aware that the institution of slavery had been legalized in the South, thus the Southerners were practicing what was rightfully enshrined in the constitution. This fact that slavery was an institutionalized practice in the South made Lincoln to ensure he did not attack it openly and directly. He had to use indirect and cunning approaches to find a lasting solution to this problem. The Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1958 brought the clear view of Abraham Lincoln on the issue slavery in the United States of America.
It is vital to mention that in the year 1858, when Abraham Lincoln gave his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination to vie as the U.S President against the incumbent Democrat, Stephen Douglas, he made reference to the Dred Scott ruling of 1857. Lincoln referred to this ruling while warning the slave states in the South that they had to be put on a path of freedom in order to save the already free states in the North. According to Lincoln, failure to put the Southern states on a path of freedom would make slavery to expand significantly into the Northern states. He urged the audience that a house divided along the lines of slavery, with half of it pro-slavery while the other free of slavery, was something the government could not endure (Lincoln, 2016).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Notably, the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 were highly based on their arguments regarding the Dred Scott ruling. During the debates, Douglas made accusations against Lincoln for fanning the flames of anarchy by rejecting something that had already been settled by a legally binding verdict of the Supreme Court (Zarefsky, 2014). Lincoln suggested in this debate that the following time the Supreme Court would rule that no state should prohibit slavery. Therefore, a close look at Lincoln’s sentiments in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 portrayed him as a person who was deeply worried at the possibility of slavery expansion into the North. This clear worry and fear of slavery expansion during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 proved that Lincoln had an anti-slavery view and he wanted this institution to end throughout the United States of America so that everybody would enjoy freedom.
The approach of Abraham Lincoln to slavery was quite cunning and indirect. He never rebuked slavery directly. Moreover, Lincoln never called for the end of abolition slavery, but he initiated actions that were meant to ensure there was an end to the institution of slavery. Abraham Lincoln tried to portray slavery as a national issue, which affected the whole country. Although the Northern states did not practice slavery hence had little to do with it, Abraham Lincoln tried to show the Northerners that slavery was an issue for them too, even they did not practice it. His strategy was to rally the whole nation against the institution of slavery.
The solution of Lincoln to the problem of slavery was the Emancipation Declaration and the Civil War. Lincoln, through this declaration, rallied the entire nation against slavery. To enlist the support of the Northern states in this fight, Lincoln listed issues of national importance such as freedom and preservation of the Union as the main purposes of the war. He knew that making slavery the main focus of the Civil War would not interest the Northern states.
References
Lincoln, A. (2016). Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois. September , 18 (1858), 1953-1955.
Zarefsky, D. (2014). Conspiracy Arguments in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. In Rhetorical Perspectives on Argumentation (pp. 195-209). New York, NY: Springer International Publishing.
