Abraham Lincolin

Abraham Lincoln Essay

This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States. Just like every President in our history, the things they did defined their presidency and ultimately what history remembers about them. During the time of Lincoln’s presidency the country was in turmoil and the Civil War was a struggle for republican values. This essay will focus on events before his presidency, the 1860 election, Southern views of Lincoln and his worries on the government and its impact on the world.

“The Founders were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars.”1 Throughout Abraham Lincoln’s political career, he seems to always have a spiritual and ideological connection to the Founding Fathers of this Nation. He believed that they did not know how to fix the problem that was slavery, and evil in which Lincoln thought to be a “necessary” one. He also stated that they left the problem for future generations to fix.

With the Passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, a fired up Lincoln jumped back into the political scene. Along with Abraham Lincoln, many other Northern political figures were outraged because slavery had crossed the boundary that was set up by the Missouri Compromise in 1820. He thought it to be wrong for the spread of slavery to reach that far. For example, he stated “I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.”2

In terms of slavery Lincoln understood that wherever it had been, it was created without law. He felt that “when a white man governs himself that is self-government, but when a white man governs himself and another man, without their permission, then that is despotism.”3 This is a basic ideal of the...