Abraham Lincoln Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Abraham Lincoln - Essay Example . . ."1 In the following paper I would like to discuss Abraham Lincolns policies during the civil war. The discussion will be structured in the way that will shape Presidents motives in actual conducting the war and mostly pointed into defining whether the reasons were to abolish slavery or receive economic benefit. Faced with heavy Union losses and the destructive nature of the war, Abraham Lincoln, an antislavery proponent, gradually adopted slave emancipation as the most prudent means of ending the conflict between North and South, bringing an end to the war, and thus paving the way to a reunited nation. Lincolns role in the destruction of the institution of slavery during the Civil War and afterward is widely accpeted to be the reason of Civil War as the institution of slavery, so instrumental in dividing the nation, provided Linocoln with an effective tool for ending the conflict. Slowly, at a pace too deliberate for most blacks and many Republicans, Linocoln gradually approached emancipation through the Confiscation Acts, compensation plans, and the Emancipation Proclamation (Abbott, 1968). None of these plans provided for immediate or full emancipation. Even the much-touted Emancipation Proclamation excluded slaves in all the border states and in Confederate areas controlled by the Union as of January 1, 1863, offering freedom only to those slaves living in Confederate strongholds--the very areas in which Linocoln could not enforce his proclamation. At best, the Emancipation Proclamation opened the door to freedom, but it left millions still enslaved. Even when war seemed inescapable, Lincoln remained the premier politician and chief adherent to the Constitution regarding the slavery issue; but observers thousands of miles away lacked his keen understanding of these domestic political and legal realities and began to ponder the