In his first inaugural address in early 1861, he declared that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.” By that time, however, seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union, forming the Confederate States of America and setting the stage for the Civil War.Īt the outset of that conflict, Lincoln insisted that the war was not about freeing enslaved people in the South but about preserving the Union. But Lincoln didn’t believe the Constitution gave the federal government the power to abolish it in the states where it already existed, only to prevent its establishment to new western territories that would eventually become states.

'If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are created equal ' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another,' he said in a now-famous speech in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854. Lincoln personally hated slavery, and considered it immoral. Opposition to the act led to the formation of the Republican Party in 1854 and revived the failing political career of an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, who rose from obscurity to national prominence and claimed the Republican nomination for president in 1860.

Sectional tensions over slavery in the United States had been building for decades by 1854, when Congress’ passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened territory that had previously been closed to slavery according to the Missouri Compromise.

Abe Lincoln's Developing Views on Slavery

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