The Lincoln Administration Pursuit of Freedom

The Lincoln Administration Pursuit of Freedom

There are many ways to describe what freedom is; in fact Webster’s dictionary offers nine different explanations of what the word means. “A right or the power to engage in certain actions without control or interference,” is one of the most ubiquitous definitions. There are many ways to describe freedom and American history has portrayed it in very contradictory manners. In the late 1700’s, it was very obvious that America’s forefathers sought freedom as they based their revolution on the principal of emancipation but it was only a short while later that the freedoms of others within the country were being inhibited by slavery. Slavery inhibits civil liberties and in a land of equal opportunity, such as America, needed to be removed. Freedom and slavery have always been closely related but the issues that surround the terms have been handled very differently by the leaders of the nation. Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the USA, is a key figure against the oppression of people and an activist in the struggle to remove slavery and gain freedom for all.

Freedom is an antonym of slavery. After years of fighting to gain independence and essentially freedom from the King of England, America became a slave endorsing entity. This era of American history is a bit of a paradox, why would people fight so hard for justice just to take away the freedoms of another people? In the United States, Slavery existed primarily in the southern states. In 1800, there were nearly 900,000 slaves in the U.S. only 40,000 of which were in the Northern states. It was in the south where large plantation owners bought people to perform grueling manual labor. These dark skinned people were literally worked to death on many occasions and rarely saw any form of retribution from their owners. Men, women and children alike had their civil liberties ripped from them at birth and were treated like misused animals for all of their lives. Many people believed that this treatment of African Americans was inhumane but sadly did not act to stop the brutal imprisonment.

Many of society’s earliest leaders “regarded slavery as evil and inconsistent with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.” However they hesitated to take political action to prohibit the enslaving of people because many southerners saw the ownership of slaves was...

... middle of paper ...

...tizens all within its borders. The suppression of one person’s rights while another is allowed to take advantage of those lost liberties no longer has a place in this world. Abraham Lincoln ensured an undivided country and abolished its reason for separation by reinstating the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln guaranteed freedom and justice to all of this country’s citizens as his forefathers who led the American Revolution had intended.

Works Cited:

Cox, LaWanda C. Fenlason. Lincoln and black freedom : a study in presidential leadership. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1981.

“Liberty," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. Microsoft Corporation. © 1993-1998

“Lincoln, Abraham," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. Microsoft

Corporation. © 1993-1998

“Slavery in the United States.” Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. Microsoft

Corporation. © 1993-1998

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. Fourth Edition

Houghton Mifflin Company: © 2000

Wightman Richard Fox, and James T. Kloppenberg, eds. A Companion to American

Thought. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995.