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DiLorenzo, Thomas J. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002-2003.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo is an author known for his many works of the history of the United States. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a Ph.D. in economics. He has spent many years as a researcher and a teacher, working at many universities and institutes. Many of the books he has written involve our sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln. His book The Real Lincoln focuses on President Lincoln during the time leading up to the Civil War. From slavery, to saving the Union, to the end of Federalism, this book reveals Lincoln's beliefs and actions throughout this time period. DiLorenzo's purpose of writing The Real Lincoln is not to tell about Lincoln's personal life, whether he married and had children or not, or his death; his purpose is to elaborate on how Lincoln helped grant the right of secession and his efforts to save the Union.
According to DiLorenzo's book, President Lincoln was a very misinterpreted man. Today, most people know him as a staunch abolitionist and “The Great Emancipator,” but DiLorenzo claims differently. He claims Lincoln to be into politics and into acting like a politician: saying one thing to an audience and saying something different to another (DiLorenzo 2002-2003, 10). While people today understand him to have been a supporter of the black race, DiLorenzo quotes a debate of Lincoln's in 1858 that reveals quite the opposite: "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races" (11). His intentions were to colonize the African-Americans. He wrote a Proclamation, the Emancipation P...
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Works Cited
Belz, Herman. "The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo; When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, by Charles Adams". Michigan Publishing. (Winter 2003). http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0024.106/--real-lincoln-a-new- look-at-abraham-lincoln-his-agenda?rgn=main;view=fulltext (accessed May 7, 2014).
Blumenthal, Sidney. "Lincoln Plays to Win". Newsweek LLC. (October 22, 2012): Vol. 160. Issue 17. p32. http://web.b.ebscohost.com/hrc/detail?vid=8&sid=4f0f5412-e963-44c9- bbcef20181e43d00%40sessionmgr113&hid=113&bdata=JnNpdGU9aHJjLWxpdmU %3d#db=khh&AN=82575921 (accessed May 7, 2014).
"Research Fellow." The Independent Institute. http://www.independent.org/aboutus/ person_detail.asp?id=544 (accessed May 7, 2014).
Abe Lincoln Grows up by Carl Sandburg is a 222-page biography. Here we have Lincoln’s childhood at Knob Creek Farm and on Little Pigeon Creek; his games and chores; the things he handles and uses; his life at Gentryville and on the Mississippi; all the way until age 19, leaving home for New Salem. This book review includes a summary of the book, an analysis, and a character analysis.
In Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, by James L. Swanson, the main characters were; John Wilkes Booth, Dr. Leale, Abraham Lincoln (even though he dies.) When John Wilkes Booth (a.k.a Booth) found out that the North had won the Civil War, he felt anger and disgust but he could do nothing. Booth had one plot that the book talked about and that was to kidnap the president and sell him to the leaders of the South but that plot never got put into action. When booth went to Ford's theatre got a letter, Booth worked at the theatre, the letter that said that the President of the United states would be visiting ford's theatre quickly he put a plot into works. First he went to get accomplices and they too would kill someone that night. When the time had come to Booth snuck into the President’s box, not even noticed he pulled out a gun and shot a bullet into the left side and under the left ear of the President's head. That didn’t kill the President, yet. When Booth tried to leave he was stopped by General Henry Rathbone, they had a knife fight while trying to stop both of them from leaving, although Booth got away jumping from the President's box and onto the stage shouting "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (Chasing Lincoln's Killer, by James L. Swanson.)
leading up to and surrounding President Abraham Lincoln’s death. The purpose of this book is to
In “The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln,” Phillip Shaw Paludan argues that even though Abraham Lincoln faced unparalleled challenges, Lincoln was America’s greatest president as he preserved the Union and freed the slaves. According to Paludan, Lincoln’s greatness exceeds that of all other American presidents as Lincoln’s presidential service was remarkable in both the obstacles he faced as well as the ways in which he overcame them. Before accepting the distinguished chair in Lincoln studies at the University of Illinois, Springfield, Paludan was a professor of history at the University of Kansas for over 30 years. Paludan has authored several books including Victims: A True Story of the Civil War and A People’s Contest: The Union and Civil
James Oakes gave a brilliant and unique perspective to a relationship between two well known historical figures of their time. Abraham Lincoln is a well-admired president for the United States because as Americans culture teaches that he was an honest and well-respected man. He heard about a young African American man, who had high aspirations for his life and the blossoming United States. This man’s name was Frederick Douglass. James Oakes demonstrates how both Douglass and Lincoln worked towards the abolishment of slavery and effectively producing better outcomes within antislavery politics.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery was the belief that the expansion of it to Free states and new territories should be ceased and that it eventually be abolished completely throughout the country. He believed simply that slavery was morally wrong, along with socially and politically wrong in the eyes of a Republican. Lincoln felt that this was a very important issue during the time period because there was starting to be much controversy between the Republicans and the Democrats regarding this issue. There was also a separation between the north and the south in the union, the north harboring the Free states and the south harboring the slave states. Lincoln refers many times to the Constitution and its relations to slavery. He was convinced that when our founding fathers wrote the Constitution their intentions were to be quite vague surrounding the topic of slavery and African-Americans, for the reason that he believes was because the fathers intended for slavery to come to an end in the distant future, in which Lincoln refers to the "ultimate extinction" of slavery. He also states that the men who wrote the constitution were wiser men, but obviously did not have the experience or technological advances that the men of his day did, hence the reasons of the measures taken by our founding fathers.
James Oakes’ The Radical and the Republican narrated the relationship between two of America’s greatest leaders: Frederick Douglass, the “radical” abolitionist, and Abraham Lincoln, the “Republican” politician. He did an astonishing job of demonstrating the commonalities between the views of Douglass and Lincoln, but also their differences on their stance of anti-slavery politics and abolitionism. Despite being on the same side of the argument of slavery, Douglass and Lincoln went about their opinions separately. Lincoln held a more patient and orthodox stance on anti-slavery, while Douglass was proven to be obstinate and direct with
David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is a biography of our sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln. At the age of twenty one, he was sure he did not want to be like his father Thomas Lincoln, an uneducated farmer, so he left his fathers house permanently. He had many jobs, learned many lessons, and made both friends and enemies, all which helped him to become one of the greatest presidents of the United States of America during the time the country had split, the Civil War. Thoroughly researched and excellently written, this biography comes alive and shows us what really happened during the early to mid-nineteenth century and it still puts us in the point of view of our former president, using the information and ideas available to him.
In a speech that Lincoln gave prior to his presidency, we can see how ambiguous his stance on slavery truly was. This speech, known as the ‘House Divided’ speech, was given on the 16th of June, 1858, and outlined his beliefs regarding secession, but did not solidify the abolition of slavery as his main goal. Lincoln states that the nation “could not endure, permanently half slave and half free,” and that the slavery will either cease to exist, or will encompass all states lawfully (Lincoln). At this point in his life, Lincoln’s primary concern is clearly with the preservation of the nation.
He wisely used the issue of slavery to appeal to both the abolitionists and to Negrophobes, Northerners who were afraid of living side-by- side with Negroes and competing with them for jobs. For example, on July 10th of 1959, Lincoln gave a speech in Chicago, a primarily abolitionist town. Lincoln stated that inequality was unnecessary in this country. If all men were created equal then were should look past race, saying, “Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal” (Hofstadter, pg. 148).
In his work, The Real Lincoln, economic historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo tells quite the different tale. Daring to criticize this beloved president, DiLorenzo defends his antithetical statements with several key points: Lincoln was more similar to a dictator than an American President. Arguing that the War Between the States was wholly unconstitutional, DiLorenzo corrects the popular misconception that Lincoln’s war was one of abolition. War was not necessary to end slavery, but it was necessary to fulfill Lincoln’s true agenda – to destroy the most significant check on the powers of the central government: the right of secession.1
Dilorenzo, Thomas J.. The Real Lincoln: a new look at Abraham Lincoln, his agenda, and an unnecessary war. Roseville, Calif: Prima, 2002
Abraham Lincoln’s original views on slavery were formed through the way he was raised and the American customs of the period. Throughout Lincoln’s influential years, slavery was a recognized and a legal institution in the United States of America. Even though Lincoln began his career by declaring that he was “anti-slavery,” he was not likely to agree to instant emancipation. However, although Lincoln did not begin as a radical anti-slavery Republican, he eventually issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves and in his last speech, even recommended extending voting to blacks. Although Lincoln’s feeling about blacks and slavery was quite constant over time, the evidence found between his debate with Stephen A. Douglas and his Gettysburg Address, proves that his political position and actions towards slavery have changed profoundly.
Contrary to what today’s society believes about Lincoln, he was not a popular man with the South at this time. The South wanted to expand towards the West, but Lincoln created a geographical containment rule keeping slavery in the states it currently resided in. Despite his trying to rationalize with the South, Lincoln actually believed something different ”Lincoln claimed that he, like the Founding Fathers, saw slavery in the Old South as a regrettable reality whose expansion could and should be arrested, thereby putting it on the long and gradual road ”ultimate extinction” (216). He believed it to be “evil” thus “implying that free southerners were evil for defending it”(275). Lincoln wanted to wipe out slavery for good, and the South could sense his secret motives.
His personal beliefs had always been opposed to slavery. He believed that the Founding Fathers had put slavery on the road to extinction, and he wanted to continue it down that path. Lincoln acted very professional; he always put the nation before his personal perspective. It transformed the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human freedom. According to the history book “A People and a Nation”, the Emancipation Proclamation was legally an ambiguous document, but as a moral and political document it had great meaning.