He also voted several times in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, that would prohibit slavery in any territory that was acquired from Mexico, siding with the majority in the Whig House of Representatives (McPherson).
However, Lincoln's opposition to the Mexican War was not popular in Illinois. Democratic newspapers dubbed him 'Spotty Lincoln', and indicated that he had committed political suicide with musings such as "What an epitaph: 'Died of Spotted Fever'" (qtd. McPherson). This label would come back to haunt him when he ran in 1848 for the Whig presidential nominee against Zachary Taylor. Although Lincoln's successor in the House, his former partner Logan, lost due to backlash against the Whig party's antiwar stance, Taylor did win the presidency.
However, most disturbing to Lincoln was the fact that he did not get the patronage appointment to commissioner of the General Land Office, as he had anticipated.
Lincoln returned home to devote his time to his law practice, disheartened with politics, and became one of the leading attorneys in the state. He represented both large corporations and small firms (Stevenson), and many of his cases involved local matters of debt, slander and libel, foreclosure, divorce, trespass, and more (McPherson). but, it would be the Kansas-Nebraska Act that would force Lincoln back into the political limelight.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act revoked the ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory that was north of 36° 30'. This repeal of a critical part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 made Kansas Territory open to slavery (Stevenson). This polarized the slave and free states more significantly than anything else ever had, inciting several years of civil war between anti- and pro-slavery forces in Kansas, becoming a prelude to the national Civil War, according to McPherson. This also gave birth to the Republican party, whose primary platform was the exclusion of slavery from territories.
Whereas prior to 1854 Lincoln had said little against slavery in public, the following six years would see him deliver approximately 175 speeches who would center on the exclusion of slavery from territories, as a step towards eradicating it everywhere eventually.
Lincoln believed that the Founding Fathers had adopted the Declaration of Independence as well as enacted the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which barred slavery from most of the existing territories, as an anti-slavery stance. He put forth that this was the reason why the words 'slave' or 'slavery' in the Constitution. He further surmised that opening all of the Louisiana Purchase up to slavery, via the Kansas-Nebraska Act, reversed the course of the Founding Fathers, arousing Lincoln "as he had never been before" (qtd. McPherson).
Lincoln again ran for state legislature, this time taking the stump for other 'anti-Nebraska' Whigs.
He and other anti-Nebraska Whigs and Democrats took control of the legislature. In 1855, Lincoln resigned to become the Whig candidate for the U.S. Senate position. He lost and returned to his law practice, until he helped found the Illinois Republican party, in 1856. In 1858, he challenged Douglas for the Senate, in which the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates were conducted (Stevenson). The plan was for the Republicans to take control of the legislature and then reconstitute the Court and ban slavery from the territories, stifling its growth, where it would eventually "whither and die" (Striner 123). Although the popular vote was nearly even, the Democrats held the majority of seats and reelected Douglas (McPherson).
Lincoln: The President:
Lincoln continued to speak and began to consider the presidency. "Lincoln explicated the parallels between the Republican position on slavery and that of the Founding Fathers" (McPherson). He spoke throughout New England, while traveling to see his son Robert Todd Lincoln, the only son to reach maturity (Emerson), promoting his 'free labor ideology'. He relayed his own life story, of a poor man's son, that had went from mauling rails to a successful legal and political career and how he believed every man should have the opportunity to better their own conditions. When he returned to Illinois, Lincoln discovered his friends had mounted a concerted effort for his presidential nomination. In the end, Lincoln carried every free state, except New Jersey, whose electoral votes he split with Douglas,...
Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky. From these humble beginnings the first born son of Thomas, an uneducated farmer, and Nancy Hanks, Lincoln would grow to become the 16th President of the United States. In 1997 William Riding Jr. And Stuart B. McIver asked a group of 719 professors, elected officials, historians, attorneys, authors and other professionals to rate the presidents.
These were all matters that needed consideration and which attracted the support of the North. His Inaugural Address tried to point them out. In this sense, he considered that the "maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the
Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America What was the most important thing you learned about Abraham Lincoln from reading "Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America"? Abraham Lincoln played an important role in bringing to an end the civil war and initiating the stoppage of slavery in the United States. After its inauguration in 1861, Lincoln was determined to unite the northern and the southern states, which were at loggerheads over slavery and
Robert Lincoln also declares that after his father became President, "any great intimacy between us became impossible. I scarcely had even ten minutes of quiet talk with him during his Presidency on account of his ever-constant devotion to the business of being Commander-in-Chief" (Randall, 183). Not surprisingly, Abraham Lincoln possessed a deep love for his sons and perhaps saw himself as he was as a youth in Illinois, long before
Thus, as a candidate for a particular region of the United States, regardless of its importance, he could promote the morality of slavery or its lack. However, as a major public figure, he did not have the political support or the democratic one to advocate the freedom of the slaves. Nor did he want to take that road. One of the most evident proofs was the fact that "Lincolnin
Douglas, as a new and alarming development (Abraham Lincoln 2010). With that, Lincoln believed that being an American individual does not necessarily mean that you are of white, black, red, brown, or yellow complexion, which signify race. The term "American" has no racial insinuations for virtually all Americans trace their roots from distinct nationalities, races and ethnic groups and this complication alone can cause innumerable perplexed things. But because of
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