Abraham Lincoln During The Civil War

Abraham Lincoln
By: Ty Parrish

Part I
The president that I chose was Abraham Lincoln. He was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky. Abraham Lincoln represented Illinois which was where he grew up. He grew up poor and he had to help his dad build their own house when they moved to Illinois. Lincoln was married to Mary Todd and they had four children. Three of the children died at a very young age. He lived from 1809 to 1865 when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. In April 1832, Lincoln decided to volunteer for the military and he served under the command of Andrew Jackson in the Black Hawk War. Lincoln was a United States Representative from the year of 1847-1849. He was also a lawyer. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president and he was in office
During Abraham Lincolns’ presidency he had to deal with the Civil War which is the major Domestic policy that he dealt with. In the Civil War Lincoln believed that secession was illegal so his goal was to try to stop it any way that he could. The South believed that they did not have to listen to the National Government if they believed that what the government was saying was unconstitutional. However, Lincoln thought that the federal law was superior no matter what. Lincoln was always trying to find great generals for war, that was a priority. When he found Ulysses S. Grant he was satisfied. Since he has such a good general he wasn’t always completely engaged in battle because he could trust on someone else to take charge. At the beginning of the Civil War Lincoln didn’t allow slaves to fight in the Union army because he was afraid that the border states would then join the Confederate army. But later, when they needed more troops he finally decided to allow slaves to fight for the Union. Also, the Emancipation Proclamation helped with the encouragement of ending slavery. This contributed to the winning of the Civil
Abraham Lincoln is unique when it comes to Foreign policy. Since Lincoln had never been out of the country and he was not well educated on the matter of Foreign affairs, Lincoln decided that he would leave most of his work on Foreign policy to his Secretary of State William H. Seward. Here is a quote that Abraham Lincoln said regarding Foreign policy. “Governor Seward, there is one part of my work that I shall have to leave largely to you. I shall have to depend upon you for taking care of these matters of foreign affairs, of which I know so little, and with which I reckon you are familiar” (Quote 3). However, there is one area of Foreign affairs that Lincoln did deal with himself and that was having to keep the French and British from trading with the Confederates during the Civil War. The Unions goal was to cut all supply off from the Confederates so they would starve. They accomplished this by building a blockade along the shoreline of the south. This made it so that no one could get in or out of the country by way of ship. So, no trading would be done besides the few occasional blockade runners who tried to get through the blockade to get