Abraham Lincoln Research Paper

Abraham Lincoln
Life
Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln on February 12, 1809. Thomas was a strong and determined pioneer and was respected by other town folk. Abraham had an older sister Sarah and younger brother Thomas, who died in infancy. Due to a land dispute, the Lincolns were forced to move from Kentucky to Perry County, Indiana in 1817, where the family lived on public land to scrap out a living in a crude shelter. Thomas was eventually able to buy the land.
When young Abraham was nine years old his mother died of tremetol (milk sickness) at age 34. A few months after Nancy’s death, Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a Kentucky widow with three children of
Lincoln's primary audience were white voters. Lincoln's views on slavery, race equality, and African American colonization are often intermixed. During the 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln expressed his contemporary view that he believed whites were superior to blacks. Lincoln stated he was against miscegenation and blacks to serve as jurors. While President, as the American Civil War progressed, Lincoln advocated or implemented anti-racist policies including the Emancipation Proclamation and limited suffrage for African Americans. Former slave and leading abolitionist, Frederick Douglass once observed of Lincoln: "In his company, I was never reminded of my humble origin or of my unpopular colour". Douglas praised Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation; however, he stated that Lincoln "was pre-eminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men." Although Lincoln believed that African Americans deserved to be free, the equality of race was not the primary focus of Lincoln's presidency. Generations through changing times have interpreted independently Lincoln's views on African
It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states then in rebellion, thus applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at that time. The Proclamation immediately freed 50,000 slaves, with nearly all the rest (of the 3.1 million) freed as Union armies advanced. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not itself outlaw slavery, and did not make the ex-slaves (called freedmen) citizens.
On September 22, 1862, Lincoln announced that he would issue a formal emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. None returned, and the order, signed and issued January 1, 1863, took effect except in locations where the Union had already mostly regained control. The Proclamation made abolition a central goal of the war (in addition to reunion), outraged white Southerners who envisioned a race war, angered some Northern Democrats, energized anti-slavery forces, and weakened forces in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the