How Did Abraham Lincoln's Primary Tension With The Constitution

Passing the thirteenth amendment enabled Abraham Lincoln to successfully save the Union and the republic. The primary tension regarding slavery grew from two different readings of the Constitution. The Confederacy believed slaves could be treated as property, whereas the Union believed in “‘we the people’, not we the white people” (347). Douglass explains how certain measures in the Constitution should have been disregarded after the slave trade was abolished. He writes, “The abolition of the slave trade was supposed to be the certain death of slavery. Cut off the stream, and the pond will dry up, was the common notion at this time” (345). However, the South was set in their beliefs and they refused to change. Since the problem stemmed from