How Did Lincoln Support Secession

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Abraham Lincoln When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in the 1860s, the American Civil War was staring to take form as already seven slaveholder states had left the Union to form the Confederate States of America, and four more states joined when the war actually began. When the Civil War engulfed the nation Lincoln Swore to preserve the Union at all cost and end the secession. The war raged for four long years and, according to history.com, “Left more than 600,000 Americans dead.” This war brought out some of the biggest accomplishments of Lincoln’s presidency such as the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves within the Confederate States and changed the war from preserving the Union to a moral struggle for freedom. Lincoln …show more content…
Lincoln’s election created a crisis in the nation, as many southern Democrats feared that eventually Lincoln would end slavery, a practice the Southern economy could not continue without. This is the reason why many southerners supported secession. They based their reasons upon the doctrine of states’ rights, which placed ultimate sovereignty with the states and not the federal governments. Lincoln vowed to preserve the Union even if he had to do it through war. Eventually the time came when civil war tore the country tore the nation apart and an army of 3 million northern men faced off against an army of 2 million southern men, brother against brother in a civil war. Lincoln used all of his executive authority and then some but not so for personal gain but all to preserve the Union. There were negative aspects of Lincoln using his executive powers, he suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, arrested anti-Unionist, declared martial law and called for a blockade of the south. But Lincoln used all his powers in good judgment for the greater good of the Union, an example of his limited personal ambitions, Lincoln refused to call of the national elections because he would rather lose the election than destroy the democratic basis upon which his powers were given to him. But with the electoral support of Union soldiers and thanks to the decisive Union victories like General Sherman’s campaign into the south and capture of Atlanta, Lincoln secured
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