Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois lawyer and former congressman, won the presidency in 1860 on a Republican platform opposing the expansion of slavery. Southern secession followed his election, and the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861 began the Civil War. Lincoln served until his assassination in April 1865, having directed the Union war effort and helped turn the destruction of slavery into a central objective of federal policy. ¹

Foreign policy centered on preventing Britain, France, and other powers from recognizing the Confederacy or intervening in the war. Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward treated secession as an internal rebellion while enforcing a naval blockade. The seizure of Confederate commissioners from the British mail steamer Trent in 1861 threatened war with Britain; their release removed the immediate danger. Confederate purchases of ships and supplies abroad remained a continuing diplomatic problem. ²

The Emancipation Proclamation, effective in 1863, declared enslaved people in areas still in rebellion free and authorized their recruitment into federal military service. It also made support for the Confederacy harder to reconcile with antislavery sentiment in Europe. Union military successes and strong European economic ties with the North further reduced the prospect of intervention. European governments ultimately withheld diplomatic recognition from the Confederacy. ^{2, 3}

Lincoln’s domestic administration mobilized manpower and finance on an unprecedented scale. Congress enacted national banking legislation, the Homestead Act, and the Morrill land grant college law. Wartime detention and suspension of habeas corpus generated serious disputes over civil liberties. Lincoln supported the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, but his assassination left the terms of Reconstruction and the rights of formerly enslaved people to be fought over under his successor. ³