Which president stopped slavery

Abraham Lincoln did believe that slavery was morally wrong, but there was one big problem: It was sanctioned by the highest law in the land, the Constitution. Abolitionists , by contrast, knew exactly what should be done about it: Slavery should be immediately abolished, and freed enslaved people should be incorporated as equal members of society.

Though Lincoln saw himself as working alongside the abolitionists on behalf of a common anti-slavery cause, he did not count himself among them.

Only with emancipation , and with his support of the eventual 13th Amendment , would Lincoln finally win over the most committed abolitionists. His views became clear during an series of debates with his opponent in the Illinois race for U. In their fourth debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, , Lincoln made his position clear. What he did believe was that, like all men, Black men had the right to improve their condition in society and to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

In this way they were equal to white men, and for this reason slavery was inherently unjust. In the last speech of his life, delivered on April 11, , he argued for limited Black suffrage, saying that any Black man who had served the Union during the Civil War should have the right to vote.

For much of his career, Lincoln believed that colonization—or the idea that a majority of the African American population should leave the United States and settle in Africa or Central America—was the best way to confront the problem of slavery. His two great political heroes, Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson , had both favored colonization; both were enslavers who took issue with aspects of slavery but saw no way that Black and white people could live together peaceably. The Bill of Rights Institute engages, educates, and empowers individuals with a passion for the freedom and opportunity that exist in a free society.

Though he had always hated slavery, President Lincoln did not believe the Constitution gave him the authority to bring it to an end-until it became necessary to free the slaves in order to save the Union. On March 4, , President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Inaugural Address to a nation in peril, divided over the issue of slavery. He explained his belief that secession was unconstitutional and that he intended to do all in his power to save the Union. Seven states had already announced their secession.

After the fall of Fort Sumter on April 12, , the Civil War began, four more states seceded, and the Union army experienced repeated defeats. Lincoln continued to maintain that he would not interfere with slavery where it existed.

However, as a result of Union battlefield losses by July , the President had decided that emancipation was a military necessity. Lincoln knew that many thousands of enslaved people were ready to fight for the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of that relied heavily on their argument about the Dred Scott ruling. Douglas accused Lincoln of flirting with anarchy by rejecting what was now a settled, legally binding Supreme Court ruling.

Lincoln, pushing his rhetoric beyond the facts, suggested that the next Supreme Court case might rule that no state had the power to prohibit slavery. The way things were going, he said, Illinois could become a slave state raising the specter to Illini workers that they might have to compete with slave labor. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects — certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. Douglas played the race card, accusing Lincoln of advocating full equality for blacks, which was an almost unthinkable thought.

Lincoln retreated, in a reply during the fourth debate that, to modern ears, sounds incredibly racist. But it nonetheless captures the fundamental right that Lincoln sought for African-Americans — the right not to be slaves:. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. Lincoln narrowly lost the Senate election, but the debates had made him a national figure, and inspired him to imagine that he could be the next Republican nominee for president, which came to pass, and then, in a crazy, four-way presidential race, to be elected with just Publicly, the president-elect maintained silence, but through intermediaries he emphasized his long-standing and oft-stated position that the Constitution granted the federal government no power over slavery in the states where it had long existed.

By Eric Black Columnist. Eric Black Ink. May 31, The Library of Congress Abraham Lincoln. Article continues after advertisement. Wikimedia Commons. See our full republication guidelines for more information.