Abraham Lincoln Quotes
Broken eggs cannot be mended.... This government cannot much longer play a game in which it stakes all, and its enemies stake nothing. Those enemies must understand that they cannot experiment for ten years trying to destroy the government, and if they fail, still come back into the Union unhurt.
There was some political pressure in the North, to offer terms to the South where they could cease the rebellion and return to the Union and return to the status quo ante—before the rebellion.
Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (Republican, IL), Letter to August Belmont, 1862
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Committee of the Congress. This was the prevailing Congressional and public view except for the South which had coalesced around an intellectual rationalization. See {618013}.
Lincoln did not believe that the South would secede.
It would be almost 30 years until Jackson would have been proved correct and the Civil War had begun.
This oath was required of Southern Rebels who wanted obtain amnesty from treason which they had committed by engaging in the Civil War. See {623307} for the Presidential Proclamation.
Lee had advised the Southern leadership to avoid secession and the war that would follow. However, the Southern leaders did not really believe that the remainder of the Nation would fight and take casualties to end the institution of slavery. While many would not, they misjudged the intensity of those who would, the moral power of the abolitionists and most Northern religious leaders. Nor did they understand the importance to most Northerners of preserving the Union. And they really had no comprehension of the industrial capability of the Northern free labor states or the importance of that in a long protracted war. Lee, more sophisticated than the other Southern leader, had a more realistic assessment, but thought that there was a chance that the South might have enough early success that the North would politically make the war untenable, but he realized the cost in men and material under the best of circumstances. Lee’s surrender came shortly afterward.
The Federalists had a loathing of President Thomas Jefferson as strong as that held by Conservatives regarding President William Clinton. Some leading Federalists including Timothy Pickering, a former Secretary of State, developed a plan whereby the New England states would secede if Jefferson won his second term and entice New York to join them thus creating a new empire. Hamilton was one of the most popular Federalists of the day and he put a stop to the plot. This was the last letter Hamilton was ever to write. The next morning he fought his fatal duel with Aaron Burr. Ironically, Burr had negotiated with the plotters for the New York action. He straddled the fence refusing to commit to the plan, but not clearly repudiating it either as Hamilton had done.
Abraham Lincoln’s major political opponent in Illinois agreed with Lincoln on the criticality of preserving the Union from a split off of the Southern States. He tended to be more willing to pander to the South than Lincoln, however they were strong allies on the fundamental issue. However, what the slavery forces in the south wanted and needed to forever protect slavery was not in the power of any President to do, short of ending the democracy. Slavery was doomed in the long run if there was no way to enforce the Supreme Court’s Dredd Scott decision upon (Northern) states whose constitutions and laws made any slave who entered the state free and whose people would not use its police and legal powers to return runaway slaves. It was the abolitionists who won the majority in the battle of public opinion on slavery. It was only a matter of time when slavery would become untenable in the South. Lincoln was unwilling to force the Northern states to return fugitive slaves against the constitution, laws and will of the people of those states as Buchanan said he was (but had a hard time doing). Also Lincoln was unwilling to allow new territories to enter the union if they allowed slavery.
Queen Victoria
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
