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It argued that the Constitution could and should be used to eventually end slavery, but that the Constitution gave the national government no authority to abolish slavery in the states directly. However, multiple tactics were available to support the long-term strategy of using the Constitution as a battering ram against the peculiar institution.
Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Radan, Peter (2023). Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America. Lawrence Kansas: University Press of Kansas. Rebeiro, Bradley (2023).
Slavery in the territories: Lincoln asserted that nothing in the Constitution expressly said what either could or could not be done regarding slavery in the territories. He indicated his willingness to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act , so long as free blacks could be protected from being kidnapped and illegally sold into slavery through its misuse.
The U.S. Constitution does not use the term slavery but the existence of slavery in the United States did influence the compromises and agreements that were made within the document.
Years later James Madison, tacitly acknowledging that the American Union was a shotgun wedding, explained why the framers did not immediately abolish the slave trade in the U.S. Constitution. If ...
In the speech, Lincoln elaborated his views on slavery by affirming that he did not wish it to be expanded into the western territories and claiming that the Founding Fathers would agree with this position. The journalist Robert J. McNamara wrote, "Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was one of his longest, at more than 7,000 words.
Out of the Whig Party came the Republican Party, which was the party of Abraham Lincoln and took a stand against slavery. The Southern Confederacy's loss in the Civil War weakened the Democrats.
Copperheads criticized Lincoln for refusing to compromise on slavery. The Radical Republicans criticized him for moving too slowly in abolishing slavery. [203] On August 6, 1861, Lincoln signed the Confiscation Act of 1861, which authorized judicial proceedings to confiscate and free slaves who were used to support the Confederates. The law had ...