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21 - Lincoln and the War

from Part IV - Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
Jonathan W. White
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

On his way to his inauguration in Washington, DC, in February 1861, Abraham Lincoln stopped at Independence Hall in Philadelphia to raise a flag. “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence,” he told the assembled crowd. The president-elect went on to say that the Declaration was not written merely to justify the separation of the colonies from Great Britain, but to give “liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is a sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.” Lincoln continued that if the nation could not be saved on the basis of the Declaration, it would be “truly awful.” And, as he was speaking off the cuff, he said, “I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 436 - 460
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

Belz, Herman. Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Belz, Herman A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedmen’s Rights, 1861 to 1866. (1976; reprinted New York: Fordham University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Blair, William. With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Conroy, James B. Lincoln’s White House: The People’s House in Wartime (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).Google Scholar
Engle, Stephen D. Gathering to Save a Nation: Lincoln and the Union’s War Governors (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).Google Scholar
Harris, William C. Two Against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2017).Google Scholar
Holzer, Harold. Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).Google Scholar
Neely, Mark E. Jr. The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Neely, Mark E. Jr. The Union Divided: Party Politics in the Civil War North (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Neely, Mark E. Jr. Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Neely, Mark E. Jr. Lincoln and the Democrats: The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Smith, Adam I. P. No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Smith, Adam I. P. The Stormy Present: Conservatism and the Problem of Slavery in Northern Politics, 1846–1865 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Tap, Bruce. Over Lincoln’s Shoulder: The Committee on the Conduct of the War (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998).Google Scholar
Weber, Jennifer L. Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).Google Scholar
White, Jonathan W. Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War: The Trials of John Merryman (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
White, Jonathan W. Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2014).Google Scholar

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