ABRAHAM LINCOLNS SPEECH ON SLAVERY

He viewed it as injustice to the weak and complete hypocrisy on the republic. He was in favor of the white race being superior to the others. He also said they could live without making Negros their slaves or wives. He felt that Negros had right to life, liberty and happiness (Gates, pp16). According to him, slavery was a very morally wrong even though he had to deal with the Constitution at that time as the founders, who had although struggled to fight against slavery had problems with defining the term. He clearly stated that he was not in favor of the social and political equality of the whites and blacks opposing that the blacks had a right to vote, work in the judiciary, be the head in any office or even get married to whites.

He said that he only believed that they could struggle like everybody else to improve their condition and earn from their hard labor. This was his reason as to why slave trade was not a morally just practice as both the whites and blacks were equal in this aspect. Just as he believed in the equality of all the Americans, Lincoln longed for the release of all slaves and the abolition of slave trade, a position that was seen in his reign as President of the United States. In this speech, he stated clearly that all the blacks who had participated in the Civil war should be given the right to vote. Throughout much of his political era, Lincoln believed that slave trade could only be overcome through colonization.

In his opinion, most of the blacks should have moved to Africa or Central America to have their lands, and as such, they could overcome slavery. Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson, his major heroic figures, had suggested colonization as a way of sailing slavery. The two owned slaves and had issues with the practice but could in no way believe that whites and blacks could live together in peace. Thus, as seen in his early political career, Lincoln, in 1852 and 1854, suggested that the slaves be freed and sent to a country in Africa, particularly Liberia. When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, it was to be a gradual process with the main intention of preventing the rebellion in the southern states from becoming worse and permanently splitting it from the Union.

However, as the Civil War continued becoming note aggressive towards the second summer in 1862, many of the slaves had fled from the Southern plantations to the Union lines and thus, the federal government had no way of dealing with them as it had no clear policy of how to act (Neely, pp. Thus, while the Union would acquire a new way of crushing the rebellion in the south through the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln saw that it would cause a further undermining of the Confederacy. As a result, the President issued his final draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet at his time. However, the Secretary of State William Seward suggested that he waits till things were better on the part of the union before enacting the emancipation or else it would give an impression that the nation was at the brink of defeat.

Despite strongly detesting slavery and having a firm belief that both the whites and blacks had equal opportunities to exercise their legal rights, he had a political career whose principal goal was the make sure the unity of the Americans was upheld. It is clear that he hated slavery and believed that it was a wrongful act against humanity both in a moral way and from the perspective of what it had cost the country, he perceived that it was the biggest menace he country had ever faced. Even though he believed that the blacks were inferior to the whites and didn’t want to give them their full equal rights, he strongly argued that the constitution should cater for their needs in the same way it did for the white citizens of America.