not believe blacks should vote or serve on juries, and he thought blacks should be colonized in other countries. With the societal conditions of the time any president elected by popular vote would have taken the same actions as Lincoln did towards the emancipation of blacks.

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky, the son of Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln, pioneer farmers. At the age of two he was taken by his parents to nearby Knob Creek, and at eight to Spencer County, Indiana. The following year his mother died.

Lincoln was determined to place emancipation on a more permanent basis, however, and so the Senate passed a Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which would prohibit slavery throughout the United States, on April 8, 1864. Because the House failed immediately to approve it with the necessary two-thirds majority vote, Lincoln, in his Annual Message of December 6, asked the House to reconsider it. With three votes to spare, the House approved it. By this time, slavery had already been abolished in Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland and Missouri, and a similar move seemed imminent in Tennessee and Kentucky. The amendment was passed after Lincoln's reelection, when he made use of all the powers of his office to ensure its success in the House of Representatives in January 31, 1865(Brooks,263-264).

In 1860 the Republicans, anxious to attract as many different factions as

In fact, one of Lincoln's most illustrative public statements on the question of racial relations was the speech on the Dred Scott decision at Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857. In this address, he explained why he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state:

"Where there is a will there is a way," and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be."(Ashbrook Center Website).

The president's success at the polls enabled him to seek to establish his own Reconstruction policies. To take the edge off conservative criticism, he met with leading Confederates at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and demonstrated the impossibility of a negotiated peace. The radicals, however, were also dissatisfied. Because of their demand for black suffrage, Lincoln was unable to induce Congress to accept the members-elect of the free state government of Louisiana, which he had organized. In addition, after the fall of Richmond, he alarmed his critics by inviting the Confederate legislature of Virginia to repeal the secession ordinance. His Reconstruction policies, however, had been determined by military necessity. As soon as the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, Lincoln withdrew the invitation to the Virginians. He again proved how close he was to the radicals by endorsing a limited black franchise.

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Approximate Word count = 3054
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)