Lincolns Motives in Attempt to Preserve The Union essays

Lincolns Motives in Attempt to Preserve The Union essays I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges April 4, 1864 (Donald page1) Abraham Lincolns only motive when he first took office, as president on February 23, 1861, was to preserve the broken Union. He was in fear of assassination and his trip to the White House was in disguise in order to escape death. He went into his position as president already in chaos because of the former president Buchanan. He claimed that on March 6, 1852 on his second day of presidency that slaves were considered to be property (Hansen). The country was left in dispute; the south had created a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The south had gone into war because they felt that the north was against them and would take away their way of survival. They also felt the threat that their states rights had been violated. The northern states only wanted to preserve a union in need. When Lincoln was elected, he basically had one major plan. It was to maintain the union and all its states. The civil war was Lincolns attempt to preserve the Union. Even before he was president Lincoln wanted to end slavery or at least stop it from growing into other parts of the states. One of his speeches in Illinois before he became president shows his point of view on slavery: Perhaps his most telling innovation was his explanation of why republicans firmly opposed to the extension of slavery were not pledged to eradicate it in the southern states. If Out in the street, or in the field, or on the prairie I find a rattle snake, Lincoln explained, I take a stake and kill him. Everybody would applaud the act and say I did right. But suppose the snake was in a bed where children were sleeping. Would I do right to strike him there? I might hurt the children; or I might not kill, but only arouse and exasperate the snake, and he might bite the c...