In 1860, Lincoln Abraham was elected as president of the United States of America. The election prompted several southern slave states to secede and later a four-year long civil war between the North and the South was triggered. Finally Lincoln led the Union to victory and started reconstruction of the country in 1865. His most known accomplishment though, considered by many, was the emancipation of black slaves. However, I think that although Lincoln was an abolitionist and did issue the Emancipation Proclamation, he seldom regarded political and social equality of black and white people a possibility in the country's future. More importantly, ending slavery was never his No.1 purpose during the presidency. .
The highest priority of the war for Lincoln was to save the Union. Even Lincoln himself admitted to it in his letter to an influential journalist Horace Greeley. The reason that he wrote this letter was Greeley criticized him for not vigorously enforcing the Second Confiscation Act, which would have been advantageous for emancipation in the future. The resolute tone he made his words an expression of his firm belief, as he had "not meant to leave any one in doubt" (Lincoln, 13) upon the policy he was pursuing in the war. Starting his argument with a short and simple sentence, "I would save the Union" (Lincoln, 13), Lincoln conveyed a straightforward message that saving the Union was the most important grounds for his policy. Then he disagreed twice with the people who considered destroying slavery the paramount object: "I do not agree with them I do not agree with them" (Lincoln, 13). .
After, he described how he valued the two goals differently, saving the union versus ending slavery. He wrote: "What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I don't believe it would help to save the Union" (Lincoln, 13).
