Abraham Lincoln and slavery facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Abraham Lincoln
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| 16th President of the United States | |
| In office March 4, 1861 – April 15, 1865 |
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| Vice President | Hannibal Hamlin Andrew Johnson |
| Preceded by | James Buchanan |
| Succeeded by | Andrew Johnson |
| Personal details | |
| Born | February 12, 1809 Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Died | April 15, 1865 (aged 56) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Political party | Republican (1854–1865) National Union (1864–1865) |
| Other political affiliations |
Whig (before 1854) |
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery is one of the central issues in American history.
Lincoln often expressed his opposition to slavery in public and private. In 1863, Lincoln ordered the freedom of all slaves in the areas "in rebellion" and insisted on enforcement freeing millions of slaves, but he did not call for the immediate end of slavery everywhere in the U.S. until the proposed 13th Amendment became part of his party platform for the 1864 election.
In 1842, Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd, who was a daughter of a slave-owning family from Kentucky.
Lincoln became a leading opponent of the "Slaveocracy" — that is the political power of the southern slave owners. The Kansas–Nebraska Act, written to form the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, included language which allowed the settlers to decide whether they would or would not accept slavery in their region. Abraham Lincoln didn't like this.
During the Civil War, Lincoln used the war powers of the presidency to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, in January 1863. It declared "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free" but exempted border states and those areas of slave states already under Union control.
By the end of his life, Lincoln had come to support black suffrage, a position that would lead him to be assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
Images for kids
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"The Rail Candidate": Lincoln's 1860 candidacy is depicted as held up by the slavery issue—a slave on the left and party organization on the right.
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1864 Reproduction of Emancipation Proclamation
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One of several failed colonization attempts during Lincoln's presidency was on the Île à Vache, off the coast of Haiti.
