Hello, my name is Abraham Lincoln. I was born on February 12th, 1809. I am the 16th President of the United States. I was born in Kentucky in a log cabin. I was very poor which then taught me how to self educate and change my life. I have had much success in law practice and I became a leader of the new Republican party in 1854. I wrote a little something known as the Gettysburg Address and is widely known as one of the most influential American statements ever. I will say that I did have a good amount of haters and nay sayers. Specifically speaking of the "Copperheads" or the Anti-War Democrats. They were more interested in a peace settlement with the Confederates and they plotted on my eventual assassination. That is besides the point. Later in life I had an anti-slavery point of view, and that is what I am going to talk about today.
I would like to start with something I said on April 6, 1859 in my letter to Henry L. Pierce... "This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.” I have said many great things in my life, but I think this is one of my favorites. It is important to have empathy and when reading that statement it becomes obvious that putting yourself in the shoes of a slave is not something you or I would want to deal with. This was important in my movement of freeing slaves because if you can make people empathize with slaves, they will understand why it is morally wrong.
My main philosophy for preventing and eventual extinction of slavery in the United States was to stop the spread of slavery to other individual states. I accomplished this with the well known Emancipation Proclamation of 1862. This said that in states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, slaves would finally be free. The freed slaves would serve for the United States. At this time I was working on ending the war. I then gave the Gettysburg Address where I stated that the nation was born not in 1789, but in 1776, "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". Every man deserved liberty and that was established when this country was formed.
I am a firm believer that slaves should be able to contribute to society. If you look at things the way I do you can understand that enslaved men, if given the opportunity, can be a great deal of help and positive production aside from physical labor. The idea of never giving them a chance to contribute to society is relatively ignorant and illogical. We are simply comfortable with the idea of things remaining the same, but only an unenlightened man is truly afraid of change.
I think my radical and unique ideas have uplifted our country and have proven to be the right decision. A lesson to be learned about the world and history itself would be to never be satisfied with the state of the way things are just because it is easy and comfortable.
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