abe helped put a stop to slavery n was shot for it where is his indiviual holidy
208441
Here's a better question? Why is there a black histoy month?  Why not just study it with the rest of history for the whole year? Or let's give everyone else a history month too and not discuss history outside of those monthes.\n\nAlso, no one mentionedthis but it's a well known fact that Lincoln did freed slaves as a last resort.  It's like like the guy did it willingly, he did it beacuse he needed more men in the army and slaves are either going to desert, attack owners, or just have no morale otherwise, so he freed them.  Done deal.
22606
the habeas corpus thing wasn't so much about freeing slaves as it was about winning the war and preserving the union.  \n\nthe idea was that doing so was necessary to prevent those people who were calling for violent revolution and actively organizing armies against the country from continuing.  habeas corpus allows a prisoner to request a hearing before a judge in order to determine whether or not the prisoner is being held lawfully - given the number of arrests that were taking place at the time, such a thing was impossible and lincoln thought it necessary to crack down on dissent.\n\n(this was one of many acts of lincoln's that were outside of his constitutional authority, by the way, including calling up a militia, instituting martial law, authorizing without congressional approval greater spending for the army and navy, as well as certain acts of war.  however many people are largely in agreement that these actions were justified considering that the survival of the nation was at stake.)\n\nin some sense slavery was at issue in the war, and if the union lost the war, then southern slaves would have been stuck as slaves in what would have become the confederate states of america.  but really, to free the slaves of the united states all he did was issue a statement that declared them free.  of course, this was outside of his constitutional authority, too, but as they say, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.\n\nhttp://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=425\nhttp://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/hl834.cfm
11236
Slavery does not legally exist in the United States.  The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified 6 December 1865.  It expressly outlaws slavery as well as involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime.\n\nNothing else has to be done to continue this “Constitutional” mandate.\n\nThis does not apply to the rest of the world.  There yet remain vestiges of slavery in various parts of the world and certainly there exist forms of involuntary servitude.\n\nRandy
205234
Their minds were focused on one goal:  freedom.\n\nWhen you set your mind on something, you achieve it.\n\nUnfortunately the owners took slaves for granted.  As a result, they were not prepared for traps.
643586
It's about the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman, and the various safe houses that the slaves could stay at overnight. It's also about how the slaves were treated by their "owners"
321027
My hometown of Bristol(the Borough, not the Township) Pennsylvania is about to unveil this summer (ground has been broken and monument is already built) a statue of Harriet Tubman in honor of her role in "The Underground Railroad" to free slaves and lead them on their passage North. There are people out there in the U.S who recognize that this great country wouldn't be where it is today if not for the effort from the backs of the slaves back then. I agree it is time to give due credit. God Bless! Below is a link for the statue I mentioned above. It's a bit dated because the progress locally has been phenomonal with many locals (black & white) responding to the call of fundraising for it.
235318
Abraham Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address," 4 March 1865\n\n\nFellow-Countrymen:\n\nAt this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.\n\nOn the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.\n\nOne-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."\n\nWith malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting
269710
one suggestion is to not overlook the question of slavery as it relates to the Alamo.  One of the things usually ignored in the great "struggle for Texan Independence" from oppressive Mexican dictator Santa Ana is that one of the main "oppressions" that really upset the Texicans was the fact that Mexico had abolished slavery and king cotton had reached Texas and the rich land owners were not willing to do without their slaves.
327632
The Ohio River.\n\nThe Compromise established a boundary between the slave states of the south and the free states of the north... This boundary became referred to as the Mason-Dixon line because it began in the east along the Mason-Dixon line and headed westward to the Ohio River and along the Ohio to its mouth at the Mississippi River and then west along 36° 30' North.\n\nhttp://ask.yahoo.com/20000829.html
464486
Basically, the story of freedom is still an unfinished story, it isn't a single event, but a series of steps taken and yet to be taken to continue to try and acheive this ideal.  You could even make an arguement that we have regressed at times and may even be doing so now...
5237
In terms of needs, the Freedmen's bureau provided education, job skills and all the things that were denied them as slaves. The federal government cut funding for the bureau and it soon failed in its mission. \nBasically, the northern politicians stopped caring about the plight of the A-A, cut funding to resources like the Bureau to help them and didn't enforce the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. It is almost like institutional racism. You can't change people's beliefs overnight and there just wasn't a sense of urgency after all the fighting of the war to change them or to fight again to make them true equals and really help the A-A.\nAlot of people, North and South didn't want to have A-A and whites on equal terms. Many wanted them to not be slaves anymore, but not equals, so they just ignored the Jim Crow laws and the institutional seperate but equal doctrines of the times until whites and A-A fought side-by-side in WW II.\n\nAlso, a lot of the same politicans who were pro-slavery went back into power at the state and federal levels in the south after the war and weren't really willing to change their attitudes.
91008
In the 1840s things started heating up between North and South over general states' rights against the rights of the federal government. The issues adressed generally dealt immediatly with slaves. New states admitted to the Union had to be judged as "slave states" (slaves allowed) or "free states" (slavery prohibited). \n\nBoth sides wanted new states to be whichever side they favored because it would give them more legislative power in the US Congress. This led to bloodshed in many areas, particularly in Kansas, which became known as "Bloody Kansas". \n\nIn 1861, South Carolina seceded from the Union (said they werent part of the US any more) and started seizing federal property, including arms and munitions. \n\nOther states started seceding as well. Soon the seceded states formed what they called the "Confederate States of America", which came to be headed by Jefferson Davis as President. They attacked Fort Sumner in South Carolina and seized the fort, capturing it's inhabitants. This was treason.\n\nAbraham Lincoln (President of the US) immediatly called for 75,000 troops to put down the uprising. Then the Civil War started, eventually involving millions of troops. 600,000 men eventually died in the conflict, and the US was shattered for decades after the war. Remember, this war was fought to unite the Union, NOT for slavery. In fact, slavery was only addressed in 1862 when Lincoln set forth the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the Confederate states. By 1863 there were armed black soldiers in Union armies, serving with distinction. In 1865 the CSA tried to use black troops, but they were destroyed before the plan could be implemented.\n\nIn 1865 the final Confederate forces surrendered (General Johnston was the last to surrender, but with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee the war was pretty much over). Richmond, VA, the Confederate capital, was seized. \n\nLincoln began steps to rebuild and reunite the US. He planned to be kind to the newly reunited South and not punish them for seceding. Before he could start, he was killed by a man named John Wilkes Booth. \n\nThe years following became years of anger and hate for Southerners. The North oppressed and punished Southern insurrection with high taxes and legal oversight. This period became known as Reconstruction, and it really only ended around the 1970s, one century after it started.\n\nHope I helped,\nThe Wise One\n\nP.S. For more information check out http://www.wikipedia.com\nThey are pretty good, but it's better to read books...however that takes more time than I think you want to spend.
326422
No. “I have always hated slavery,” he wrote in 1858. He lived his entire adult life to the time he was elected president in Indiana or Illinois, both free states.
134991
prisons have existed since the advent of slavery.
218778
Actually, Lincoln said while he felt whites were superior to blacks (this sounds awful now, but remember that even as late as Harry Truman this was considered a legitimate statement), this did not give any justification for blacks to be slaves to whites. He said there was no justification to keep a black man from enjoying the fruits of his own labor. Further, he felt that black slavery was a burden that stifled free labor, which led into one of his more famous sayings was that "A house divided cannot long stand," meaning that the two separate systems could not be at peace because slave labor was a constant threat to free labor, just as we are seeing today when jobs that used to be done by Americans are now being done by Chinese political prisoners, or how employers here are luring illegal workers because they will then be at the mercy of whatever the employer wants to pay.\n\nAt his inauguration, Lincoln had said that he wanted the end of slavery, but that he wanted to preserve the Union even more. "If I could save the Union by freeing all of the slaves, I would. If I could save the Union by freeing none of the slaves, I would do that."\n\nThe Emancipation was certainly a generous act, and took a great deal of courage, but it was also politically calculated. He had intended to issue it for a while, but waited for a fairly successful battle (Antietam) to announce it. Because of the growing intolerance of slavery in Europe, emancipation combined with a federal victory would make it impractical for England or France to lend material assistance to the Confederate cause.
36872
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, America's first Republican president.\n\n\nFour score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. \n\nNow we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. \n\nBut, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, shall not perish from the earth.
466149
The North's general attitude toward the South, from the tariff of abominations and and other laws designed to keep the south's markets isolated.   Slavery was only thrown into the mix to gain public support.  It was not the main issue.  It was the North with its industry trying to force the South to knuckle under to its demands.