The Abolitionist Movement and its Influence on the Civil War Research Paper

The Abolitionist Movement and its Influence on the Civil War - Research Paper Example Worse than that was the way that they were treated. The Abolitionists believed in slavery being sin and that every American should rise against it until something was done about it. However, â€Å"the clash between those who wished to end slavery and those who wished to expand and extend the institution escalated† (Hoffman). The latter did not believe in what the Abolitionists wanted – that slavery be eradicated from America by gradually shipping out the slaves back to Africa. Instead, they thought that getting rid of the slaves would result in chaos. There were â€Å"practical economic and status advantages associated with slavery and racial oppression† (Clark 239). Without the slaves, there would be no racial order and the people who worked in the cotton fields would have to be paid for their hard work. That would lead to a rise in the cotton prices or a decrease in the profits earned as they would have to cover up the cost incurred of paying the wages. Thus, t he whole process of finally managing to abolish slavery took a really long period of time. Of course, there were many people who worked hard to make their beliefs come true. One such man was Abraham Lincoln who later ended up becoming the President of the United States of America. He is most popular for being a far sighted and open minded politician who saw and understood enough to realize that what was going on in his country was wrong, that the whole tradition of buying people was against every morals that there are. He had the courage to go against the majority and work on trying to do what he thought was right. In fact, it was his passion for justice which led to him stepping in the political field and eventually running as president. However, he was not a conventional abolitionist. In fact, in the beginning, he was not an abolitionist all; he just greatly disliked the whole concept behind slavery and spoke quite strongly about it. Initially, Abraham Lincoln had run several camp aigns against expanding slavery into more states and territories. He had realized that the Constitution did not allow the American government to get rid of slavery completely so he could not do much about the Africans who already were part of the order and helped run the land smoothly without disrupting the whole process. But he could work on stopping it from happening in the future in places where there was no concept of slavery and the people were not dependent on the Africans to do their work for them. He has been recorded as been saying â€Å"I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist† (Burlingame). Even after he became the President, he tried to reconcile those living in the South who were owners of many slaves with the Northerners who were the opposing party. This effort, of course, did not prove to be fruitful. It was later on during his political career – sometime after he was elected as the President – that he declared himself to b e a supporter of the Abolitionist Movement and started working on using his power to overcome the injustice shown towards the Africans. The Civil War had started in 1861 due to the â€Å"long-standing sectional differences and questions not fully resolved when the United States Constitution was ratified in 1789†; the whole country was in turmoil (The Civil War). It was a year later that Lincoln decided to put a stop to all that was happening. He â€Å"