There have always been people who are against slavery. In the early years of our nation they were called abolitionists, and Abraham Lincoln was an abolitionist. He was lawyer from Illinois before he became president and was strongly against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act said that people within new state borders could decide for themselves whether slavery would be allowed or not. Some thought that this act was a beginning step towards making slavery legal, so the abolitionists were strongly against it. Lincoln condemned the Democratic Party for supporting a law that “assumes there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another.” He saw that this law went against the basic American principle that “all men are created equal,” and on October 16, 1854, he gave a speech about how horribly wrong this Kansas-Nebraska Act was. He said it was “immoral.” Lincoln wanted to stop the spread of slavery to new states in the hopes that it would save the Union and slowly end slavery. He saw that by keeping it only in the South “it would surely die a slow death.” His group of abolitionists were very disappointed to see a pro-slavery candidate get voted into Congress that November. However, Lincoln’s political career increased over the next several years, and he kept on actively going against slavery and ran for the U.S. Senate in 1859. He lost to Democrat Stephen Douglas, but he became well-known nationally and gained more support from the North and abolitionists across the nation. This popularity did a lot to help him win the presidency in 1860.
Outlawing Slavery
