Now for all of you that don't know, I am obsessed with the movie Lincoln! I mean who isn't! Unless you are not a lover of history, you should like the movie. Maybe not to the extent of me, but still like the movie.Well after I saw the movie and read Chapters 20-21, I was thinking of a lot of "what if" situations. Like what if the Democrats weren't stupid enough, in the election of 1860, to split the Democrat vote 3 ways, between Stephen Douglas, John C. Breckinridge and John Bell?.. ABRAHAM LINCOLN WOULDN'T OF BECOME PRESIDENT AND OUR COUNTRY WOULD BE LOST!!! Okay so that might be a little bit dramatic, but the country as we know it today as, wouldn't probably exist. I never really realized how important Lincoln was to this country. I mean I knew that he did some important things to this country. He changed the course of history with his actions as a leader of this country.
I don't think there are many things that Lincoln could do to prevent to war from happening. The Confederate states really didn't like him as President. Hense the states seceding when he was elected president in 1860. Lincoln was a Republican who wanted to end the extension of slavery (which the south did not agree with). It was hard enough for Lincoln to keep the border states on his side for the most part. The border states were democrats but Lincoln knew he was ion the brink of war so he needed to make sure when the war started they were on his side.
At the battle of Fort Sumter, which I am sure you all know pretty well by now, was the turning point for weather or not the border states would become part of the Union or the Confederate states. They say that if the union fired first, the border states would of sided with the confederacy. Later on in 1861 part of Virginia broke of to become part of the Union states. This was known as West Virginia. Just think about it, if the border states didn't join the union, the civil war would of been profoundly different.So now jumping forward to the Thirteenth Amendment (this is the part were I try not to geek out about Lincoln). This was a very hard thing for Abraham Lincoln to do in 1864. You don't realize how hard it was for him to get it passed in the house of representatives. When the idea was came to the table, the justification for wanting to get this passed was to get it legalized. The Emancipation Proclamation was just freeing the slaves in the South. But Lincoln was afraid that if after the war the freed slaves would then be put back into slavery after the war. I mean the Emancipation Proclamation didn't legalize anything. The south didn't pay any attention to it what so ever.
Now to relate this to modern day, well I guess when West Virginia became a state it would become a state forever, duh!. But really if all this didn't go down in 1861, we wouldn't have another state. Also another thing since the civil war, Thirteenth Amendment, and the Emancipation Proclomation happened, our country has grown. I mean look we have an African- American president, Obama. In the movie Lincoln an African- American Soldier said that "maybe in 100 years we could have one of us become the president". I believe we made that standard, maybe not as fast as the character wanted it but it still happened and that amazing!!!!!!!
So here is the nail biting question, If you were a house of Representatives, and a border state congressman back then would you of passed the Thirteenth Amendment? why?Thank You for listening to my rant about the civil war and Lincoln. :)
