The White House at Lincoln's First Inauguration (House Divided Project)
Introduction
On March 4, 1861, Lincoln said in his inaugural address, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” This was a clear attempt at sectional compromise from someone who also openly declared in the same speech that slavery was “wrong.”
Text: Lincoln and Secession
This excerpt from Lincoln’s 1861 inaugural features only 700 words out of the 3,628-word address. His speech described the growing crisis over secession. Lincoln expressed his desire to avoid interfering with slavery in the states where it is existed, but he called slavery “wrong and labeled secession as “the essence of anarchy.” He vowed to hold the union together and called upon peoples’ patriotic sentiment to help end the secession crisis and avoid war.
Context: Republicans in Power
The Republican win in the 1860 election had altered the nation’s political landscape by ending a long period of southern dominance in Washington. Most white Southerners feared the antislavery platform of the Republican Party, which was almost exclusively based in the North and the West. The Republicans morally opposed slavery, but they had long pledged to focus on their efforts on containing the spread of slavery, keeping it out of the western territories in places like Kansas (which had just entered the union as a free state). Lincoln’s promise to leave slavery untouched in the South was thus the standard position of his party. There were others, however, more radical antislavery figures known as abolitionists, men like Frederick Douglass, who argued for more direct moral confrontation against slavery everywhere. Before Lincoln's inauguration, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, starting with South Carolina in December 1860, claiming that all Republicans were nothing more than abolitionist in disguise. Lincoln was clearly trying to use his inaugural speech to calm their worst sectional fears.
Subtext: First Things First
There is no doubt that Lincoln viewed slavery as morally wrong, but he also believed in maintaining the law, the Constitution, and in keeping the union together. His strategy as a new president was to focus on uniting the nation first –or at least containing the damage of secession to a minority of slave states—and then to start dealing with the issue of slavery policy and the future of the institution.
Conclusion:
Lincoln's 1861 Inaugural Address showed that his goals as a national leader were to stand on the principle of preserving the union instead of fighting immediately for abolition. Though he was unable to stop the Civil War from occurring, Lincoln continued to push for both union and freedom measures throughout the rest of his presidency. Before too long, those dual principles would converge together in his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.