Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), known as "Honest Abe" and "The Great Emancipator" is regarded by many to be America's greatest president because of his powerful leadership during the civil war and the impact of that leadership on the moral and political character of the nation. He used his role as president to uphold the Constitution, but also to preserve, protect, and defend it during a war which, he in essence started. As well as being credited with winning the most important war in America's history, he is also considered to have abolished the institution of slavery and set in motion the Civil Rights movement. He was the sixteenth, and first Republican, president. .
In the decades leading up to the secession crisis of 1860 the issue of slavery was dividing the nation. There was a growing awareness that slavery; a human being owning another human being as property; was immoral and contradicted "the American way". The practical maintenance of slavery was requiring an expansion of federal power and Southern "slave states", while advocating states rights, demanded federal intervention in support of slavery.
In his 1860 campaign for president, Abraham Lincoln firmly expressed his opposition to slavery and his determination to limit its expansion westward into the new territories acquired from Mexico in 1850. .
Therefore his election victory created a crisis, as many southern Democrats feared that it would be only a matter of time before Lincoln would move to kill slavery in the South. Rather than face a future, in which black people might become free and equal citizens and fearing the loss of their main source of economy, much of the white South supported secession. Their reasoning was based upon the doctrine of states' rights, which placed ultimate sovereignty with them. This meant that Lincoln, even before being sworn in as president, was faced with the rebellion of 7 southern states who left the Union to form the Confederate States of America, and later four more who joined as hostilities began between the North and South.
