Abraham Lincoln s President Of The United States

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln took his first oath of office as President of the United States. On the East Portico of the new Capitol Building, Lincoln directed his voice not to the people in the crowd, but to the people of the seven states which had seceded from the Union just days before. He stood in the shadow of the Capitol’s half-finished dome, a symbol of the severe division within the nation. Mr. Lincoln would be met with great hardship and ambiguity throughout his two terms as president. He knew â€Å"a house divided among itself cannot stand.† What, then, was the solution? A war between the Northern Union and Southern rebels. His second inauguration, delivered just days before the surrender of the South, was spoken with a sense of†¦show more content†¦He used his first inaugural address to declare his constitutional intentions, especially given the anxiety in the Southern states over the protection of their slaves, and to explain the nature of the national Union. Although Lincoln hated slavery and consistently argued against its expansion, he was not an abolitionist at first. Lincoln recognized the fragile condition of the country on the eve of the fighting, and therefore did not seek the repeal of the notorious (but constitutional) Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required that escaped slaves be returned to their masters in the South. A repeal of that law meant that reconciliation with the South would be impossible. He announced that he would not interfere with slavery where it already existed, and pledged to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act—a key issue for seceding states. Lincoln then declared the Union of these States is perpetual (AHR 476, line 4) and added no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union,† (AHR 476, line 27). Why? He believed that all governments by their very nature existed in perpetuity. Even if one man or a group of people assumed the United States was not government proper, but rather an association of states, all the states collectively would need to agree to dissolve their association. He also believed that the existence of the American Union was around long before the constitution, demonstrating that the States intended to