Abraham Lincoln's Attitude To The Civil War

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Although he presided over arguably the most dire crisis our nation has faced in its history, he was careful to act within the bounds set forth by that document as he viewed them. Long before he ascended to the presidency, Lincoln explained, “that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed.” Despite his belief that nothing was more wrong than slavery, he could not act upon that moral belief while slavery was still legal in many areas of the nation. Until freeing the slaves became “indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution,” he could not take action that in time of peace would have been unconstitutional. Throughout his political career, Lincoln professed to being antislavery. As early as his first term in the Illinois State House in 1837, Lincoln and another representative, Dan Stone, denounced resolutions stating that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed a right to own slaves and that the Congress had no right to end
Chase to expand the areas affected by the Proclamation, Lincoln refused because “the original proclamation has no constitutional or legal justification, except as a military measure.” Although Lincoln’s (and any President’s) war powers in the case of rebellion and insurrection are virtually unlimited, they are limited by geography to areas that are in actual rebellion against the government of the United States. Lincoln further reinforced his position on presidential war powers in a letter to James C. Conkling, stating: “I think the Constitution invests its Commander-in-chief, with the law of war, in time of war. … Is there - has there ever been - any question that by the law of war, property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when