What did Abraham Lincoln Do?

[ForeverYoung1]

I'm Canadian and doing a project on how Abraham Lincoln fits into the great man theory. Of course I have a hard time grasping this subject and I left it to the last second to research.

I was wondering if anyone who know about Abraham Lincoln could help me out... I know his basic biography to start my introduction but there were a couple things I would like help with so I can get going.

What were the major points/achievments in Lincoln's life?

What qualities did he show as a leader?

 

[JohnSmith]

s president, he led the country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis—the American Civil War—preserving the Union while ending slavery and promoting economic modernization.

After deftly opposing the expansion of slavery in the United States in his campaign debates and speeches, Lincoln secured the Republican nomination and was elected president in 1860. Following declarations of secession by southern slave states, war began in April 1861, and he concentrated on both the military and political dimensions of the war effort, seeking to reunify the nation. He vigorously exercised unprecedented war powers, including the arrest and detention without trial of thousands of suspected secessionists. He prevented British recognition of the Confederacy by skillfully handling the Trent affair late in 1861. He issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery.

 

[loryntoo]

Lincoln was willing to do whatever it took to keep the Union together. Although he personally did not approve of slavery, he would have allowed it to keep the South happy in his term. Even with the war starting, he did not issue the Emancipation Proclamation until midway through the war as he refused to let the war become a war over slaves. For him the question was whether we were "one nation under God" or whether the Union would continue to exist at all. The men in the ranks supported him and believed in him. They were the ones doing the fighting and dying, but they were also the ones who swept Lincoln into office for a second term.