Abraham Lincoln became the president of the United States during a very critical phase of American history.

(a) Lincoln’s views on slavery were well known. He thoroughly despised slavery, which he believed was a vicious and brutal system. He was uncompromisingly opposed to slavery. Human bondage was a negation and gross violation of democracy. 

(b) In the famous Gettysburg address in 1863, Lincoln justified the abolition of slavery on grounds of the cherished principles of liberty and equality of the founding father of the United States of America. ‘Four score and seven years ago,’ he declared, ‘our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. . .It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

(c) The southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis was appointed the President of the Confederacy.Lincoln was determined to save the Union at all costs-at the cost of war, if necessary. Civil war broke out in 1861. The southerners fought with determination and courage. They had brilliant generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, under whose leadership they initially won a number of victories.Gradually, however, the North with its superior resources wore down the Confederacy. Lee surrendered to the Union general, Ulysses Grant, in April 1865. The Civil War came to an end. It had established the fact that the American federation was an indestructible Union of States and no state had the right to secede.The war had been fought mainly in the South, and had resulted in the impoverishment of the southerners.