The arrival of the first American laborers to the English colony of Virginia in
1619 began the tragic history of slavery in North America. By 1776 when
Americans fought for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", slavery had already
prevailed in their country for more than a hundred and fifty years. In the years that
followed the first colonizers, slavery paced the growth of the U.S.; it was the rise of
America. The territory of the slave states at the time of the civil war was equal if not
greater to that of the original thirteen colonies in 1776. As the nation matured so did
its debates about slavery, the topic was starting to get very heated. Nothing fueled the
conflict as much as the country's territorial expansion. Each new state admitted to the
Union threatened to upset the balance of the power agreed upon between the slave
and free states.
The issue of slavery took the country to a dangerous internal conflict,
about 600,000 people died to finally end slavery through an awesome civil war filled
with blood shed and high emotions. Abraham Lincoln, the president that was in
charge during the Civil War, had always hated slavery; it was he said, a
"monstrous injustice and unqualified evil to the Negro, the white man, and the state; if
slavery is not wrong nothing is wrong." Lincoln believed that the nation's founders
had also hated slavery and looked forward to its abolition. Abraham Lincoln fought in
favor of anti-slavery reform from his days of youth to the day he was assassinated.
In his early years, Lincoln always spoke to white men, he did not know how to
handle the problem of race. He lived in a white society, with racial groups, he never
interacted with an African American except...