Abraham Lincoln (Civ6)/Civilopedia

One of the most recognizable faces in US history, Abraham Lincoln was President for only four years, but during which time he abolished slavery (an act that was rather late in comparison with the USA’s European contemporaries), successfully waged the Civil War, and catapulted the United States into the industrial age.
Lincoln came from modest beginnings in the Midwest. His family were poor landowners who were caught between the two major struggles of the day: the push westward into indigenous territory, and the tension between enslaving farmers (where wealth tended to be consolidated into larger landownings) and those who worked their own fields. The Lincolns were pushed up and north into Indiana, where they engaged in woodworking and farming. Times were hard – Lincoln’s mother died when he was a small boy, and Lincoln became mostly self-taught. Upon his return from serving in the militia against the Sauk, Lincoln studied law and began pursuing politics in earnest.
Lincoln’s early political career was with the Whigs, a party that had coalesced – in America, at least – against executive power, an artifact of its original anti-monarchical status. In the US, this meant combating the potential for political figures such as Andrew Jackson to establish sweeping executive powers. The US was changing, however, and the dominant divisions were no longer between wealthy plantation owners in Virginia (e.g., Washington or Jefferson) against thrifty and philosophically-minded New Englanders (e.g., Franklin or Adams), but as an industrial capital in the North against a South moving towards industrial agriculture, powered by slave labor. As the Whigs transformed into the Republican party, aligning with Northern industrial interests against the South, Lincoln became a leading voice. Lincoln’s views called for moderation on the issue of slavery (as awful as that sounds today, it was progressive for the time), international economic protectionism, and support for domestic industry – all policies that favored free capital (within the country, at least, and amongst white men), industrialization and the wealth of industrialists.
These white Southern landowners in the South depended upon slavery to keep pace with international industrial, agricultural production, and global trade. Still, it was an increasingly untenable (and had always been an abhorrent) practice. Lincoln made no disguise of his opposition to slavery, although he saw containment, and not eradication, as the path forward. But even this attempt at moderation was too far for Southern states, who interpreted his election as a sign that their power within the Union was irrevocably waning and that the institution of slavery, and thus their economic base, might be at an end. Thus, directly after his election, the Confederacy declared its separation.
Lincoln was a debater and, as such, was criticized for underestimating the gravity of the situation and not taking early action, but his penchant for words and caution was to pay off later. In the Civil War, the South had the advantage of home territory and a well-educated elite to produce generals and strategists, but lagged behind the North in nearly every other factor. As much of the labor force in the South were enslaved and, as such, would be hard-pressed to make fight for their own continued enslavement, the South had to use propaganda campaigns to bring poor landless whites to fight. Further, Southern factories and industry lagged behind the North. And finally, the South lacked existing international support.
But there was a path to victory, however unlikely this seemed. The politics of racial resentment remained, and Lincoln underestimated the pro-slavery sentiment even in states that did not secede (e.g., Maryland) – riots and saboteurs abounded there. More ominous, there were many international powers that would like to see the South remain a largely agricultural producer of raw materials to fuel their own industry, especially given Lincoln’s penchant for foreign tariffs and protecting American trade. Lincoln intercepted envoys from the Confederacy to England, but in a wise move, gave leniency, thus avoiding an international incident.
Things could have gone differently: a foreign power could have intervened. A mass slave uprising could have destroyed the Confederacy before it began. A mass pro-slavery uprising could have sabotaged the United States’ industry. But none of these things happened, and the industrial machine of the North inexorably destroyed the Confederacy.
This theme of industrialism is key here. At home, Lincoln was known for establishing a banking administration and a department of agriculture, both issues to bring the growing nation under centralized control. But when we think of Lincoln’s time, we think of growing factories, the rise of European immigration to the US, the growth of railroads. And also, the movement of these industrial forces against the lands to the west – Lincoln, especially given his background, had no soft spot in his heart for the indigenous people of the continent.
Lincoln’s victory and the reforms made to the South in the wake of the war were bound to cause resentment. He was assassinated in Washington DC by John Wilkes Booth in 1865, just after his re-election and only a few days after the end of the war. Booth believed such an assassination would lead to the war’s continuance, but this was not the case. Lincoln was succeeded by Andrew Johnson, a particularly inept leader.