Presidency of Abraham Lincoln

**The presidency of Abraham Lincoln** began on March 4, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States and ended upon his death on April 15, 1865.  During his presidency he claimed more prerogatives than any other president had done before him. As a result, the small and relatively limited powers of the president grew enormously during his time in office. Since the 1830s, Southern states had talked about secession, but it became a serious issue in 1860. They formed the Confederate States of America (CSA). When Confederates attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 and captured it the next day, this started the American Civil War. While having little previous military experience, Lincoln still managed to stand out as a great war president. In 1863, his Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in Southern states. It led directly to the abolition of slavery in the United States. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by their state legislatures. So both Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. Although Illinois was a free state, the main issue of all seven debates was slavery.

Lincoln spent the next 16 months making speeches for a number of Republican candidates in the North. This both made him many political friends and also was in preparation for his run for President. Lincoln spent months preparing for this speech; more time than he had spent on any speech he had given during the senatorial debates. The Cooper Union address got Lincoln the attention he needed to become the Republican candidate for president in 1860. Voter turnout for the election was 81.2%, the second highest in American history. 

## Secession crisis (1860–1861) 
In November of 1860, with Lincoln the  winner, a crisis that had been ing for at least a decade ed. Southerners were outraged by the election of Lincoln, who opposed slavery in territories and new states. Leaders there had warned that if a Republican won the 1868 election, they would leave the Union. His speech was written in a spirit of friendship toward the seceded states. It ran from March 4, 1861 until he was shot by a Confederate sympathizer and died on April 15, 1865. It included all of his major rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination. He already had a reputation for being  and . He inherited the problems from his predecessor, President James Buchanan. In his own inaugural address four years earlier, Buchan had called the issues of slavery “happily, a matter of but little practical importance.” Buchanan took the position he did not have the power to do anything about the impending civil war. He said: “It is beyond the power of any president, no matter what may be his own political proclivities, to restore peace and harmony among the states. Wisely limited and restrained as is his power under our Constitution and laws, he alone can accomplish but little for good or for evil on such a momentous question.” Their constitution was patterned after the United States Constitution with four differences. It supported states' Sovereignty. At the start of the war, with only a few ships, this was all but impossible. By war's end, the Union had captured or destroyed 1500 blockade runners. The North counted on them because of their ation of slavery. This d Lincoln. Seward warned both nations of the possibility of war with the United States over this issue. They intended to use the world's largest ship, the SS Great Eastern as a troop transport. Lincoln was diplomatic in his handling of two Confederates who had been arrested on the British ship the Trent. Men could be enlisted and war goods could be manufactured, but generals took time to train. The general in chief of the army in 1861 was Winfield Scott, in charge of an army of only about 16,000 men. Scott was both old and old school (meaning he had no modern training). Quite a few officers had been trained at West Point, but at the time West Point taught engineering, mathematics and fortifications. It taught very little about strategy and nothing about leading large s of soldiers in the . None had learned anything about staff work or how to manage an army except those few who could read French or who had any military experience in Europe. One of the worst problems is that field commanders did not even have accurate maps of the areas they had to move and fight in. Except in the West, local maps did not exist for many parts of the country. Unlike Jefferson Davis, who did have military experience, Lincoln had almost none.

Lincoln faced a very steep learning curve when the war started. But Lincoln was a quick study. He had taught himself to be a lawyer. Learning military strategy proved to be something else he could do very well. He read books on strategy, military history and learned from the successes and failures of his troops in the field. He also learned from the enemy's military tactics. He learned so well that by 1862, historian T. Harry William said about him: "Lincoln stands out as a great war president, probably the greatest in our history, and a great natural strategist, a better one than any of his generals." Although there is no evidence he ever read Karl von Clausewitz's *On War*, his actions followed the book's central argument: "The political objective is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose. Therefore, it is clear that war should never be thought of as something  but always as an instrument of policy."

## Notes 
## References 
## Other websites 
* President Abraham Lincoln 1st Inaugural Address; YouTube
* Lincoln and Davis: War Presidents: YouTube
* Abraham Lincoln vs. the British Empire - part 1: YouTube
* Abraham Lincoln vs. the British Empire - part 2:YouTube