Abraham Lincoln Achievements and Contributions: Speeches and Principles.

Abraham Lincoln is a huge actor on the stage of American history.

While he is remembered for freeing the slaves and preserving the Union through a bloody Civil War, his contributions to the philosophy of representative government are also profound.

President Lincoln presided over the successful prosecution of the Civil War, authored the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the Confederacy, and held the Union together through many critical challenges during the years of the war.

This is significant. A look at history testifies to the significance of this last point alone.

How many nations have been torn apart for years or destroyed by civil wars? France is an excellent example of this.

France’s bloody revolution and continuing internal struggles produced a tyrant, Napoleon.

After Napoleon came to power, France suffered through some seventy years of foreign wars and internal upheavals.

Finally, in 1875, the Third Republic brought a form of representative government to France.

Russia had a revolution in 1917 that was supposed to bring bread to the masses and secure a bright future for the workers.

This civil war produced Lenin and the successive dictators who ruled the Soviet Union.

The nation that that emerged from the Russian Revolution, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, became one of the most oppressive regimes in the history of man and ruled with an iron fist for more than 70 years.

Abraham Lincoln achievements and contributions become more significant when considering some of the grueling events of history.

Lincoln’s ability to lead testifies to the significance of a successful conclusion to the Civil War in the United States.

Of course, some of events following the war were not desirable, particularly Reconstruction and the defacto re-enslavement of African Americans in the South.

Had Lincoln lived, history may have taken a more positive course.

But Lincoln’s achievements were nevertheless profound, and his speeches and policies shaped the course of events in his day.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered to mark the dedication of a national cemetery for fallen soldiers, was particularly poignant.

The Gettysburg Address is a masterful and elegant expression of the price of war and freedom and the tasks before the leaders of the struggling American republic.

Abraham Lincoln Achievements and Contributions: Gettysburg Address

Abraham Lincoln Achievements and Contributions: First Inaugural Address

In his speeches and his policies, Abraham Lincoln established an enduring vision for what a nation of free people could be, if they behaved wisely.

This is quite apparent in Lincoln’s first inaugural address.

In his first speech as president, Lincoln asserted that the Union was perpetual and could not be dissolved unless all of the states agreed to “lawfully rescind it”.

He went on to say that no state could lawfully withdraw from the Union by itself, and that acts of violence against the United States are “insurrectionary or revolutionary”.

But having said this, Lincoln saw no reason why the Union could not continue to exist.

He restated what he had said in previous speeches, that it was not his intention to interfere with the institution of slavery, seeking to calm fears in the South.

Abraham Lincoln Achievements and Contributions: An Enduring Constitutional Framework

Lincoln pointed out in his inaugural address that constitutional protections for individuals were still in force, which by implication, included the right to property, which would have included slaves according to the legal doctrines of that day.

While Lincoln stated that the Constitution was silent on several of questions related to the slavery controversy, he also said that the solution would be to decide these questions on the basis of the rule of the majority.

He believed states should be bound by the rule of the majority in Congress, and not secede when they disagreed.

He said, “The central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.”

Lincoln’s first inaugural address is a brilliant argument to work within the framework of the Constitution to resolve the controversies facing the nation.

He concluded his speech with an appeal for national unity with stirring words that reflect Lincoln’s love for the nation.

”I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.

”The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

President Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

Abraham Lincoln Achievements and Contributions: Uniting our Nation

At an event celebrating Lincoln’s birthday and the renovation of Ford’s Theater where Lincoln was assassinated, President Barack Obama reflected on Lincoln’s legacy.

”For despite all that divided us – North and South, black and white – he had an unyielding belief that we were, at heart, one nation, and one people.

”And because of Abraham Lincoln, and all who’ve carried on his work in the generations since, that is what we remain today.”

President Barack Obama, February 11, 2009

Most notable among Lincoln’s contributions is his great vision to see the United States of America continue as one nation, a free nation, where “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”