Slavery Primary Sources | Lincoln, Abraham and United States Constitution

Abraham Lincoln

Emancipation Proclamation

Reprinted in The American Revolution—an .HTML project, 1997

United States Constitution

Amendments 13 to 15

Reprinted in Discovering World History, 2000

By the 1860 presidential elections, tensions in America had reached a boiling point. The Democratic Party had divided into proslavery and antislavery factions while the Republican Party, united in its opposition to slavery, nominated Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) for president. Lincoln, who opposed both the spread of slavery and efforts by government to forcibly end it, won the November presidential elections.