Abraham Lincoln, also known as Honest Abe, is regarded by many historians as the greatest American president ever. He was tall, magnetic, and charismatic, though not particularly handsome. His character, determination, and work ethic molded him from a poor farm boy into the greatest president in America's history, to date.

History has gilded him with the title of 'The Great Emancipator.' History tends to disregard that Lincoln, though with high regard for the 'people' who were slaves, did not feel black people were the moral or intellectual equals of white people.(1) When one considers that Lincoln did not intend to abolish slavery, but merely prevent its expansion, then, before the tides of the war had turned, he declared slaves in all Confederate states free, it seems more likely that it was really a ploy to entice slaves in the south to fight with Union soldiers. Despite those two major conflicts between teachings and truth, Lincoln was a very progressive thinker for his days.

Slavery was not a matter of dominance; it was a matter of economics. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin before Lincoln was born, and machines followed that could do the work of many men. Many slaves had been given their 'walking papers.' When Lincoln was still a child, Liberia was purchased as a dumping ground for slave owners not wanting to free slaves in America. The new western states provided slave owners an opportunity to sell their slaves to the slave drivers out west, who would then not need to import as many Chinese people to slave on the railroads.

It was that expansion of slavery to the western states that Lincoln opposed. Coupled with a firm belief that the Constitution was a contract to which individual parties were not free to leave without agreement from the other parties, Lincoln sought to preserve the union.

Lincoln's predecessors, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, regarded by many historians as two of the three worst presidents in American history, had bobbled, bungled, and blubbered America into polarized ideals. Lincoln's election in 1860 began The Winter of Secession.

Lincoln arrived in Washington in disguise, and avoided an assassination attempt, to give his first inaugural address in March of 1861. In that speech, he talked of the "implied perpetuity" in the Constitution. Toward the end of the speech, he made this appeal for diplomacy: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The

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