"The Civil War began because Lincoln wanted to free the slaves."
It is an impressive idea, and it suits a great president. It is not quite true.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it."
A month earlier he had already shown his cabinet a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Hold that thought.
Lincoln was the president of the winning side.
He led the country through the war of 1861 to 1865, saved the Union, and ended slavery. The question is the order.
At the start, Lincoln wanted two things.
Keep the Union whole
Southern states were leaving. Lincoln wanted them back inside one country.
Stop slavery spreading west
No slavery in the new territories. But where it already existed, he would leave it alone.
Ending slavery was not on the list.
His first speech as president. He tried to calm the South.
"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists."
It did not work. Within six weeks, the shooting started.
Fort Sumter in South Carolina was one of only two federal properties in the South still held by the Union. Lincoln did not want war, but he would not hand it over.
In 1858 Douglas said settlers in new territories should vote on slavery themselves. He tried to paint Lincoln as an out-and-out abolitionist.
Lincoln answered with his rule: slavery must not spread, but he had no plan to abolish it where it already stood. He also said:
"I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races."
He changed his message for the crowd. To some he called slavery evil. To others he stressed that white came first.
The South did not believe him.
Seven slave states left the Union after Lincoln's election. Four more left after Fort Sumter. They feared his party would end slavery everywhere.
Source: state counts as given in the standard account of the war; Confederacy grew from 7 to 11 states in 1861.
Then the war did something Lincoln had not planned.
So many Southern men were fighting that the system they left behind began to fall apart. Enslaved people ran to Union lines.
August 1861. The First Confiscation Act lets the Union seize enslaved people working for the Confederate army.
July 17, 1862. The Second Confiscation Act frees the enslaved people of rebels who reach Union lines. The Militia Act opens army jobs to Black men.
Lincoln signed the second law reluctantly.
Lincoln still hoped for peace. He said the fight "shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle." He even floated resettling freed slaves abroad.
What was at stake: nearly 4 million people.
The 1860 census counted 3,953,760 enslaved people. That was about 1 in 8 Americans (12.6%). Most were in the Deep South.
Sources: 1860 census totals; PolitiFact on the 12.6% share; regional split, rounded. Authors draw the regions differently.
An editor demands action. Lincoln answers.
Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, wrote an open letter on August 20 urging Lincoln to act on slavery. Lincoln replied two days later.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
The last line of that letter matters most. What he did about slavery, he wrote, he did because it helped save the Union. Slavery policy was a tool.
Source: Lincoln to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862, Dickinson College.
On July 22, a month before that reply, Lincoln had read a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. He kept it secret and waited for a Union victory.
That victory came at Antietam, the bloodiest day in US history.
Watch the aim change, one date at a time.
Sources: Dickinson College timeline; National Archives; American Battlefield Trust.
He signs it.
Lincoln still said his main goal was the Union. He now also saw that the Union could only be saved by emancipation.
September 22, 1862: Lincoln announces it. January 1, 1863: it takes effect.
Enslaved people in states still in rebellion on that date are free. Black men can join the army and navy.
It left out the border states that had not seceded.
The Proclamation was big. It was not the end.
It covered about 3.1 million of roughly 4 million enslaved people. About 800,000 were left out. Only the Thirteenth Amendment reached them.
Sources: Emancipation Proclamation overview; Equal Justice Initiative. Estimates of the covered number range from 3.1 million to 3.5 million, depending on how exempt areas are counted.
Escaped slaves were a resource the Union could not ignore.
On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first Black regiments, led the assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina.
Black men served in the Union army, in about 175 regiments. Roughly 1 in 10 Union soldiers.
"The use of the colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the Rebellion."
They also paid more.
Of the Colored Troops, 20.5% died of all causes. Among all US Volunteers, it was 15.2%.
Source: United States Colored Troops, citing revised official data. Counts of the Black share of the army range from 6% to about 10% depending on the source.
Gettysburg, November 1863.
Four months after the battle, Lincoln spoke at a funeral service for the fallen. He pointed back to the Declaration of Independence and its line that all men are created equal.
The war was now a struggle for "a new birth of freedom."
Two and a half years earlier he had told the South he would not touch slavery.
The story: Lincoln scribbled the speech on the back of an envelope on the train.
The record: He began the first draft in Washington on White House paper. Five handwritten copies exist. Two date from around the speech. The other three came later. Nobody has found the envelope.
The story spread after a 1906 book by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews. It probably stuck because the speech was three minutes long and followed Edward Everett's two-hour address.
Sources: American Battlefield Trust; Seth Kaller.
Each secretary received one of the two drafts. Both are now at the Library of Congress.
A wartime order can end with the war. Lincoln wanted a law that could not.
The Senate passed the amendment on April 8, 1864. The House said no. After Lincoln won re-election, the House passed it on January 31, 1865, with just enough votes.
Sources: National Archives; National Constitution Center. Bars show share of votes cast.
27 of 36 states ratify. Slavery is now illegal in the whole country.
Lincoln did not see it. He was killed on April 14, 1865.
Mississippi did not officially ratify the amendment until 1995. It filed the paperwork in 2013.
Source: EJI
The price was at least 620,000 lives.
For a century the standard count was about 620,000 dead. A 2011 study using census data puts it nearer 750,000. At that death rate, today's US would lose about 7.5 million people.
Sources: NPR on J. David Hacker; HistoryNet interview.
"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
He wrote it to Albert G. Hodges, at the end of three years of war.
Sources and method
Lincoln, letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862: House Divided, Dickinson College. It was sent to the Tribune's rival paper and printed on August 23. It is sometimes misdated or credited to Harper's Weekly.
1860 census and enslaved population: Ancestry, FamilySearch, PolitiFact.
Confiscation and Militia Acts: US Senate; House Divided.
Emancipation Proclamation: overview; Encyclopedia Virginia; EJI.
Colored Troops: American Battlefield Trust; The Henry Ford; Wikipedia.
Gettysburg Address copies: American Battlefield Trust; Seth Kaller; Google Arts and Culture.
13th Amendment: National Archives; National Constitution Center.
Death toll: History.com; NPR.
Photos, all public domain via Wikimedia Commons: Lincoln portrait; Fort Sumter; Douglas; Proclamation; Fort Wagner, Gettysburg crowd, Cumberland Landing and Nicolay and Hay as linked in each caption.
Method: quotes are from the original documents. Where sources disagree (3.1 vs 3.5 million covered by the Proclamation, the Black share of the army, the death toll), this board shows the range. More stories at vizmaya.fyi/stories.
The story we were told
Lincoln fought the Civil War to free the slaves. That is the clean version. The records say something odder, and the odd part is the good part.
He said it himself
In August 1862 Lincoln wrote that he would save the Union without freeing a single slave if he could. Yet a month before, he had shown his cabinet a draft that freed them. Which was the real Lincoln?
In 1861 the goal was the Union
Lincoln wanted two things: keep the country whole, and stop slavery spreading west. He promised the South he would not touch slavery where it already existed. Within six weeks, Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter.
What he said in 1858
In debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln drew a line. Slavery must not spread, but he would not abolish it where it stood. He was no champion of racial equality at this point.
The South heard something else
Southern leaders were sure his party meant to end slavery. Seven states left after his election. Four more left after Sumter. Lincoln's calm words did not matter.
Then the war went off script
With so many Southern men at the front, slavery began to come apart at home. Enslaved people ran to Union lines. Congress passed laws to keep them. Lincoln was still hoping for peace.
A letter and a secret
Lincoln told the editor Horace Greeley that slavery policy was only a tool to save the Union. At the same time he held a secret draft of emancipation. He was waiting for a win.
The turn, on one line
Look at the dates. Before September 1862 the aim is the Union. After it, the aim has two parts. The war itself did the changing.
January 1, 1863
The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect. It frees about 3.1 million people in rebel states. It leaves out about 800,000 more, mostly in the border states.
Black soldiers tip the war
About 180,000 Black men joined the Union army. Lincoln called their service the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion. They died at a higher rate than other Union troops.
Gettysburg, and a myth
By November 1863 Lincoln was speaking of "a new birth of freedom." The envelope story is a myth. He drafted the speech in Washington.
Making it permanent
A war order could end with the war, so Lincoln pushed for an amendment. The House passed it by a thin margin on January 31, 1865. It became law on December 6, 1865.
The price and the answer
At least 620,000 people died. Lincoln said events had controlled him. The war turned a fight for the Union into a fight over freedom.
The whole board
Four years, one changed aim. The sources are in the bottom left corner.