Who Was the Best Us President - Abraham Lincoln

I believe that Abraham Lincoln was the best president, If not for Abraham Lincoln (March 4, 1861 – April 15, 1865), who presided during the American Civil War, the U.S. might look very different today. Lincoln guided the Union through many years of conflict and war, abolished slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation, and at war's end laid the foundation for reconciliation with the defeated South. However Lincoln never got to see the end of the war because he was assassinated just a few weeks before the war ended by John Wilkes Booth.

The civil war ripped the United states in half, it was-in my opinion-one of the most disgraceful events to occur on United States soil. Lincoln lead the Union army during the civil war, he was fighting for equal rights of African Americans, to preserve the country and make it back into one united nation, and to save democracy and to prevent anarchy. Although slavery was legal at the time many people, called abolitionists, like Lincoln were morally appalled by it and did something to change it. The north and south battled for many years because the Confederates did not find anything wrong with slavery because they thought as whites they were entitled to own slaves.

Before Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation he passed an act called the Contrabands and Confiscations Act. This act made it illegal for Generals to return runaway slaves to their owners. Before this act was passed many Generals protected runaway slaves from their Confederate owners but there were some Generals that would return them if the owner could prove their loyalty to the United States but this act made that illegal. Slaves were considered contraband and were confiscated from Confederate owners. In the beginning there were only a small amount of slaves crossing Union lines to seek refuge but towards the end of the war there were masses of slaves crossing Union lines for safety. These confiscated slaves helped the Union soldiers, although they did not have the right to bear arms yet.

Another reason why Lincoln was the best, in my own opinion, was because he ended slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation Act and managed to keep the nation together as one. By 1862 many of the Republicans had determined that the war against slaveholders wasn't going to get any better and were pushing Lincoln to create the Emancipation Proclamation Act. However Lincoln was hesitant to anything more because he did not want the states to recede. As the war continued and the Union started to lose more men and battles it became apparent to Lincoln that in order to win the war, if they did not free the slaves they themselves would be subdued. Lincoln and his cabinet agreed something needed to be done so Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation Act. The act lead to what’s now known as the 13th amendment. After the amendment was put into place on January 31, 1865 close to 200,000 slaves joined union