On the other hand, President Abraham Lincoln – who succeeded Buchanan and preceded Johnson – was credited with resolving the
slavery issue and adroitly ending the Civil War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is therefore ranked the best president of all time.
The idea of popular sovereignty, and indeed the Union, crumbled under the ever-increasing weight of cumbersome constitutional rhetoric over the
slavery issue. By showing how the debate over slavery divided the nation into rigid sectional blocs, a broader history of the popular sovereignty idea provides essential insight into how and when the Union sundered.
Taney and the
Slavery Issue: Looking Beyond--and Before--Dred Scott" by Timothy S.
The reader may infer that Jackson was forced to remain neutral on the
slavery issue because he could not condemn an institution that was the backbone of his way of life at the Hermitage in Tennessee.
Andrew Jackson, James Polk and Millard Fillmore were among the presidents who sought to tame those passions (especially over the burgeoning
slavery issue), consciously giving priority to the preservation of American unity as the more important value.
After rejecting an abolitionist amendment presented by Phelps, the Board accepted the Brooklyn report as its authoritative statement on the
slavery issue. This was the last straw for the abolitionist members of the Board.
The New York Times' current diplomatic correspondent and a foreign correspondent for twelve years at The Wall Street Journal, Cooper is descended from freed American slaves who in 1820 returned to Africa rather than remain in a country divided about the
slavery issue but united in the belief that freed and enslaved African-Americans could not easily co-exist in one nation.
The Constitution, written as it was by a convention whose members included vocal foes and friends of slavery, played a prominent role in rendering America, in Lincoln's words, "a house divided against itself" on the
slavery issue. In this sense the Constitution's flaws paved the way for the Civil War.
"As you look at the
slavery issue, blacks are not debtors, but creditors.
Like Washington, Jefferson was a surveyor who owned slaves and did not resolve the
slavery issue when he wrote the Constitution.
None of the President's future appointees to the post managed to settle the
slavery issue. As Congress discussed Kansas's proslavery constitution in February 1858, the debate grew so heated that a brawl broke out among the legislators.)
Led by Miller, the war against the
slavery issue of our time is proceeding spectacularly apace.
