7 Abraham Lincoln 7American War had begun with the shedding of American
blood upon American soil. His criticisms of the war were
not popular with his constituents, however, and he was
not reelected.
Lincoln took little part in politics until 1854, when
Stephen A. Douglas maneuvered through Congress the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, reopening the Louisiana Purchase
to slavery and allowing settlers of Kansas and Nebraska
to decide for themselves whether to permit slaveholding.
Opposition to the act sped the disintegration of the Whig
Party but gave rise to the Republican Party, which Lincoln
joined in 1856. He challenged the incumbent Douglas for
the Senate seat in 1858, and the series of debates they
engaged in throughout Illinois was political oratory of the
highest order. In one of his most famous speeches, Lincoln
said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand... I
believe the government cannot endure permanently half
slave and half free.” Yet he agreed with Thomas Jefferson
and other founding fathers that slavery should be merely
contained, not directly attacked. In the end, Lincoln lost
the election to Douglas but gained national recognition
that led to his nomination as the Republic Party’s candi-
date for president in 1860. With the Republicans united,
the Democrats divided, and a total of four candidates in the
field, he carried the election on November 6.
Leadership in War
After Lincoln’s election, South Carolina withdrew from
the Union, followed by six additional states, which joined
to form the Confederate States of America (four more
states joined later). When Confederate batteries fired on
Fort Sumter, a federal installation in Charleston Bay, South
Carolina, on April 12, 1861, the Civil War began. Lincoln