Although most soldiers' personal goals in the war may not have revolved around slavery, but more likely issues such as conserving the family farm or patriotic values of preserving the Union, the 200,000 African American soldiers likely fought for one common goal - emancipation.
The History of Slavery in the United States
White European settlers, seeking cheap labor to generate the American colonies' exports, imported African slaves. Many saw the existence of slavery in all thirteen colonies a direct contradiction to the Declaration of Independence and the values this new country was founded on. Northern states phased out slavery following the American Revolution in 1775; however, when the Constitution was written in 1787, slavery issues were dealt with ambiguously, paving the way for future conflict. In the early 1800s, with a rising demand for cotton, it became the United States' number one profitable export, solidifying the "need" for slave labor. Tension between abolitionists in the north and slave holders in the south mounted, and the Republican party was founded in the 1850s; one of its chief aims was abolishing slavery. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision of 1857 that African Americans were not U.S. citizens. The pending presidential election of 1860 saw a division in the Democratic Party, who nominated two candidates, while the Republicans supported Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the Civil War
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809 in Kentucky. At the Knob Creek Farm, where Lincoln spent the first few years of his boyhood, he witnessed many slaves being traded along the Cumberland Trail which ran adjacent to the family farm. His mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died when he was nine of milk sickness, leaving Abraham, his sister Sarah and father Thomas. In 1828 when Abraham was 19, he floated down the Mississippi River and observed a slave auction in New Orleans. Abraham's family moved to Illinois in1830, where he studied law and was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1834 as a member of the Whig Party. In 1842 he married Mary Todd, and between 1843 - 1853 they had four sons. The year 1858 was a busy one for Lincoln, as he engaged in seven debates with Stephen Douglas, delivered his "House Divided" speech, and was nominated as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate (which he ultimately lost to Douglas). On March 4, 1861, he was inaugurated President of the U.S. at age 52, only six weeks before the outbreak of the Civil War.
The End of Slavery and Abraham Lincoln
In 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, delivered the "Gettysburg Address", and issued the Thanksgiving Proclamation, establishing the national holiday. Some in Lincoln's party asked him to withdraw the Emancipation Proclamation for fear that he wouldn't be re-elected, but Lincoln refused, saying if he did he "should deserve to be damned in time and eternity". In a letter to Albert Hodges, editor of the Frankfort Commonwealth, Lincoln wrote "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel." Shortly after being inaugurated for a second Presidential term, on April 14, 1865 Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth. He died only six days after the surrender of confederate troops, but not before he saw twenty states ratify the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. By the end of 1865 the thirteenth amendment would become law.
Sources:
Kentucky Lincoln Heritage Trail sign boards
"Slavery and the Civil War" - publication of the U.S. Department of the Interior's National Park Service
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