When Abraham Lincoln was growing up, there were many hundreds of thousands of slaves in the United States. The slaves were men, women, and children. Whole families could be bought and sold. Some were sold together, some were separated. There were slave auctions in many states like Louisiana and Kentucky. The United States was divided by the issue of slavery.
Northern states were called "free states" which was supposed to mean no slavery.

     Abraham Lincoln learned of slavery at an early age. When he was just a boy he saw slave traders with their slaves on the Cumberland Trail, which ran right by his family's cabin at Knob Creek, Kentucky. His father was against slavery. This is part of the reason that he moved his family from Kentucky, a slave state, to Indiana, a free state.
As Abraham grew up he read books about our nation's forefathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. He believed it was true that our country should be, as the Declaration of Independence states, a nation where "all men are created equal." 

     Abraham never really saw a slave auction though until he traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana at age 18 on a flatboat trip. He and his friend Allen Gentry had gone there to sell produce for Allen's father. At the docks in New Orleans they saw firsthand what a slave auction was like. Along the way to New Orleans they saw many slaves working in fields, forests, and swamps. He said of slavery then, "If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard."
     The sights of slavery stayed with Abraham Lincoln throughout his life.  He once said, "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy." He promised to free the slaves when he campaigned for presidency. He debated a man named Stephen Douglass, and in those debates he said slavery was wrong.
     During the time he was President of the United States the southern slave states decided to secede, or "leave" the United States to form their own country called the "Confederate States of America".  One reason this happened was because they wanted to keep slavery.
     President Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free."  So in 1861 our country had a Civil War. The Northern states battled the Southern states in this war. It lasted for four years until finally in 1865 the Northern states won the war.
     During the war President Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. This proclamation freed all slaves who lived in the Confederate States of America. It set in motion the eventual freeing of all slaves by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in December 1865.
After the war he wanted to unite the country again. In his second inaugural speech he said, "With malice toward none, with charity for all...let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds."
     Abraham Lincoln's antislavery views eventually caused his death. On April 14, 1865 he was assassinated by a John Wilkes Booth, who was for slavery and hated President Lincoln. However, Lincoln's hopes and ideals for our nation lived on and became reality.

    We thank John Hargis of Rockport, Indiana for the above photograph of the historic marker in Spencer County, Indiana marking the spot where Abraham Lincoln and Allen Gentry set off on their flatboat trip to New Orleans.

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