Where morality and politics collide: How Abraham Lincoln held his ground

Not long after Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th president of the United States, South Carolina seceded from the Union. In the months leading up to his March 1861 inauguration, various politicians and business leaders appealed to the president-elect to compromise with the South in order to avert a civil war. The most developed plan, the Crittenden Compromise, proposed constitutional amendments protecting slavery where it existed and allowing its spread to southern territories, but prohibiting its expansion in the