The Union Lincoln Made

Abraham Lincoln cherished the Union. When he swore in his presidential oath to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’, he vowed to make the American experiment in democracy succeed. In Lincoln’s view, the experiment could only succeed through the preservation of the Union without secession; he resolved to restore the rebellious states to the Union and all else would fall to this goal. But the war was very hard and very long, and war by its nature lowers the status of peripheral principles and elevates the central principles in dispute.