Lincoln, who was a former Whig congressman, emerged as a major Republican presidential candidate following his narrow loss to Democrat Stephen A. Douglas in the 1858 Senate election in Illinois.

[12] Realizing that soothing words on the rights of slaveholders would alienate the Republican base, while taking a strong stand on the indestructibility of the Union would further inflame Southerners, Lincoln chose a policy of silence.

[13] At the suggestion of a Southern merchant who contacted him, Lincoln did make an indirect appeal to the South by providing material for Senator Lyman Trumbull to insert into his own public address.

The unannounced departure from the published schedule, along with the unconventional attire Lincoln wore to keep a low profile, led to critics and cartoonists accusing him of sneaking into Washington in disguise.

[28] Lincoln, aware that his inaugural address would be delivered in an atmosphere filled with fear and anxiety, and amid an unstable political landscape, sought guidance from colleagues and friends as he prepared it.

"[35] In his closing remarks Lincoln spoke directly to the secessionists, and asserted that no state could secede from the Union "upon its own mere motion" and emphasized the moral commitment that he was undertaking to "preserve, protect, and defend" the laws of the land.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

[44] By the end of 1862, Seward had emerged as the dominant figure in Lincoln's cabinet, though the Secretary of State's conservative policies on abolition and other issues alienated many within the Republican Party.

Nonetheless, by Inauguration Day the competing factions realized that it was important to business interests that at least some Pennsylvanian be in Lincoln's cabinet, and Cameron was made Secretary of War.

[63] Southern Democrats had dominated the Supreme Court of the United States in the period before Lincoln took office, and their unpopular ruling in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford had done much to invigorate the Republican cause in the North.

[68] Any hope Lincoln might have had about using time to his advantage in addressing the crisis was shattered on his first full day in office, when he read a letter from Major Robert Anderson, the commander at Fort Sumter, stating that his troops would run out of provisions within four to six weeks.

[82] Organizing the army would prove to be a challenge for Lincoln and the War Department, as many professional officers resisted civilian control, while many state militias sought to act autonomously.

[100] The mid-term elections in 1862 brought the Republicans severe losses due to sharp disfavor with the administration over its failure to deliver a speedy end to the war, as well as rising inflation, new taxes, rumors of corruption, the suspension of habeas corpus, the military draft law, and fears that freed slaves would undermine the labor market.

[119] Grant and Generals Hooker, George H. Thomas, and William Tecumseh Sherman led the Union to another major victory at the Third Battle of Chattanooga in November, driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee.

On July 11, two days after defeating Union forces under General Lew Wallace in the Battle of Monocacy, Early attacked Fort Stevens, an outpost on the defensive perimeter of Washington.

Acknowledging this, Lincoln wrote and signed a pledge that, if he should lose the election, he would nonetheless defeat the Confederacy by an all-out military effort before turning over the White House:[148] This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected.

[149]Lincoln's re-election prospects grew brighter after the Union Navy seized Mobile Bay in late August and General Sherman captured Atlanta a few weeks later.

[158] Blair had advocated to Lincoln that the war could be brought to a close by having the two opposing sections of the nation stand down in their conflict, and reunite on grounds of the Monroe Doctrine in attacking the French-installed Emperor Maximilian in Mexico.

Louisiana, which had a larger slave population than other Confederate states occupied early in the war, became the center of discussion regarding Reconstruction under Lincoln and military governor Benjamin Butler.

[180] Radical Republicans countered with the Wade–Davis Bill, a Reconstruction plan that included protections for the rights of freed African Americans and required fifty percent of voters to swear the "Ironclad Oath" indicating that they had never and never would support a rebellion against the United States.

[183] Established as a temporary institution, the Freedmen's Bureau was designed to provide food and other supplies to free blacks in the South, and was also authorized to grant confiscated land to former slaves.

"[189] In the decades prior to the Civil War, Southern congressmen had blocked the passage of various economic proposals, including federal funding for internal improvements, support for higher education, and increased tariff rates designed to protect domestic manufacturing against foreign competition.

[192] Lincoln and Secretary of the Treasury Chase contributed to the drafting and passage of some legislation, but congressional leaders played the dominant role in formulating domestic policy outside of military affairs.

The European aristocracy (the dominant class in every major country) was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed."

Confederate spokesmen, on the other hand, were much more successful by ignoring slavery and instead focusing on their struggle for liberty, their commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy.

The controversy would ultimately be resolved after the Civil War in the form of the Alabama Claims, in which the United States finally was given $15.5 million in arbitration by an international tribunal for damages caused by British-built warships.

In October 1862, fearing that a re-unified United States would threaten his restored French empire, Napoleon III proposed an armistice and joint mediation of the American Civil War by France, Britain, and Russia.

With the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the U.S. increased pressure on France to withdraw from Mexico, and the French presence in the Western hemisphere would be a major foreign policy issue for Lincoln's successor.

[254] Booth had also plotted with fellow conspirators, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt to also kill Secretary of State Seward and Vice President Johnson.

[263] In recent years, historians such as Harry Jaffa, Herman Belz, John Diggins, Vernon Burton, and Eric Foner have stressed Lincoln's redefinition of republican values.