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giving freedom to slaves or ensuring the rights of black Americans. Lincoln had political reasons for taking this approach. In 1861 most white northerners would not support a war to free black people, but they would fight to preserve their country. Lincoln also hoped this approach would keep slave-holding states like Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri from joining the Confederacy. These border states never voted to secede from the United States, and the slave system continued to be legal there. Not everyone agreed with Lincoln’s approach, however. Once the war broke out, abolitionists in the North argued that the federal government’s goals should include freeing the slaves and punishing rebellious slaveholders. Members of the Republican Party who supported the abolitionist position were known as Radical Republicans. They included Congressmen like Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, and Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. The Radical Republicans pointed to the numerous compromises and agreements over slavery that the northern and southern states had made during the preceding decades. They argued that for a permanent peace between North and South to be possible, slavery in the United States had to end.

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A Broken Nation