Lincoln and 13th Amendment

President Lincoln had to overcome many different obstacles in order to get the 13th Amendment passed.  His first issue was getting the votes needed in order to get the bill to pass.  Even if everyone on the Republican side voted for the bill, they would still be twenty votes short.  He hired a group of men to bribe lame-duck Democrats into voting for the bill by offering them jobs.  This succeeds in getting ten to eleven votes from Democrats, until an important Democrat was forced to vote for the amendment because the governor that voted in was a Republican.  Finally, another issue Lincoln had to deal with was resistance from his cabinet to get the bill passed.  This was mainly came from racism.  They did not want the colored people to vote, own property, hold office, take jobs, or intermarry.

The president needed to pass the 13th Amendment and he used the Constitution as implied papers in order to pass the amendment.  In order to get the bill passed he had to do some unethical things.  He had to bribe lame-duck Democrats.  He had to lie about peace talks in order to make it look as if the amendment was the only way to get peace.  Finally, he had to twist what the Constitution stated in order to pass the Emancipation Proclamation.

President Lincoln wanted the 13th Amendment to pass for several different reasons.  The first was that if the amendment passed he would have colored people’s votes for reelection.  The second reason was that he wanted to keep his promise to the colored people that he would free them and keep them free from slavery.  Finally, the third reason is because he believed that all people should be free no matter their color or race.