A Comparison Of Abraham Lincoln And Jefferson Davis

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Alexander Hellenberg
Hughes
Civil War
21st March, 2014
Parallel Leaders Facing A Single War for Freedom
Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, born in central Kentucky within a year and within a radius of eighty-five miles of each other, followed different paths to eminence. Different as their background, training, and experience were, they both eventually turned to politics and wrestled with the issues of their time. The United States in which Lincoln and Davis grew up in was very raw, energetic, and an exploding world that brought in the Market and Industrial Revolution which incidentally created a land of many opportunities. These opportunities were given to the people who fought against the established order to protect their rights, and it was up to Lincoln and Davis to protect those rights no matter how many battles would be fought and no matter how much blood would be shed. The United States, confined within modest boundaries unchanged for a generation, would face the most intense war during a span of five years. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis would face incomprehensible tactics led by their strongest army leaders, economic failure that was challenged by the subject of slavery and religion, and their own debatable differences that would change the history of America forever.
When President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) took office, he did not garner much respect from the American citizens as a military leader. Lincoln exercised actions that took his West Point generals into more aggressive territory. Even though he didn’t have the military education or experience as his counterpart Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), he continued his abilities as a fearless leader by becoming a student of...

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...both Lincoln and Davis were reared in a Democratic atmosphere; Lincoln emerged as a Whig, Davis remained a Democrat. Both their interests in public affairs were continuously growing, before and up until the end of the Civil War.
As leaders of their respective people during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis faced similar problems and coped with similar issues. The solutions to their problems and the policies devised and followed by the two men were added up by the actions of their generals and the crippling economies fighting for what was considered right in America. In general, the ideas of Lincoln and of Davis stemmed from the same Anglo-American source; and frequently the ideas of both men echoed those expressed by their common American forebears and contemporaries. Those contemporaries being the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.

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