Abraham Lincoln's Anti-Slavery Views

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The first chapter opens with one of the most quoted words from Lincoln, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel.” (Foner, 2010, p. 3) Lincoln anti-slavery views were initially from the influence of his parents, although his father’s uncle owned 43 slaves. In his early childhood, there were more than 1,000 slaves in Hardin County, Kentucky, in 1811, where he was born two years earlier. When Lincoln was seven years old, the family moved to Indiana “partly on account of slavery”. (Foner, 2010, p. 5) The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory, which is today much of the Midwest. In the same year that Lincoln’s family moved

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