First Inaugural Address: In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln’s main goal was to get the southern slave states to calm down. At the time, the southern states were very worried that Abraham Lincoln would try to abolish slavery. Abraham Lincoln also wanted to make sure that the southern states would not secede. In his inaugural address he tried to put the southern states at ease. In the first part of his speech he talked directly to the south and said he only wanted to talk about slavery. He reassured them that he wouldn’t take their slaves or even try to remove the fugitive slave law. He also said he was not interested in making slavery illegal even though he was a republican. To make the southern states not want to secede he said the constitution was like a contract because any states who signed it could not leave unless all states choose to dissolve the contract. Lincoln says that the northern states will not let them break the contract by seceding. He closed by saying that he did not want the southern states to secede and that he will treat the secession as an act of rebellion and not a true action of politics.
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http://study.com/academy/lesson/lincolns-first-inaugural-address-summary-analysis.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_first_inaugural_address