Abraham Lincoln Case

Martin Luther King was a Civil Rights Activist, during the late 1950s and 1960s, who "fought" for the rights of Black Americans. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States of America who led the Union in the American Civil War against the Confederate States of America. In 1863, Lincoln read the Gettysburg Address, declaring that the war was over for the fallen, but that the US must continue forward on the mission these boys set out to do, Reunite the Union. 100 years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech in front of 2 to 3 hundred thousand people during the March on Washington. During his speech, titled "I Have A Dream", he stated to America his hopes for America and his hopes for a fairer, racially tolerant nation. Although both were clear and direct about their intentions, I believe Abraham Lincoln had a more direct speech than Martin Luther King, Jr.

First let's start with a little background history. In 1619, the first African slaves were brought over to the British colonies. Over time the Columbian Exchange allowed for a systemized way of transporting Blacks, and many other goods, to the "New World". By the 1700s slaves had become an important part of the American economy, especially in the southern colonies. Two important changes occurred in the 1700s, though. The first change occurred in Great Britain. Beginning in the mid-1700s the British began a 200-year period in Europe called the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was, and still is in other, less developed parts of the world, a period in European history where industry, economics, and trade were revolutionized with the creation of mechanized devices, or machines. These new machines were able to do the work of 5, let's say weavers, in half the time. With the creation of machines slavery slowly became an obsolete and economically unviable option in Britain, but in the Americas slavery was still going strong until the Industrial Revolution occurred in the 1830s and 1840s.

Now before talking about slavery, we must understand the reason why slavery was becoming outdated. There are basically two reasons why slavery became obsolete by 1861, the beginning of the American Civil War. The first reason is the afore mentioned Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution began in the United States in the 1830s. Over the next 60 years inventors, scientists, etc. began developing and inventing newer and quicker machines that could do the work of 100 slaves. One of the first inventions of the American IR was the modern cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793. The cotton gin was a machine that allowed slaves and cotton workers, basically slaves, to produce exponentially larger amounts of cotton. In fact the number of cotton bales produced in 1830 was 750,000 bales, but in 1850 2.85 million bales had been produced, but with the invention of the modern cotton gin also came other inventions which slowly forced slavery into obsolescence.

Now the second important change was the American Revolution. During the American Revolution the 13 Colonies declared independence from the British. With the conclusion of the war in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, the newly-formed United States began to form a government, but fighting within the new government over what the strength of the Central government threatened the fragile, new nation. Over a period of the next 70 or so years, debates over how powerful the central government could be and what powers the states had created divisions in the United States. By 1860 the United States had been bloodied by fights between abolitionists and pro-slavery forces in the territories of Nebraska and Kansas. The fight over slavery was an extension, albeit extremely important extension, of the States' Rights argument. The States' Rights argument originated with the Supreme Court Case McCulloch v. Maryland and was about how much power the federal government had over the states and how much power the States had over the federal government. The breaking point came with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The Southerners feared that Lincoln would limit the power of the states and more importantly, to the average Southerner at least, end slavery because of Lincoln's championing of stopping the spread of slavery into the Western Territories. With the election of Lincoln 11 states, led by South Carolina, seceded between December 1860 and June 1861.

By 1863 the tide of the American Civil War had been turning in favor of the Union with the victories at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Vicksburg, Mississippi. Four months after the end of the Battle of Gettysburg, on November 19, 1863 Abraham Lincoln read the Gettysburg Address. The contents of the declaration basically said that the brave lads who had fought and died at Gettysburg were done with the war, but that the Union could not officially honor the sacrifices those soldiers had made until the Union had been reunited under the American, not Confederate, flag. He then declared that no matter