ABSTRACT
One of the most significant changes wrought by the Civil War was the abolition of slavery. Yet the Civil War was not fought specifically or solely to abolish the institution. The official rhetoric at the onset of war in 1861 was that the North was fighting to restore the Union—as a slaveholding union. In his inaugural address and then again in a July Fourth message to Congress, President Lincoln pledged that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists” (170). At the end of July, Congress overwhelmingly approved the Crittenden-Johnson resolution affirming that the war was not being fought with the intention or purpose of “overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions” of the states but rather to “defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union” (Congressional Globe 1861, 222–23).
