There was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it a felony for any federal official to fail to arrest a runaway slave. This put Northern abolitionists against their own will. The were forced to put runaways back into the harsh environment of slavery. There was also the writing and publishing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This book, which was a nearly immediate bestseller, had a huge impact on how Northerners viewed slavery. It opened their eyes to the harshness and inhumanity of slavery in the South. There was also the Dred Scott Case where the verdict declared that Dred Scott, who was held a slave in a free state, did not have the right to be a free man. One of the last events that transpired before the secession of the Confederacy, was the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. South Carolina was the first state to secede, which was then followed by six other states. These events eventually led to the Civil War, which was one of the most difficult problems our country ever …show more content…
This is one of the more difficult tasks that any leader in any position has ever been in. Just because the war was over did not mean that those in the south were going to all of a sudden give up their way of life and reform to the new rules of the once again United States. It was going to take hard work; a two steps forward, one step back type of approach. This is exactly what President Lincoln was trying to accomplish in this speech. He was trying to take the hard but necessary steps forward to bring the country together. He did not want a temporary fix that would cause problems again in the near future. In giving the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln was doing all that he needed in order to bring the United States to the modern day power that we are today. The Civil War was one of the worst but most influential events that our country has gone through. While this was a terrible thing that our country went through, the way that it transpired, and the way that the leaders of the time dealt with it, transformed our country into the one we live into today. Abraham Lincoln, during this time gave many speeches like the Gettysburg Address, in an attempt to unify our country. The Gettysburg Address embodied the passion of its author, one our greatest presidents who