The Meaning of the Gettysburg Address

[Bill Richter]

I do not think that Lincoln was trying to please anyone but antislavery people in general and standing by his principles of no slavery in the territories. But what he and other failed to reckon with was that when Southerners said non-exclusion of slavery would not be allowed under art IV sect 2 of the Constitution they meant it. Slavery had an extraterritorial right everywhere in the US and Taney stated that in Dred Scott. The real problem was on its way--Lemmon v. People of New York, where a ruling on slavery as legal in the free states was in the offing. As Lincoln said, the US could not exist as half free and half slave; sooner or later, it would be all one or the other. Lemmon addressed that problem. So did the Civil War in the final analysis with the 13th Amendment in 1865.