SLAVERY
The first negroes were brought to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. American Indians were unfit for hard labor, while white men asked high wages. Africans were the best human resources to exploit. The climate of the North was too cold for agriculture, so the Northern colonies had not so many negroes as in the South, where slavery was greatly increased by the invention of the cotton gins.
In the large farms of the South negroes were made to work without rest as slaves. Slavery was a bane of America; it might prove fatal to her unless got rid of by some drastic measures. In 1842, when Lincoln was thirty-tree, he married Mary Todd. She was a twenty- four years old girl, proud, sesitive, but of excellent education.
Having attained leadership in state politics, Lincoln aspired to go to Congress now; in 1846, he was elected and worked strenuously as a congressman. However, his efforts were not rewarded so well as he expected. Disappointed, he returned to Springfield to resume his law practice
In 1852, the Whig party was dissolved and the Republican party was formed. Lincoln was a member. The status of slavery had been settled by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the compromise of 1850, but in 1854 Stephen Douglas, an influential member of the Democratic party, brought about the repeal of an important section of the Missouri Compromise.
This section prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of the line of latitude 36*30'. Douglas made a provision that the people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska could admit or exclude slavery as they chose.
Lincoln began to work for the anti-slavery cause again. When Senator Douglas ran for re-election in 1858, Lincoln was recognized in Illinois as the strongest man to oppose him. A Republican candidate for the United States senator, Lincoln held a series of seven joint debates throughout Illinois with Douglas, in which Lincoln took a strong stand against slavery.