VOCABULARY
Read these words from
the passage. Check the
words you know.
abolitionists
labor
plantations
preserve
secede
slavery
Functional
Vocabulary
☐ opposed
against
Slavery, Lincoln, and Emancipation
As people continued to move west across the United States in the first part of the 19th
century, the country grew, new states entered the Union, and the topic of slavery divided
the country.
The question was whether new states would allow slavery. Northerners didn't want slavery
to spread west. Abolitionists thought slavery was wrong and wanted to end it completely.
But for many years, the Southern economy had depended on growing cotton and tobacco
on large plantations that required slave labor. Southerners wanted the new states to become
slave states.
Although he was not an abolitionist, Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery. Southerners said
they would secede from the Union if he were elected president. In the months following
Lincoln's election in 1860, 11 Southern states seceded. They formed the Confederate States
America (the CSA), with Jefferson Davis as their president.
When the American Civil War began in 1861, President Lincoln wanted to preserve the
Union, not necessarily to end slavery. In 1862, he wrote, "If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all
the slaves, I would do it
and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." How
in 1863, he signed the Emancipation [freedom from slavery]
Proclamation and freed the
slaves in Confederate states. The proclamation didn't end slavery, but it made freeing
sla
important goal of the war.
1. Vocabulary Focus
Write each word from the vocabulary list beside its definition.
slavery
abolitionists
OPPOSed
1. the condition of being owned by and forced to
someone
2. people who wanted to end or stop slavery con
3. workers
Plantations 4. large areas of land where crops like sugar, c
Preserve
coffee are grown
5. to leave or break away
6. disagreed with something strongly
7. to keep something from harm or loss
UNIT 2