Just as the Founding Fathers acquiesced to the South and excluded Black people from the “all men are created equal” when initiating the American experiment, most political leaders wanted to figure out a way to avoid a North vs. South showdown, even if it meant denying Black people’s freedom. This centrist sentiment resulted in the election of President Abraham Lincoln, who admitted that his “paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.”4
