Jeffersonian democracy persisted as an element of the Democratic Party into the early 20th century, as exemplified by William Jennings Bryan (1860â1925), and its themes continue to echo in the 21st century.
Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln became the United States' 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
Lincoln's plans for Reconstruction defined the moderate Republican platform (though technically he joined the National Union Party for that election cycle). But Lincoln had chosen Andrew Johnson as his vice president-a Democrat from Tennessee who had remained in the senate even after his state seceded from the Union.he has a BSEd in English Education. When President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the task of Reconstruction fell to President Andrew Johnson. He was soon at odds with many different factions in the nation.