Chapter 4 plunges the reader directly into the election of Lincoln in late 1860 and the fallout cause by a Republican president gaining power. Although Oakes tries to show that Lincoln’s original intent was to do all that he could to preserve the Union, “[h]e repeated once again that he had neither the intention nor the inclination to interfere with slavery in the South” (139) during his inaugural address. Oakes also shows how Lincoln was not one to be afraid of the potential conflict to come. Still, as masterful as ever he managed to position himself such that, should conflict come to pass, it would be clear to all that it was brought upon by an intransigent South:

In your [Southern] hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it’ (141).

Oakes goes on to argue that Lincoln saw slavery as something on its deathbed, but that the secession of the Southern states would be something that would hasten its demise.