About This Quote
The will of the people is a phrase often associated with the American Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln was elected president, he discovered that many in the South were unhappy about the fact that the United States had become a nation. Many Southerners believed that they should be able to continue to be independent and not part of the Union. To Lincoln, that was unacceptable. He believed that when it came to deciding what was best for all Americans, there was no choice but to vote in favor of the people’s will and accept what he called “the Union.”