All Presidents have faced the challenge of keeping people today united in times of conflict and turmoil this specifically applied to Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. They have been faced with solving delicate scenarios involving segregation and the civil rights of American citizens in two different centuries. Although there has been the enduring impression that each presidents held high ideals with regard to the African American population, a closer examination of history could lead a single to believe that Lincoln was the false freer of the enslaved and Kennedy was the false figurehead for the Civil Rights movement.
Abraham Lincoln entered his initial term as president following the leaders Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Pierce was identified as “an outspoken critic of federal involvement in state and locale issues” (http://www.npr.org). His veto of a bill which would have supplied solutions and assistance for the mentally handicapped “established the rationale behind government uninvolvement in public health problems into the twentieth century” (http://www.npr.org). This climate of governmental uninvolvement persisted into the term of James Buchanan, a time nicely-identified for the Dred Scott decision, which stated that “congress had no constitutional power to deprive persons of their house rights in slaves in the territories” (http://www.whitehouse.gov). Later, Buchanan “reverted to a policy of inactivity that continued until he left office” (http://www.whitehouse.gov). Therefore, upon entering workplace, Lincoln found the stage set for an uphill climb with a sharply divided country and a government unused to active leadership by a president whose most important agenda was to unite the nation, even if this meant an involvement in previously “untouchable” states rights. The situation of slavery was at the center of the controversies, and decisions in the preceding two administrations only compounded the difficulties encountered in any actions that Lincoln may well make.
The issue of segregation continued even up to one hundred years later when Kennedy became president following Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nevertheless, as opposed to Pierce and Buchanan, the decisions and actions of each of these presidents must have created any stand that Kennedy would take for the civil rights movement less difficult. Immediately after Globe War Two had ended, Truman proposed twenty-a single major policy points for the betterment of America in an try to calm the unrest among the American workers, as this was a time of numerous labor strikes and issues involving citizens who have been unsatisfied with the economy. These twenty-one points integrated innovations such as minimum wage,…