Paper 1 Essay After four years of bloodshed and many deaths, it was finally worth it. On December 6th, 1865, slavery had ended. The 13th amendment, which was ratified by Congress, had abolished slavery in the U.S. Many steps were taken in order to achieve this goal, such as the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln worked hard to ban slavery and managed to do it. Abraham Lincoln deserves all the amount of credit for abolishing slavery. In 1861, the Civil War had started to abolish slavery. Lincoln saw that the North and the South were fighting and did not want that. He wanted to save the Union, but if he abolished slavery in one step, it would be much more