Compare the backgrounds, political experiences, and leadership styles of President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Final Essay Prompt
The Civil War was a struggle between two massive entities — the Confederacy and the Union. However, each side had key individuals who massively impacted the course of both the war, and the subsequent development of the United States. For this assignment, write an essay based on one of the prompts below.

President Lincoln was assassinated before his plans for reconstruction were realized. Considering his goals for reconstruction, do you think he would have considered the Reconstruction Period a success or a failure? Speculate on how Lincoln might have planned and carried out the reconstruction differently from how it actually happened.
It is believed that Abraham Lincoln referred to Harriet Beecher Stowe as ‘the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.’ Consider Lincoln’s assessment of Harriet Beecher Stowe and analyze the effect of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the events that led to the war. Defend or criticize Lincoln’s statement and support your position.
Compare the backgrounds, political experiences, and leadership styles of President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Evaluate their styles for strengths and weaknesses, and explain how those styles contributed to each man’s successes and failures during their respective presidencies.
Formatting & Sources
Please write your paper in the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) format. As part of your research, you may refer to the course material for supporting evidence, but you must also use at least five credible, outside sources and cite them using CMS format as well. Please include a mix of both primary and secondary sources, with at least one source from a scholarly peer-reviewed journal. If you use any Study.com lessons as sources, please also cite them in CMS (including the lesson title and instructor’s name).

Primary sources are first-hand accounts such as interviews, advertisements, speeches, company documents, statements, and press releases published by the company in question.
Secondary sources come from peer-reviewed scholarly journals, such as the Journal of Management. You may use like JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Social Science Research Network to find articles from these journals. Secondary sources may also come from reputable websites with .gov, .edu, or .org in the domain. (Wikipedia is not a reputable source, though the sources listed in Wikipedia articles may be acceptable.)