Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Just looking over the document and wondering if any of you have new ideas on what the Emancipation actually did besides tell the world the war is now about slavery.
From what I can see it did not free a **** person. Sort of like us declaring all Iraq's people free from Hussien from this point forward. Plus it did not include border states or counties in Union controll. Just looking for some other ideas you may have.
A PROCLAMATION
Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation
was issued by the President of the United States, containing,
among other things, the following, to wit:
"That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as
slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people
whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall
be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive
government of the United States, including the military and naval
authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such
persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any
of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
"That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid,
by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any,
in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in
rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State
or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith
represented in the Congress of the United States by members
chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified
voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the
absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive
evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then
in rebellion against the United States."
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United
States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief
of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed
rebellion against the authority and government of the United States,
and as a fit and necessary war measure for supressing said
rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in
accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the
full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned,
order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the
people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against
the United States the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard,
Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension,
Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans,
including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the
forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the
counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton, Elizabeth City, York,
Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and
Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left
precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do
order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said
designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall
be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States,
including the military and naval authorities thereof, will
recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to
abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and
I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor
faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known that such persons of
suitable condition will be received into the armed service of
the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and
other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke
the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor
of Almighty God.
-------------------------------------
On Jan. 1, 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared free
all slaves residing in territory in rebellion against the federal
government. This Emancipation Proclamation actually freed few
people. It did not apply to slaves in border states fighting on
the Union side; nor did it affect slaves in southern areas already
under Union control. Naturally, the states in rebellion did not
act on Lincoln's order. But the proclamation did show Americans--
and the world--that the civil war was now being fought to end slavery.
Lincoln had been reluctant to come to this position, he initially viewed the war only in terms of
preserving the Union. As pressure for abolition mounted in
Congress and the country, however, Lincoln became more sympathetic
to the idea. On Sept. 22, 1862, he issued a preliminary proclamation
announcing that emancipation would become effective on Jan. 1, 1863,
in those states still in rebellion. Although the Emancipation
Proclamation did not end slavery in America--this was achieved
by the passage of the 13TH Amendment to the Constitution on Dec.
18, 1865--it did make that accomplishment a basic war goal and
a virtual certainty.
The Emancipation Proclamation freed every slave in the eleven states that rebelled and as the union army moved into CSA held territory the black Americans who lived there (thank God) were forever free. It also made slavery in the four remaining border states an aberration that would not and could not survive an ultimate Union victory resulting in the 13th Amendment.
It was a brilliant stroke on Lincoln's part. By employing a war measure device, he effectively did an end run around the Constitutional questions, took Europe out of the equation and raised the ante beyond the South's ability to stay in the high stakes game.
I agree with what you said however, maybe I should have stated it "What did it due when he declared it?" The war was still in doubt, Southern slaves were not freed. You can't free a people you have no control over and Mr. Lincoln did not free the ones he did have control over.
So besides showing Europe were the Union currently stood what else did it accomplish at that time, besides a glimmer of hope for Southern slaves.
It certainly ticked off Jeff Davis and CSA government as well as the southern press. The outrage was loud and clear. It also opened the way to 150,000 armed black soldiers fighting against their former enslavers, a not insignificant number. The EP set the stage, it warned the south and prepared the north. It was a PR move seldom unequaled in history. By war's end, it had changed the face of the nation.
Lincoln did not write the EP on the spur of the moment or on a whim. He agonized over the wording as well as how to present it to the country. He picked the brains of his cabinet and agreed to hold it back pending a decisive northern win in the east. Lincoln knew that it was a bombshell and could not be certain how it would be received. He understood his Constitutional limitations and was also mindful of the border states, which were skittish about the slavery question but were essential to keep in the Union camp.
He wrote the first draft in the telegraph office where he spent much of his time. Major Thomas Eckert observed him during that time.
"As you know, the President came to the office every day and invariably sat at my desk while there. Upon his arrival early one morning in June 1862, shortly after McClellan's Seven Days' fight, he asked me for some paper, as he wanted to write something special. I procured some foolscap and handed it to him. He then sat down and began to write. . . He would look out the window a while and then put his pen to appear, but he did not write much at once. He would study between times and when he had made up his mind he would put down a line or two, and then sit quiet for a few minutes. After a time he would resume his writing, only to stop again at intervals to make some remark to me or to one of the cipher operators as a fresh despatch from the front was handed to him. . .
On the first day Lincoln did not cover one sheet of his special writing paper (nor indeed on any subsequent day). When ready to leave, he asked me to take charge of what he had written and not allow anyone to see it. . .
When he came to the office on the following day he asked for the papers, and I unlocked my desk and handed them to him and he again sat down to write. This he did nearly every day for several weeks, always handing me what he had written when ready to leave the office each day. Sometimes he would not write more than a line or two, and once I observed that he had put question marks on the margin of what he had written. He would read over each day all the matter he had previously written and revise it, studying carefully each sentence.
On one occasion he took the papers away with him, but he brought them back a day or two later. I became much interested in the matter and was impressed with the idea that he was engaged upon something of great importance, but did not know what it was until he had finished the document and then for the first time he told me that he had been writing an order giving freedom to the slaves in the South, for the purpose of hastening the end of the war. He said he had been able to work at my desk more quietly and command his thoughts better than at the White House, where he was frequently interrupted. . .
The effect upon the public mind of the Emancipation Proclamation was, of course, not the same in all sections. By the radicals it was welcomed as one of the most important acts of the President since the war began, while the conservative element feared it would prove ineffective in the North and would lead to reprisal on the part of the enemy. . . In the border states the lines were sharply drawn between the military and the loyalists on the one hand, and the Southern sympathizers and former slave owners on the other."
**<u>Lincoln in the Telegraph Office: Recollections of the United States Military Telegraph Corps during the Civil War</u> by David Homer Bates org. pub. 1907
Sean, I think you miss the idea of great historical statements. Consider this question: What did the Declaration of Independence actually do on July 4th 1776? The Continental Congress and the Continental Army controlled very little territory and the outcome of the war was very much in doubt, so what did it actually do?
Lincoln was the quintessential politician. He combined a wily pragmatism with a savvy ability to communicate new ideas to his constituency without destroying its support.
He understood as few did both the importance of the EP and the revolutionary social upheaval it would generate. James McPherson answers the question Who Freed the Slaves? in his book <u>Drawn with the Sword</u>
"By July 1862, Lincoln turned a decisive corner toward abolition. He made up his mind to issue an emancipation proclamation. Whereas a year earlier, even three months earlier, Lincoln had believed that avoidance of such a drastic step was necessary to maintain that knife-edge balance in the Union coalition, things had now changed. The escalation of the war in scope and fury had mobilized all resources on both sides, including the slave labor force of the Confederacy. . . The risks of alienating the border states and Northern Democrats, Lincoln now believed, were outweighed by the opportunity to energize the Republican majority and mobilize part of the slave population for the cause of Union -- and freedom." [Who Freed the Slaves?]
McPherson goes on to outline how the EP affected the progress of war and concludes: Regrettably, Lincoln did not live to see the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. But if he had never lived, it seems safe to say that we would not have had a Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. In that sense, the traditional answer to the question, Who Freed the Slaves is the right answer. Lincoln did not accomplish this in the manner sometimes symbolically portrayed, breaking the chains of helpless and passive bondsmen with the stroke of a pen by signing the Emancipation Proclamation. But by pronouncing slavery a moral evil that must come to an end and then winning the presidency in 1860, provoking the South to secede, by refusing to compromise on the issue of slavery's expansion or on Fort Sumter, by careful leadership and timing that kept a fragile Union coalition together in the first year of war and committed it to emancipation in the second, by refusing to compromise this policy once he had adopted it, and by prosecuting the war to unconditional victory as commander in chief of an army of liberation, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.
I do not miss the "Idea" of great historical statements! However, Lincoln is a complicated man and though he hated slavery, I do not believe he would have went to war to free them if the South had not left the Union.
I can find no proof Lincoln was that much of a die hard. I due believe he wanted gradual emancipation (We can find historical proof of this)
The link below is what I found today and this is the type of information I have been looking for.
Sean: Shotgun's site is one of the best on the web and a great place to surf. Randall's book <u>The Civil War and Reconstruction</u> has long been considered a standard. It has undergone revised editions each done by Dr. David Herbert Donald who is the premiere expert today on Lincoln. There are 122 copies available at ABE books ranging in price from $5 to $25.
If the question is: Would Lincoln have gone to war to free the slaves?, then the answer is an unequivocal No, to my mind. Although he abhorred slavery, he was not an abolitionist and fully admitted it.
After Lincoln wrote the EP, but before it was released to the public, Horace Greeley criticized Lincoln in his New York Tribune for not taking action against slavery. On August 22, 1862, Lincoln responded:
. . As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. . . If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. <u>My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.</u> What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
Even though it is true that Lincoln would never have waged a war to abolish slavery that does not change the fact that he freed the slaves in the end and assured passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. It is one of those ironies of the CW that the man the South feared would lead the way to abolition was unlikely to do so, but once the South seceded and war came, he was the man most likely to find a way to free the slaves.
I will look that book and sight up. Minus Washington D.C., I have taken my family to most of the significant sights in Lincoln's career. Luckily I live within striking distance of Kentucky and Illinois. The more I read about him the more complicated I find him to be.
What I am really trying to due is separate the legend from the man. Luckily, I have found a wealth of information from his earlier days as a lawyer and more importantly his childhood. I find his relation with his father and step mother most interesting. Anyway, thanks for the information.
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