Emancipation Proclamation

The first answer to my edit is based on sound reasoning. This edit will supplement what has already been written.

The Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln was a strategic move to serve the his main purpose for fighting the Civil War. Lincoln always believed that the Federal Government had no right, under the US Constitution to outlaw slavery. He tried to assure the South before he took office that he had no intention to abolish slavery where it already existed. As history has shown us, this made no impact on the leaders of the South. They were concerned about Lincoln's motives and they were concerned that the Southern "slave" States would eventually be a huge minority of States that had legal slaves.

To fully gauge the impact, the later results, and reasons for the Emancipation Proclamation the following information is important:

A. In 1865 Lincoln ratified the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution which outlawed slavery;

B. Many freed slaves and the peoples of Afro-American society would continue to experience limited freedoms & prejudice. Many of these issues took almost 100 years to be resolved;

C. Based on Lincoln's earlier stated ideas regarding slavery, the emancipation of slaves was not the first reason that Lincoln engaged the Union in the Civil War. In fact, he even saw it as a potential threat to the goal of keeping the Union unified. (note. as an aside, the concept of manifest destiny, already in the minds of many leaders, would be thwarted by the secession. )

D. In truth, Lincoln was a pragmatist and a man of moderation. No one, who could see that over 600,000 men would be killed, that the War would take over 4 years to settle, added to the massive destruction, and bitter ed divisiveness over decades, could have wanted such a war. Somehow, someway, the slavery issue would have had to be solved without the costs of this Civil War.

E. To the horror of the Abolitionists, it would become clear that abolishing slavery was not why the Union could field large armies of young men whose call to duty was to save the Union. Most Northerners were against slavery. There is no doubt about that, however they were not going to war, a war that would destroy so many families, to end slavery.

F. Lincoln believed that turning the war into an abolitionist crusade, might result in North en Democrats & border State Unionists to withdraw their support.

G. And, once again, Lincoln did not believe he had any authority to free anyone's "slaves". He even hoped that if the South thought that a compromise of sorts could be worked out, the South would return to the Union. Lincoln ignored critics would found it absurd that the South would give in if the North had the possibility of making the reunified Union, slave free. The critics would have to ignore the fact that prior to and during the upcoming war, the Federal Capital itself had legal slavery.

H. During the early stages of the War, Union generals wielded their military powers to undermine slavery. Lincoln reversed their actions of freeing slaves in some Territories, and even removed these generals.

I. The War began in April 1861, and the fighting continued with both sides losing men. With the power and huge military advantages of the Union, this was not expected in most quarters of the North. Lincoln saw the problems a longer than expected war would bring.

J. In defiance of his own ideas, the pragmatic side of Lincoln knew he needed another reason to continue the war. He hoped that adding a popular, moral attachment to the war might prove to be a favorable tactic. His hope was that an emancipation would encourage a deeper commitment to victory and he had nothing to lose except his own integrity. He could place that aside if emancipation could help end the War ( it didn't in real terms and the idea that the despotic and quasi democratic Europeans would side with the United States & not recognize the Confederacy was a "hope". (More on this later. )

K. Lincoln also hoped that emancipation would generate international support and deny the Confederacy of possible European allies. It was reasoned that no external power would want to be allied with a nation fighting for Slavery. Freeing the slaves would hurt the Southern economy and thus weaken its military strength. Also, Lincoln saw a new source of manpower, the freed slaves, joining the military.

L. The War dragged on and as the Summer of 1862 was upon the nation, Lincoln decided to issue the emancipation as an act of justice and a military edict to help end the War. As now the pragmatic politician, the timing of such an announcement was of most importance At all costs the emancipation could not appear as a desperate measure. It might have, as the Union had suffered a number of defeats against a "put together at the last moment army of the South".

He announced it to his cabinet in July, 1862. Luckily when the horrible battle of Antietam was over in September & the South withdrew from Maryland, this was the chance as Lee's retreat, if you will, could be seen as a Northern victory. In military terms it was a tactical draw. When an attacking army loses less men than the defenders, it's the reverse of a natural battle.

If it was a Union victory, & McClellan was praised for pressing the attack on Lee's army, which McClellan did, it did not save his job. George B. McClellan lost his job as leader of the Army of the Potomac on November 3, 1862.

M. Antietam is said by some historians as the end of the Confederacy's bid for recognition from Europe. In my view, European governments had no intention of recognizing the Confederacy. They had little to gain. Many astute European statesman and military men saw the potential of the United States. Many saw it as a rival "power to be". However, it was not lost on them that a successful

new group of "Americans" could result in "two new powers to be".

The Europeans had outlawed slavery long before the US Civil War. That's true enough, but they did not outlaw enslaving entire populations in their colonial empires. France "engineered" the construction of The Suez Canal as example with the use of "forced labor" in 1869. At any given point in time, 30,000 laborers by force were involved in the construction. Thousands of them died.

Most political scientists mark 1928 as the year Great Britain attained the same civil rights status as the United States.

N. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. He took great care to make it clear that it was an executive order allowed to him as the Commander in Chief under the Constitution. Because of that, the proclamation allowed for the liberation of slaves only in areas that were in rebellion and thus under martial law. Bottom line was that slaves were liberated in areas where the Federal Government had no power.

Lee's retreat out of Maryland ( a Union slave State ) prompted Lincoln to call for the surrender of the Confederacy and for its States to rejoin the Union by December 31, 1862. If that didn't happen then their slaves would be declared free men. Based on the example of Maryland, it needs to be again said that Lincoln, personally against slavery, was not as President implacable opposed to slavery; his avowed purpose was always to preserve the Union no matter it took to do so. So whether by preserving slavery, destroying it, or by keeping it in some States and not in others, the Union had to be preserved.

O. Lincoln's Final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 specifically listed those areas where slaves were to be free. Slave owners who were loyal to the Union were exempt and allowed to keep their slaves. Based on the 1860 census, this meant that over 800,000 slaves or 21% of slaveswere to remain in bondage. The "keep Europe out " plan was ridiculous in that the Union could have slaves but the areas not within Union control were not.

P. The Proclamation was almost as controversial as the suspension of US Civil Rights. It caused political disputes in the North and among the rank and file of the US Army. It was early on that Lincoln in the interest of national security had suspended civil liberties in the Union. The suspension of habeas corpus resulted in the summary arrests which imprisoned thousands of Federal citizens.

Some were forced to take loyalty oaths and simple economic rights were also suspended. Some of the Federal "activities" were issues not settled until after the War.

In tact below is the initial answer which has enough good information worth keeping.

He wanted to take control of the rebellion and after the battle of Antietam, where the north won, he thought it was a good move to get re-elected. Also, by making that proclamation he made the war about slavery first and foremost. This ensured that Britain and France would not enter the war and aid the South....the people of Britain and France could not support a cause that supported slavery.
To turn it into a war on slavery.

He was hoping this would raise Northern morale (which it didn't) and keep the British from helping the Confederates (which it did). <--- Little unjustifed, because of the rebelling slaves in the States that Lincoln had put in both the preliminary document of the Proclamation followed by the actual one.

Lincoln wanted to STOP the Civil War, therefore stop the Northern States and Southern states fighting. He didn't want a war against slavery, he wanted it abolished. When Lincoln signed the paper, he stated, "If my name ever goes into history, it will be because of this act." His act meant that the rebellion would stop and war would end.

But this Proclamation resulted in his assassination. Therefore, John Wilkes Booth shooting him at that play he attended.

I see for that the Emancipation Proclamation, was a good delcaration. If you think about it, Abraham Lincoln's legacy is because he did something, that no one at that time would believe possible.

He is one of the greatest Presidents of the United States of America. Not all he did was bad, more so heroic.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865) President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law, freeing African slaves held in areas that the Federal Government did not control. After the war, the congress made full freedom and citizenship of former slaves national law as part of the U.S. Constitution with what are called the three Reconstruction Amendments, the 13th, 14th 15th. These ultimately gave all people equal rights under law. They relate directly to the Civil Rights Movement, and may now be said to directly pertain to the election of President Barack Obama, the first American president of African decent.

The Emancipation Proclamation: Issued during the American Civil War in late 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation consisted of a pair of executive orders issued by President Abraham Lincoln which declared free any slaves held in the confederate states which did not return to the Union by January 1, 1863. Lincoln's order was a war measure and was controversial at the time and even down to the present because it did not free any slaves except where the federal government had no power. It was not a popular decision at the time, south or north. Even Lincoln, being a man of his times, once suggested that freed slaves should be repatriated to Africa. But what Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation bravely did was to commit the United States to permanently ending slavery. It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. Yet it would take more than a century before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, essentially completing what the Emancipation Proclamation began.

The Thirteenth Amendment: the first of the three "Reconstruction Amendments" legally ended slavery. The text reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The amendment was proposed on January 31, 1865, signed by President Lincoln and ratified on December 6, 1865.

The Fourteenth Amendment is the citizenship amendment. It was proposed on June 13, 1866, and ratified on July 9, 1868. It effectively conferred full U.S. citizenship on former slaves.It requires the states to provide equal protection under the law to all people, regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin. The 14th Amendment was applied strongly in the famed Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) which helped to overturn so-called "Jim Crow" laws and outlawed racial segregation in the United States.

The Fifteenth Amendment guarantees all citizens the right to vote. It prohibits any state government from denying any citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color or previous condition of servitude" (that is, slavery). It was ratified on February 3, 1870 and also played a powerful role in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

The Civil Rights Movement: Taken together, the Emancipation Proclamation, the three Reconstruction Amendments and the Brown v. Board of Education supreme court decision of 1954 may be said to have led ultimately to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the National Voting Rights Act of 1965, but not without a great deal of heartbreak, bloodshed, terror, assassination and murder. Getting human beings to recognize one another as simply human turns out not to be simple. Yet we United States have just inaugurated our first nonwhite president, an event many of us from the Vietnam and Civil Rights generation never imagined we would live to see. Hope springs eternal ….