On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. Attempting to stitch together a nation mired in a bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln made a last-ditch, but carefully calculated, decision regarding the institution of slavery in America.
By the end of 1862, things were not looking good for the Union. The Confederate Army had overcome Union troops in significant battles and Britain and France were set to officially recognize the Confederacy as a separate nation. In an August 1862 letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln confessed “my paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” Lincoln hoped that declaring a national policy of emancipation would stimulate a rush of the South’s enslaved people into the ranks of the Union army, thus depleting the Confederacy’s labor force, on which the southern states depended to wage war against the North.
Lincoln waited to unveil the proclamation until he could do so on the heels of a Union military success. On September 22, 1862, after the battle at Antietam, he issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation declaring all enslaved people free in the rebellious states as of January 1, 1863. Lincoln and his advisors limited the proclamation’s language to slavery in states outside of federal control as of 1862, failing to address the contentious issue of slavery within the nation’s border states. In his attempt to appease all parties, Lincoln left many loopholes open that civil rights advocates would be forced to tackle in the future.
Republican abolitionists in the North rejoiced that Lincoln had finally thrown his full weight behind the cause for which they had elected him. Though enslaved people in the south failed to rebel en masse with the signing of the proclamation, they slowly began to liberate themselves as Union armies marched into Confederate territory. Toward the end of the war, enslaved people left their former masters in droves. They fought and grew crops for the Union Army, performed other military jobs and worked in the North’s mills. Though the proclamation was not greeted with joy by all northerners, particularly northern white workers and troops fearful of job competition from an influx of formerly enslaved people, it had the distinct benefit of convincing Britain and France to steer clear of official diplomatic relations with the Confederacy.
Though the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation signified Lincoln’s growing resolve to preserve the Union at all costs, he still rejoiced in the ethical correctness of his decision. Lincoln admitted on that New Year’s Day in 1863 that he never “felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.” Although he waffled on the subject of slavery in the early years of his presidency, he would thereafter be remembered as “The Great Emancipator.” To Confederate sympathizers, however, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation reinforced their image of him as a hated despot and ultimately inspired his assassination by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865.
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“I don’t deserve this! I was building a house!” – Little Bill
“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” – William Munny
“We all have it coming.”
” Thats what he gets for decorating his bar with my friend “
“He should’ve armed himself.”
I took that one to heart immediately!
History.com can be relied upon to add to the pile of bullshit that is the Lincoln myth.
“Lincoln hoped that declaring a national policy of emancipation would stimulate a rush of the South’s enslaved people into the ranks of the Union army, thus depleting the Confederacy’s labor force, on which the southern states depended to wage war against the North.”
Lincoln was desperate, the Union Army was unsuccessful against the superior Confederate officers and their troops and European capital was set to recognize and support the Confederacy. England needed cotton and indigo to fuel its’ booming clothing industry as well as other raw materials from the South.
Abolishing slavery was never the issue, Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories not the institution of slavery itself! At heart he was a “Free Soiler” a poor white man who viewed slavery as fierce competition for white workers. His Emancipation Proclamation was merely a PR ploy to keep England out of the war. In reality as a sovereign nation the Confederate States of America with its own government, currency (that had images of Blacks picking cotton on them) and military was not bound by Lincoln’s executive orders or the Union’s laws! The order was so bogus it did not even free the enslaved persons living in the Union states that sanctioned slavery!
The major reason England did not join the war on the side of the CSA was Russia sent its fleet to the Atlantic and Pacific in support of Lincoln! (This action marked the Russian monarchy as an enemy of the European banksters and the banksters took revenge using the Bolsheviks several decades later.)
Lincoln was not an emancipator, most American history is a lie and we are living the KARMA of those lies in 2024. The truth is: the 13th Amendment did not abolish slavery (read it for yourself) , the 14th Amendment has never provided equal protection under the law for Blacks and the 15th Amendment was neutered following the collapse of Reconstruction when the Republicans sold the “freed” people out in the “Compromise of 1877” (https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/compromise-of-1877) .
And the 16th made SLAVES OF US ALL.
Yes! The 16the Amendment was pushed through “passed” while most of the money grubbers Congress critters were on recess.
The book, “The Real Lincoln,” makes the point that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in the South. It did not free the slaves in the North. In other words, it was pure Propaganda which Lincoln was a master at.
Read it, great book. If anyone here hasn’t read it it’s on amazon and you won’t be able to put it down. Use Jim’s link though.
He explains much in the book i.e. why was Ft. Sumter fired on? Short version: Southern reps went to meet with Northern reps in dc to get their land back which Sumter was built on. Got the run around. Lincoln secretly sent supply ships to resupply it. When the southerners discovered this they were outraged and determined that there would be no Ft. Sumter there when those ships arrived. Spoiler: there wasn’t.
As a kid. I knew about propaganda. But I had no idea how everything about our history is almost complete bullshit.
Former slaves were used as bioweapons. Worse than any viral plague
On this day in history, Abraham Newsom’s signed legislation requiring stores to cater to a non existant market went into effect.
Fixed.
I continue to disbelieve 300,000 poor white uneducated northerners died fighting poor uneducated white southerners (most of which owned no slaves) on the premise of freeing poor uneducated African imports.
There is an old anecdote about the War. A Union soldier was talking to a Confederate soldier, and asked, “Why are you Southerners fighting us?!” The Confederate answered, “Because y’all are down here!”
It is hard to know why the Union soldiers fought, but the Southerners fought to repel an invasion.
Slavery was not the reason for the war it was used once the war started by abolitionists (mostly Blacks) but as for the legality of Lincoln’s EP executive directed at a separate sovereign nation; he couldn’t enforce it, because the Union wasn’t winning the war at that time! Because of ardent Black Union recruits (as opposed to many Northerners who opposed the war and actively resisted conscription via draft riots in several cities. https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/northern-draft-riots-during-the-civil-war) and the more aggressive leadership of the Union military, coupled with Black enlistment and fervor and the abandonment of the farms and fields and rivers by enslaved Southern Blacks helped turn the tide for the Union.
As with most modern wars those with no real dog in the fight paid the heaviest costs. “Of course people don’t want war. Why should a poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best thing he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?” – Hermann Goering, Nazi
Imagine if the south had won? States remained independent in a loose confederation, a small federal government, slaves sent back to their homelands when the combustion engine was developed and implemented.
Imagine a country with no diggers……
Nice fantasy but the truth is if the South won the war, the Southern aristocrats would have replaced my people with poor whites and dogged them out just like they did European “indentured servants” during colonial times.