The Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation

Abraham Lincoln

ESTUDIOS INGLESES UNED

PEC 2º SEMESTRE CURSO 2020/2021

Olga A. Iglesias España

 The Emancipation Proclamation

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January, 1,

1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. This historical
document was addressed to all citizens in the Union but especially to all the slaves
in the secessionist’s estates. It declared that all enslaved people in the states
currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and
forever free”. While the document represents an important step towards full
freedom, the emancipation proclamation applied only to states that had seceded
from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states and in the
North. Furthermore, the federal government at that time had no power to enforce
emancipation in the South as according to the Constitution, the slaves were
personal property so he could not free slaves constitutionally and because this was
a temporary war measure, it later had to be codified into law with the 13 th
Amendment to the Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln was born in February 12, 1809 to Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in
Kentucky. His father was a farmer and his family very poor, living in a one-room log
cabin. While Lincoln was still very young his family moved to Indiana, and then
again to Illinois. Lincoln’s formal schooling was limited to three brief periods in local
schools, as he had to work constantly to support his family. A love of knowledge
made him into an intelligent, well-spoken and popular man. Despite the fact that he
came from a very poor family and of being mostly self-taught, he managed to
become a successful lawyer in the town of Springfield, Illinois. He also got into
politics and gained a seat as a member of the Whig Party. In 1856, he joined the
newly formed Republican Party; two years later, he ran for the U.S. Senate and
started the Lincoln-Douglas debates, seven public debates with Democrat Stephan
A. Douglas, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories. In
May 1860, the Illinois Republican State Convention supported Lincoln to run for the
presidency and on November 6, 1860, he became the 16 th president of the United
States.

As the nation developed, the North and the South evolved along two very different
lines and two very different cultural identities emerged. Northern cities began rapidly
industrializing while the southern climate allowed for large plantations of labour-
intensive crops that depended on the hard work of black enslaved people to grow
these plantations, especially cotton and tobacco. As a result, one-half of the country
 The Emancipation Proclamation

did not rely on slaves while the other half had become economically dependent on
them. In 1793, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin (a machine that quickly and easily separates
cotton fibers from their seeds) caused the slave trade in the South to explode.
Besides, not having to pay someone to work on the plantations, made the rich
slaveholders richer.

A general mistrust began to develop between the North and the South. When
Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican President on a
platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the
deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America
(CSA). The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people
refused to recognise the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit
democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-
longer United States into several small, bickering countries.

After years of violence, the tension began to grow at a rapid pace and as a result,
the United Stated entered a Civil War in 1861. When the war began with the firing of
Fort Sumter, four more states of the upper South joined the Confederacy. General
opinion was that it would only take the United States a few weeks to suppress the
rebellion. Instead, during the first year of the conflict, the Confederate Army had
won the majority of important battles. It was becoming more and more apparent that
the Civil War was going to be a long and bloody conflict.

At the outset of the conflict, Lincoln made it clear that the war was not about freeing
enslaved people or black rights in the South but about preserving the union; after a
while, the mission of the war also included the end of slavery but that took some
time. Enslaved people in the South, whose owners were waging war to make sure
slavery endured, immediately interpreted the conflict as a war to end slavery. When
Northern forces invaded the South, black men and women escaped from bondage
and ran to US army lines, seeing the soldiers as liberators. Lincoln, like several of
his generals, began to see that committing the United States to abolish slavery
would only help its cause. Losing enslaved people not only demoralized white
Southerners, it also deprived them of their labour force, meaning that the South
would soon run out of food and supplies.

In the summer of 1862, he began to hash out the details of the Emancipation
Proclamation. He wrote the first draft while staying with his family at the Soldier’s
 The Emancipation Proclamation

Home, a cottage on the outskirts of Washington D.C. He presented the document to

his cabinet on July 1862 and asked for their opinion. They approved, but Lincoln’s
secretary of war urged the president to wait for a big military victory on the
battlefield to announce the proclamation so it would not be seen as a desperate
measure. This awaited triumph over the CSA came in September 1862 at the battle
of Antietam in Maryland. Days later, Lincoln went public with the preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation on September 22 nd, 1862. It stipulated that if the
Southern states did not cease their rebellion by January 1 st, 1863, then
Proclamation would go into effect. When the Confederacy did not yield, Lincoln
issued the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1863.

The fighting continued, however, and with the new year, the Emancipation
Proclamation took effect in the ten rebellious states – Alabana, Arkansas, Florida,
Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
In the Proclamation Lincoln declared “all persons held as slaves within any State or
designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the
Union States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”. He also pledged that,
“the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval
authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons”.
However, because Lincoln did not want to incite a slave rebellion, he cautioned the
freed slaves “to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence”. He also
recommended, “in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable
wages”

The Emancipation Proclamation changed the meaning and purpose of the Civil
War. The war was no longer just about preserving the Union, it was also about
freeing the slaves. Black Americans were permitted to serve in the Union Army for
the first time, and nearly 200.000 would do so by the end of the war.

Lincoln is known for his unparalleled eloquence as a writer and orator. The
Emancipation Proclamation with its whereof, thenceforwards and hereunto is
anything but sophisticated He was a lawyer by trade and he knew the importance
of making the text clear and without loopholes. It was not intended to be eloquent or
touching, it was intended to be an inflexible document.

Certainly, the Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for the permanent
abolition of slavery in the United States and established the foundations for the
 The Emancipation Proclamation

ratification of the 13th Amendment. This was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864,
but did not pass in the House until January 31, 1865. Lincoln signed the joint
resolution of both bodies that submitted the amendment to the states for approval
on February 1, 1865. Sadly, he did not live to see its ratification. He was
assassinated on April 15 of the same year.

In my personal opinion, Lincoln was a self-made man, a savvy politician that helped
shape America. Back at that time, white supremacy and slavery were deeply
ingrained in society. Despite this, Abraham Lincoln took the first step towards
abolishing slavery. I think that the exploitation of the poor his family suffered when
he was as a kid made him a more empathetic person and made him see slavery as
the worse form of exploitation. He was indeed a great orator whose words still ring
clear and true today. Abraham Lincoln is regarded as one of the America’s greatest
heroes.

Bibliography:

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/emancipation-proclamation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery

https://www.britannica.com/event/Emancipation-Proclamation

BBC Radio 4 podcast Great Lives, Abraham Lincoln

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b06ycr4x

Youtube video Abraham Lincoln’s Biography

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SaQlUJnrdk