It could be argued that a key factor for many presidents when it came to establishing and developing the Civil Rights for African American people was merely a political device, only pushed forward to collaborate with situation factors, in which there was no other choice but to support the Civil Rights Movement, and also used to assist the Presidents in increasing their popularity amongst the voters. Within the 1860s and onwards, slavery and racism were rife throughout America to the point in which having a public opposition to such views would have had a substantial impact on your political position not only within the public eye, but within the government itself. For instance, in 1859 John Brown, an American Abolitionist who believed armed …show more content…
Although Lincoln opposed slavery, deeming it morally wrong, he wasn’t an abolitionist, as slavery was established under the constitution and so Lincoln was unsure as to how it would affect the current political system. However, due to the impact the Civil War was having on the separated American States, on January 1st 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation officially took effect. It could be strongly argued that the Proclamation was only introduced so that the African American’s could join the Union’s armed forces, thus securing a victory for The Union. Moreover, Lincoln believed that if the slaves were to be freed it meant that the Confederates could no longer use them as labourers thus weakening them on the field. This may then illustrate that the pushing for Civil Rights and the freedom of the Slaves was only introduced as a means of political gain, and was not due to Lincoln’s beliefs. Moreover, in a letter Lincoln wrote to Hon. Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862, he stated that, “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.” This excerpt from his letter may highlight the fact that Lincoln’s priority lay with preserving the union, and not emancipating the
Some use this opportunity to point out Lincoln’s deceptive character, dethrone the illusion of honest Abe, or that he was, as some have said, the best president the Unites States has ever had. I do not see the importance of this argument, whether true or false and do not pretend to hold Lincoln accountable to a god-like standard of perfection or positively pure political and personal passions. In his letter to James Conkling, Lincoln himself states that he emphatically wishes the Negro to be free (Perman and Taylor 289). By issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, some say Lincoln used his political office to satisfy a personal vendetta against slavery and those who supported it, falling back on his promises in his inauguration. However, that promise was not broken when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Once the war commenced, he was the head of the Union army. There are no campaign
One September 22, 1862, the president of the Union, Abraham Lincoln, proposed the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. If I was one of his advisors I would have encouraged Lincoln to propose this Emancipation because it is a necessity to pass it in order to preserve the Union. Through threatening the South’s life style, this will help define the Union’s perception and position of the war: freeing the slaves and preserving the union. This also makes it seem that the North is fighting for a significant moral and human cause. I would have also recommended that because this would have been a good war strategy. By emancipating all the slaves in the rebellion states, this would have crippled the Confederate army. The south army depended on slaves to aid in war efforts.
Therefore, in order to understand the true and nuanced nature of Lincoln’s relationship to abolition and the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation, one must realize that the Proclamation was a war measure used only as a method to secure a Union victory and the following union of the divided states, that the abolition of slavery became a war aim gradually only as a result of the original use of the critical issue as a weapon, and that Lincoln never acted to abolish slavery for the sake of abolition, but he acted in support of abolition as a tonic with which he could heal the
Slavery was a crucial issue on the Union 's diplomatic front with Britain. Lincoln realized that he could use emancipation as a weapon of war as the war was now primarily being fought over slavery. He also wanted to satisfy his own personal hope that everyone everywhere would eventually be free. So in June 1862, Congress passed a law prohibiting slavery in the territories. Lincoln issued the final form of his Emancipation Proclamation (Document F). It stated, “slaves within any State...shall be then, thencefoward, and forever free.” The proclamation had a powerful symbolic effect. It broadened the base of the war by turning it in to a fight for unity.
Historically, Lincoln was mainly focused on the idea of keeping the Union unified and he felt that the only way to accomplish it was through abolishing slavery. Lincoln believed that slavery was morally wrong and how it was the reason for the war because: “One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves… [and they were] localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest (Stanza 3).” With regard to Lincoln’s speech, he always chose his words carefully to portray the purpose of the Civil War referring that the slaves were part of the nation and all the government had a job to keep all the slavery together and not spread. On the contrary, Lincoln was against slavery because he didn’t want it to expand further and not let it spread to the newly formed state of America which was
Regarding peaceful emancipation, which was what many other countries had implemented and had success. Lincoln did not care. He was concerned with one thing, and that was saving the Union. “My paramount object inn this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy
As Bennett states in his article, Lincoln was opposed to the extension of slavery not out of compassion for suffering black people, but out of devotion to the interests of white people. In his Charlston speech, Lincoln stated, “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black race, . . . I will say there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.” The speech itself shows that Lincoln was opposed to every aspect of the Emancipation Proclamation that he himself issued. Not only that, but Lincoln felt pressured to issue the Emancipation Proclamation by Radical Republicans who were pushing for it to be passed. Furthermore, if Lincoln had not issued the Proclamation, the congress would have done it. Lincoln did not want to give up his power as a president, and signed the document himself. In response to the proclamation, Bennett writes, Lincoln “freed” slaves where he had no power and left them in chains where he had power (page 137). In Lincoln and Colonization, by Richard Blackett, a historian of the abolition movement, The pressures of war forced his hand. As a result, the proclamation contained so many restrictions that observers questioned its effectiveness (page 20).
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made an executive edict that would influence a nation and shape the nation’s future to come. A man who immersed himself in politics that were complicated during this time period, President Lincoln initially had contradictory views in regards to slavery. According to Eric Foner, Lincoln has been quoted as saying “I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” (The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, p. 42). He had also been known to use derogatory (though normal for the time period) language when referencing black peoples and slaves. President Lincoln had been quoted as saying that he had no constitutional authority to enact such proclamation during peacetime, and as Guelzo pointed out in Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation even “used as a war power, emancipation was a risky political act. Public opinion as a whole was against it.” He found his vantage point on this controversial topic, ran on an anti-slavery campaign for the presidency, and began laying the foundation for the Emancipation Proclamation as the Union splintered. After more than thirty six months of a war against relatives and kin, Union forces were dealing with heavy casualties and diminishing support for the war effort. President Lincoln needed to find a way to raise the esprit de corps of the North and replenish lost ranks. On this day, the President provided a second executive order that proclaimed that “all persons held
In the taxing process of saving the Union, Lincoln managed to write a document for the purpose of freeing the slaves. Though this operation aroused an overwhelming amount of controversy, the controversy is a significant part of Lincoln’s legacy. Despite the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation is considered to be one of Lincoln’s most admired achievements, some claim that he did not deserve this praise. Furthermore, they argue that the importance of his action was exaggerated. However, by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln assisted in freeing the slaves by encouraging them to free themselves. As “The Great Emancipator” mentions, “Lincoln’s proclamation was a moral landmark. It also was a political stroke of genius that began the long-overdue process of crushing slavery.” Throughout the entirety of his presidency, Lincoln invested himself in extinguishing slavery, one of America’s greatest
After Antietam, one of the bloodiest one day battles in history, Abraham Lincoln sent out a preliminary warning about the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation which would declare all slaves in rebellious states, as of January 1, 1863, to be free. He defended the proclamation as being “exclusively to save the Union.” and as beneficial for the war effort because if “the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance.”(Source 3) Though the Democratic party would say otherwise, at this point in the war, the Emancipation Proclamation was viewed by the Republican party as really only being for the war effort and not racial equality. This thought would begin to change as Lincoln realized that the resizing and commissioning the freed slaves back into slavery after the war “can not be; and it ought not to be.” (Source
Lincoln was forced to walk a thin line between racist conservatives and radical abolitionists. The Emancipation Proclamation, defended by Lincoln as “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity,” helped prepare northerners for the eventuality of emancipation. Although it did not technically free any slaves at the time, it gave the war a moral purpose and laid to rest any possibility of foreign support for the Confederacy. It encouraged slaves to flee the South, subverting the southern war
The abolishment of slavery is one that Abraham Lincoln is all to familiar with. From the time the man first walked into office he was hounded by people wanting to end the ‘people of service and labor.’ That description is one Lincoln wrote about in his Emancipation Proclamation, instead of saying, ‘blacks’ or ‘slaves’. When Lincoln took office, his main goal was to reunite the Union. He wanted to make sure that no matter what he did, that no part would secede from the Union. There was warfare, there was struggle, and there were unhappy people but the Emancipation Proclamation made its way to the Union on January 1, 1863.
During his election campaign and throughout the early years of the Civil War, Lincoln vehemently denied the rumour that he would mount an attack on slavery. At the outbreak of fighting, he pledged to 'restore the Union, but accept slavery where it existed ', with Congress supporting his position via the Crittendon-Johnson Resolutions. However, during 1862 Lincoln was persuaded for a number of reasons that Negro emancipation as a war measure was both essential and sound. Public opinion seemed to be going that way, Negro slaves were helping the Southern war effort, and a string of defeats had left Northern morale low. A new moral boost to the cause might give weary Union soldiers added impetus in the fight. Furthermore, if the Union fought against slavery, Britain and France could not help the other side, since their 'peculiar institution ' was largely abhorred in both European nations. Having eased the American public into the idea, through speeches that hinted at emancipation, Lincoln finally signed the Proclamation on January 1st 1863, releasing all slaves behind rebel lines. Critics argued that the proclamation went little further than the Second Confiscation Act and it conveniently failed to release prisoners behind Union lines. Nevertheless, Henry Adams summed up public reaction to the Proclamation as an 'almost convulsive reaction in our favour '.
Lincoln states "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 by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Lincoln was strictly for the Union and if he could save the Union and end slavery he would, but his first thoughts were for the Union, and only the Union. He deals with slavery in this manner because he does not want to upset or cause turmoil in the South. Even though the Civil War was going on, he wants it to end and the Union to be whole.
Lincoln believed that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” Lincoln continues and says, “I believe that I have not lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so” (Majewaki, pg. 70). Lincoln was a humble politician. He in no way wanted to endanger the unity of the nation.