Taking a Look at The Emancipation Proclamation

As the nation descended further into a split entity, with the issue of slavery at the forefront of the debate. The North and South needed to find a way to deal with their differences before the Union fell in shambles. The Compromise of 1850 was passed after long extensive debate in congress, the compromise was intended to settle the debate over how slavery would be controlled throughout the expanding nation. The Fugitive Slave Act was included in the compromise to satisfy southern states, that wanted to preserve the institution of slavery. The act allowed for run away slaves to be hunted down and returned to their past owners, even after they made it to the free states in the North. The Southerners wished to preserve their right to property, which is among the “Unalienable Rights”. Some northern states refuse to recognize the law which infuriated the South because they saw this as an explicit violation of the slave holder’s rights, this intensified the South’s urge to become a separate State.

In 1850, the Compromise was formed as a way of preventing the southerners from withdrawing from the Union. Part of this law, was the Fugitive Slave act, which aroused many reactions from the public that it ultimately led to the civil war. This Fugitive Slave Act stated that the southerners were still owners of these slaves that had escaped to the north and that the Northerners had to abide to it, even though most of their states had illegalized slavery. This law also made it hard for the blacks to have a fair trial as they were not able to prove whether they were free or not. This led to the blacks in the northern states freeing to Canada in fear of being returned to slavery and because they did not feel as safe anymore. The Compromise, to keep the southerners in the Union, made these laws on slaves to favor them. However unexpectedly it made the Abolitionists

Correspondingly, there was the quarrel over state versus federal rights. States felt they didn’t have any say if they disliked a federal law. So when all these compromises came about concerning slavery in the West, people wanted to be able to nullify federal laws. To nullify is to cancel, and in this case to cancel a federal law. People like John C. Calhoun fought for this right along with many others. However, the federal government felt this was not necessary, therefore, some states threatened to secede.

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the biggest documents in the history of the United States and its effects lasted years after its implementation. On September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln announced a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation (Dudley 166). This preliminary version told the basis of President Lincoln’s plan; all slaves who were living in a seceded and rebelling area of the South would be declared “then, thenceforward, and forever free” as of January 1, 1863 (Dudley 167). Whether or not the document would truly make a change in the nation was something that was disputed among many during the time of its issuing. Frederick Douglass was a widely known runaway slave turned abolitionist, speaker, and writer who promoted

President Lincoln waited untill announcing the Emancipation Proclamation because in the middle of the civil war, this proclamation really didn't free anyone . It did accomplish two things, though. First, as Confederate states fell into Union hands, slaves living there would become free. This action by Lincoln also carried with it an open invitation for blacks to take an active role in the Civil War's outcome. More than two hundred thousand would do so by war's end.With the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln challenged Congress to draft a Constitutional amendment that granted full citizenship to all Americans. The Thirteenth Amendment would eventually come to pass in January of 1865.As can be expected, the Emancipation Proclamation was met with

As the early nineteenth century unfolded hostility to slavery surfaced on the national scene. The United States began to split because of views of the people became concreate causing the bitter disputes between the North and South to be more drastic due to economic issues of slavery and morals. The Constitution contributed in the separation that was occurring. For example the Compromise of 1850, was drafted by Henry Clay in an attempt to gloss over the confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regarding the territory with slavery. Another example of a Supreme Court decision that is known as the Dred Scott Decision of 1857 declared that African Americans had no rights of citizenship hence slaves who escaped to free states were not free but still the property of their owners and would need to be returned. The decision of the United States to determine that once a person was a slave they could never become a citizen. This case instilled fear to anti-slavery groups that slavery would spread and it infuriated anti-slavery leaders causing the new Republican Party.

Washington D.C., summer 1862. The Civil War had been going on for over a year, and it was not going well for Abraham Lincoln. 11 of the 15 southern states where slavery was legal had formed the Confederate States of America (CSA) and were waging a war to break free from the United States. Lincoln was determined that the nation was not going to fall apart on his watch. During the first year of the civil war, the Confederate Army had won the majority of important battles. When Lincoln became president, he had had no intention of abolishing slavery. Though he personally despised slavery and had won the presidency on an anti-slavery platform, he would gladly have given up any chance of ending slavery in the South if it meant that the Confederate states would rejoin the United States.

The election of Lincoln in November 1860 was the final trigger for secession.[74] Efforts at compromise, including the "Corwin Amendment" and the "Crittenden Compromise", failed. Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of Representatives, were now facing a future as a perpetual minority in the Senate and Electoral College against an increasingly powerful North. Before Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven slave states had declared their secession and joined together to form the Confederacy.

On September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, issued the first, or preliminary, Emancipation Proclamation. In this document he warned that unless the states of the Confederacy returned to the Union by January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves to be “forever free.” During the Civil War, he was fighting to save the Union and trying not to free the slaves. Lincoln was quoted to say, “I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” The Emancipation Proclamation illustrated this view.

The Emancipation Proclamation consists of two executive orders issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named ten specific states where it would apply. Lincoln issued the Executive Order by his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free all the slaves, but it kept critical border states from seceding and it

The emancipation proclamation was an order signed by president Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War in attempt to abolish slavery in the ten rebellion states in the confederacy. The order took effect on January 1, 1863 in attempts to free more than 3.5 million slaves in the confederate area where they rebelled against the Union, and to maintain apprehended freedom between the newly freed slaves and the federal government and military. This was a turning point in the Civil war as Abraham lincoln changed the focal point of the war from secession to slavery, which the South [Jefferson Davis] didn’t want to occur, in fear of losing foreign allies, such as anti-slavery Great Britain. The North really increased their chances of

The Emancipation Proclamation. John Hope Franklin. Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, 1963, 1965, 1995. 155 pp.

In 1860, new president-elect Lincoln was immediately forced to deal with Southern states making threats to succeed. Though initially doubtful, the reality of the Southern states ultimatum would become very real for Lincoln when in in late 1860 and early 1861, Southern states began leaving the Union one after the other. Though succession was proclaimed illegal, the succeeded states nevertheless combined to form the Confederate states of America, electing their own president,

With the election in 1860 of Abraham Lincoln, who ran on a message of anti-slavery, the Southern states felt it was only a matter of time before the institution was outlawed completely. South Carolina became the first state to officially secede from the United States on December 20, 1860. Four months later, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana seceded as well. Later Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee joined them, and soon afterward, the people of these states elected Jefferson Davis as president of the newly formed

When Abraham Lincoln became president in 1860, seven southern states secede from the union and formed the confederate states of America