The Impact Of The Emancipation Proclamation

Following the Civil War, America was in shambles. There were many groups with strong, conflicting ideas of how things should be. However, most groups had one idea in common: reducing the rights of African Americans as much as possible. Freed slaves had very little freedom under the law, were treated like a lesser species by those around them, and faced dangerous environments everywhere they went. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation may have legally freed slaves, but African Americans were barely more than paid slaves.

The Civil War was fought over the “race problem,” to determine the place of African-Americans in America. The Union won the war and freed the slaves. However, when President Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, a hopeful promise for freedom from oppression and slavery for African-Americans, he refrained from announcing the decades of hardship that would follow to obtaining the new won “freedom”. Over the course of nearly a century, African-Americans would be deprived and face adversity to their rights. They faced something perhaps worse than slavery; plagued with the threat of being lynched or beat for walking at the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the addition of the 14th and

Lincoln debates that the emancipation of slaves from the Emancipation Proclamation is making a big deal over really nothing. No slaves will be affected by the Emancipation Proclamation, because the people that have to enforce it will not enforce it. Lincoln compared it to how Pope Callixtus III excommunicated Halley’s Comet. The comet was seen as an omen of troubles to come to Pope Callixtus III so he just got rid of all of its affiliations from the church. Lincoln sees this as a chance to make it seem like a difference is being made in America with some slaves being set free but none really are. Lincoln also pointed out the problem if a mass amount of slaves started to come to the North for refuge. How could the North support all the slaves

In 1865, the United States government implemented what was known as Reconstruction. Its’ purpose was to remove slavery from the south, and give African-American’s the freedom in which they deserved. However, the freedom that they deserved was not the freedom that they received. With documents like The Black Codes restricting them from numerous privileges that white people had and the terroristic organization known as the Klu Klux Klan attacking and killing them, African-American’s were still being oppressed by their government as well as their fellow man. Slavery may have been abolished, but African-American’s were not yet given the freedom and rights that their white counterparts took for granted.

Although there were more than four million slaves living in the U.S. at this time, the Emancipation Proclamation did not formally free a single one of them. So that presents us with a couple of very interesting questions: first, why did Lincoln issue the proclamation if it had no practical effect? Second, why is the Emancipation Proclamation considered Lincoln's most important legacy if it didn't actually free anyone?

The fear of insurrection had a strong influence on the methods by which the Confederacy attempted to legislate against the possibility of slave insurrection. To begin, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 had the effect of forcing the Confederate government into hastily passing a widely unfavorable act. Through the point of view of Confederate Officials, they believed that the Emancipation Proclamation was purposely created to incite slave insurrections (283). The unfavorable act, The Conscription Act, was class biased and favored the upper class slaveholders (284).

Therefore , handicaping the effectiveness of the Confederate war effort. However, Lincoln needed to demonstate that the Union government is capable to impose the Proclamation and protect the freed slaves. On Spetember 22, 1862 , the priliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued, this introductory proclamation took effect three months later on January 1, 1863. (ibid)

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 '.

On July 21st, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to the Congressmen from the border states, warning them of his upcoming Emancipation Proclamation. In it he stated, "I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a decision at once to emancipate gradually.” President Lincoln then issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in states or portions of states that still supported slavery. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

On January 1, 1863, sitting President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a document decreeing the end of slavery throughout the United States of America. While symbolic at the time (the self-proclaimed and effectively sovereign Confederate States of America had no intention of recognizing a law issued by a political body with which it was currently at war, and whose authority it did not recognize) it was undebatably a momentous and powerful decision that would forever change the fabric of the American social and political paradigm. Insofar as it symbolically freed the African-American population from slavery, the document did little to improve the plight of the more than four million members of said population formerly held in bondage in the Southern United States in the times following the war. In fact, the end of legal slavery in these areas only led to continued and unofficial de facto bondage, sanctioned and enforced by local governments. In this way, it can be inferred that the plight of the African Americans in the South continued to in one form or another be more or less the same in the half-century following emancipation.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, is famous for being one of the few presidents who were assassinated, the Gettysburg Address, and abolishing slavery. During the Civil War, slavery was an issue, but it wasn’t President Lincoln’s main goal of the war. His actions on freeing slaves in the Southern states, issued by the Emancipation Proclamation, were being controlled by the Civil War. In a letter President Lincoln wrote to Albert Hodges, Lincoln said, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” The Civil War was fought between the Northern states and Southern states between 1861 and 1865. President Lincoln put out a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, stating that all slaves in Southern states who were still in rebellion would be free after January 1, 1863. However, it had no immediate effect, not until the

The fervent prayers of slaves had been answered by the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. Five years later, the 14th Amendment ensured that all people who were born in the country to equality and citizenship. In addition, the 15th Amendment was made to give black males suffrage(the right to vote). Likewise many slaves were able to live their own lives as free men and women. However, the South were very bitter about the Emancipation and the result of the Civil War. The Union won the war after crucial victories in battles like Gettysburg and Vicksburg which lead to their success. The South did their best to ruin the lives of the black community. As a matter of fact, a hate group formed called the Klu Klux Klan became the main group

Abraham Lincoln once said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." (Lincoln 's 'House-Divided ' Speech in Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858). The critical issue of slavery throughout the 19th century in America, was a heavily debated topic. Due to this disagreement of the bondage of slaves, America was split into two distinct entities, the Union and the Confederacy. Both of these bodies of states struggled over the idea of slavery, and whether or not it should be enforced, but both for different reasons. In the North, or the Union States, slavery was looked down upon being morally wrong, while on the other hand, the Southerners, or the Confederate States, believed the exact opposite. In the year of 1863, the issue of slavery would start to diminish due to a very important proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln. This prominent decree, the Emancipation Proclamation, would settle the heated dispute between the Union and the Confederacy for all years to come. Although not one slave was initially freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in the Southern states, the deeper symbolic meaning of the manifesto

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…” Just like that, President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, which completely altered the history of the United States. Nothing had changed physically or mentally within theses people’s lives. Like the slaves then and everyone today, humans are continuously entrusting other people to protect one of the most important concepts in our life, freedom.

The Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order signed and issued on January 1st, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln, was a bill that was sure to change the future of the United States of America. Through the enforcement of this bill, nearly two hundred years of the enslavement of the black population was pardon and abolished. Although it took approximately two years for the bill to be enacted, blacks were finally free. Free of unpaid labor, immense torture, sex trafficking, and others unnamable forms of inhumane treatments. Those who held political power at the time pondered on a way of erasing the heartfelt pain that these civilians had to endure for more than two centuries, hence the birth of black reparations. Reparation, also known as making amends in a monetary manner, was a form of an apology towards the families of enslaved ancestors. African Americans whose ancestors had endured generations of discrimination and suppression where now entitled to American currency. With such an appealing policy came a high demand of monitory support. A vast majority of African-Americans began to demand for “what was theirs” from the American government. In 2012 nearly fifty-five percent of the African-American population was solely dependent on welfare and reparations as means of survival. With financial support coming from the higher up, many individuals did not see the need to seek resources of better living; instead they formed a victim mentality. The black community preceded