What Was The Effects Of The Emancipation Proclamation

The United States is a immigrant country, which faces varieties of problems. The African American problem is one of the most serious one. Racial segregation is a deep-rooted social problem, which reflects in every field in the United States. For example, education, labor market and criminal justice system. In the aspect of education, most of black children were not permitted to enter the school, because the white children studied there. In the aspect of labor market, the black people 's average wages were lower than the whites. They did the manual work. In the aspect of criminal justice system, the blacks were easily in jail. Badly, their sentences were also more serious than the whites. In general, the blacks live in the bottom of the American society. Martin Luther King delivered the famous speech I Have a Dream, ' ' I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ' ' (1) However, it was difficult for African American to get the freedom. The 1776 Declaration of Independence announced that everyone are equal and freedom.But black slavery still occurred in the southern states of America. Then the Civil War broke out, African American kept struggling for land and political rights.

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

The first American slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Their job was to aid in the production of crops such as tobacco as the Virginians “were desperate for labor, to grow enough to stay alive… needed labor, to grow corn for subsistence, to grow tobacco for export” (Zinn 24,25). The slaves that were being brought to the Americas were seen as builders of the economic foundations of the new nation and as time passed the ownership of slaves dwindled but inequality and segregation grew to be more prevalent in the U.S (“Slavery in America”). On January 1st, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order which freed slaves in the United States not within the Confederacy, under Union Control. Two years later the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery but many Southern States managed to create unattainable prerequisites for blacks to live, work or participate in society. With nearly one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African-Americans were still treated just as unequally. Oppression, race-inspired violence, segregation and an unequal world of disenfranchisement lingered across Southern States for African-Americans. The Jim Crow Laws

With the Civil War in full swing in 1863, President Lincoln was grappling with a nation divided. Long-standing racial turmoils had finally boiled over in 1861 with the battle of Fort Sumter. The country had been thrown headfirst into bloody battles, culminating most recently with the infamous Battle of Antietam. Antietam allowed the president to issue the most important document of his career with a narrow Union “victory”and an attempt to boost low spirits. As a result, the North secured an advantage when Lincoln announced his intent to free all Confederate slaves with the shocking Emancipation Proclamation. Determined on securing and protecting the Union, Lincoln took a pragmatic approach in issuing the controversial document. A defining moment in American history, it is essential to investigates the reasons and acts leading up to it, the responses it elicited from the nation and the world, and its effects on the country.

9. Discuss the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation, both during and after the Civil War. Discuss reasons why Lincoln issued it when he did, and what was the impact on African Americans?

After years of abuse and oppression, black men were supposedly now subject to the same constitutional rights as their white counterparts, extending the gift of equality to all men, regardless of their skin color or economic status. Emancipation for African-American slaves provided freedoms that had, never before in their lifetime, been obtainable. Intent on preventing former slave owners from restricting any efforts to achieve the slaves' freedom, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which “defined an American citizen as anyone born in the United States...thereby automatically making African Americans citizens.” For the first time in American history, black men had the ability to vote, hold office, acquire land and receive a proper education. Most importantly, freedom meant that their labor would be for their own benefit, and not for their master’s.

The Emancipation of the slaves presented the need for giving them the rights of citizens. The federal government granted them citizenship, civil rights, and suffrage. (Doc F) This brought immense change to the lifestyle of the south. Blacks gained political power and elected many leaders in government. (Doc G) Blacks had finally received the recognition and respect as Americans they had worked for. The Petition to the Union convention in Tennessee illustrates the emotion blacks felt in this area. (Doc C) Blacks were also given a chance to improve their economic status by the Freedmen’s Bureau. They received free education and other assistance. The Bureau, however, failed to distribute land in large amounts as it was promised to do. (Doc E)

After President Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, circumstances for blacks only slightly got better, but the attitudes of Southern white people never changed. African American men received citizenship and the right to vote, however Jim Crow laws, a series of harsh anti-black laws. The Northern states were not as cruel to black people as the Southern states. The Southern States were completely segregated, from the schools, offices, and churches, to the water fountains. However, many leaders changed the rights of the black community like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Their viewpoints on non violence as opposed to self-defense is an age-old argument that carried them both to their graves and still exists decades after the ending of the civil rights movement. Although both of these leaders had different viewpoints on how to achieve it, they both ultimately had the same goal: to bring equality to all races and desegregate the United

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?

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution were historical milestones in which the ever controversial topic of racial equality was first challenged. In theory, these two movements laid the groundwork for a racially equal United States of America. A country in which every member, regardless of skin color, or race were to be treated equally under the eyes of the law and to one day be treated as equals within all realms of society. As historic and powerful as these movements were, they did

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 '.

Although the conclusion of the Civil War during the mid-1860s demolished the official practice of slavery, the oppression and exploitation of African Americans has continued. Although the rights and opportunities of African Americans were greatly improved during Reconstruction, cases such a 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson, which served as the legal basis for segregation, continue to diminish the recognized humanity of African Americans as equal people. Furthermore, the practice of the sharecropping system impoverished unemployed African Americans, recreating slavery. As economic and social conditions worsened, the civil rights movement began to emerge as the oppressed responded to their conditions, searching for equality and protected

Many actions have been taken by Presidents to expand civil rights for minority groups, prominently African-Americans. One of the most well known and early attempts was Abraham Lincolns Emancipation proclamation. This stated that every slave in a state of rebellion was declared free. Unfortunately even after the civil war they were not technically free. The phrase Emancipation without freedom, means that although written in law the slaves were free no one carried out the laws, and were still oppressed. Although legally voted in early African American congressmen were ousted. This would dwindle and demolish any chance for African Americans to get representation or legal support, “In 1868, the Georgia legislature voted to expel all its Negro members-two senators,