Was Lincoln The Great Emancipator?

Taken into effect on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, allowed millions of enslaved people to be free in the southern areas of the United States. Even though Lincoln signed the proclamation, does this really make him the “Great Emancipator”? The question is up for debate. The Great Emancipator should have had supported the negroes’ 100 percent, without doubt, on all levels of equality, constitutionally, politically and socially, and took immediate action to end slavery. Lincoln, in reality, was still a white supremacist and tried to look for other solutions, other than emancipation, that would end the Civil War. Although Lincoln may have ended slavery, he does not deserve the title

As stated in the Declaration of Independence, he first believed that all negroes had the right to have natural rights. He declared this in the first Lincoln-Douglas Debate that “he is much entitled to these as the white men.”1 Here, Lincoln emphasized his stance that even a negro is entitled to their natural rights. However, prior to this, Lincoln stated that he has no lawful right or inclination to end slavery and “introduce political and social inequality between the white and the black races.”2 Abraham Lincoln did not even have any intention of ending slavery. He just wanted the public to know that the negroes deserved natural rights and nothing more. He was never in favor of making them voters or jurors in court, or letting them hold office, or marry white people.3 How can one say that he is the “Great Emancipator” when he did not want to give the negroes any more rights? Looking at them as minorities, he still did not want to try and to give them any freedom. He does not view them as equals in society, nor did he have strong feelings to support the negroes at all. Attacking their race, he still calls the white race superior to the negroes. If Lincoln never supported the equal rights of negroes, he cannot be the great emancipator. Showing indifference to the negroes, he was also reluctant to interfere with the state’s rights and wanted to

Instead of calling for immediate emancipation of slaves, he decided to set up meetings with the head of the Chiriqui Improvement Company to obtain land to send slaves to. He also urged Congress to provide funds to put colonized slaves, freed and those that decided to be free, in a newly acquired territory.7 Here, Lincoln is more interested in colonizing the slaves than trying to emancipate them. Shifting his efforts into trying to acquire land in Central and South America, Lincoln now seemed to be avoiding the idea of emancipation. He used colonization as an excuse to circumvent the idea of emancipation as a solution to end the Civil War. Lincoln also claimed that colonization would “be better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”8 In addition, he then said that the political affairs are not as satisfactory as he would had liked them to be in the territory he aquired, but he would send them there anyway because of all the other benefits it possessed for the negroes.9 Lincoln even tried to convince the blacks that colonization would be better for them instead of emancipation besides the fact that they would have to deal with political issues at their new home. If political matters are not up to his satisfaction, it does not make sense as to why he would even consider colonization at this point as a solution. It would make more sense to call for emancipation. Again, Lincoln shows he is