Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation

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On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered by Abraham Lincoln. This bold and progressive move by the President declared that "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" (The Library of Congress, 2014). While Lincoln now harbors the fame for ending slavery, his proclamation initially only ended slavery in those states that attempted to separate from the union. The proclamation authorized the recruitment of former slaves into the Union Armies and promoted the eventual creation of a Union without slavery. It was this strategic use of the legal system that allowed Lincoln to manipulate the Border States between the North and South while molding the characteristics of the Civil War. Still, after the war was ended the now freed slaves did not flourish with their new found and hard fought freedoms.
The ideal that former slaves were successful after the war is very far from realistic. Many freed slaves faced the new world without necessities such as shoes or clothing to protect them from the environment. During the winters, many freed slaves were out of work and homeless causing them to freeze and starve to death. Being ‘kept’ by slave masters their entire lives, they did not possess any skills outside crop farming to aide them in survival. This lack of experience and materials only served to increase the hardships endured; yet nothing could prepare them for the inequalities they would continue to face.
The first inequality they would have to endure was in the form of education. As slaves, it was illegal for them to read or write thus propelling them into ...

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...nearly eliminated blacks from the American landscape. Luckily, over the last 151years America has continued to grow and heal from the ugliness that was slavery. In doing so, Americans cherish Lincoln who cemented our ideals that all citizens remain “…forever free" (The Library of Congress, 2014).

References
Oshinsky, D. M. (n.d.). The Washington Post. Retrieved from Worse Than Slavery: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/worsethanslavery.htm
Schuessler, J. (2012, June 10). Books: Liberation as Death Sentence. Retrieved from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/books/sick-from-freedom-by-jim-downs-about-freed-slaves.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The Library of Congress. (2014, April 10). Retrieved from Primary Documents in AMerican History: Emancipation Proclamation: http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/EmanProc.html

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