Myth and fact have always been at odds. Time and time again myth has been misrepresented as fact. To such an extent it has been ingrained so deeply within the cultural mind, people cease to question its feasibility. To quote Mark Twain, “For the world will not stop and think, it never does, it is not our way; its way is to generalize from a single example”. If asked, nearly every person will unquestionably state that it was Abraham Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves from their southern bondage. In his article “Who Freed the Slaves?” John Green claims “this telling of history oversimplifies the truth so much as to render it useless.” . As the factuality of this great American historical antecedent has been called into question, the question still stands, if Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves, who did? This also poses the question Lincoln’s involvement, if he had any, in the fight against slavery.
While it is true that Lincoln fundamentally opposed slavery, he could not actively fight against the institution. Lincoln’s attentions were more focused on the crumbling union and his need to appease any potential allies. One might point out Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation has been called one the most misunderstood documents in American history, and with good reason. While the Emancipation Proclamation did free slaves, it was a more of a war tactic than a true attempt at universal freedom. Instead, the Emancipation Proclamation declared “all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state – the people whereof shall then be on rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward and forever free…”. Essentially, Linco...
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...e Slaves?." dlt.ncssm.edu. http://www.dlt.ncssm.edu/lmtm/docs/EndOfSlavery/EmancipationProclamationScript.pdf (accessed January 28, 2013).
GoodHeart, Adam. "How Slavery Really Ended in America." New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed December 28, 2013).
Green, John. "Who freed the slaves?." Socialist Worker. http://socialistworker.org/2005-1/532/532_08_FreedTheSlaves.shtml (accessed December 30, 2013).
Lincoln, Abraham. The Emancipation Proclamation. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg, 199.
Martin, Michel, and Lonnie Bunch. "What The Emancipation Proclamation Didn't Do." NPR. http://www.npr.org/2013/01/09/168957092/what-the-emancipation-proclamation-didnt-do (accessed December 28, 2013).
McPherson, James. Who Freed the Slaves. Vol. 139, No. 1. ed. NA: e American Philosophical Society, 1995.
Lincoln was a very smart lawyer and politician. During his “House Divided” speech he asked the question, “Can we, as a nation, continue together permanently, forever, half slave, and half free?" When he first asked this question, America was slowly gaining the knowledge and realizing that as a nation, it could not possibly exist as half-slave and half-free. It was either one way or the other. “Slavery was unconstitutional and immoral, but not simply on a practical level.” (Greenfield, 2009) Slave states and free states had significantly different and incompatible interests. In 1858, when Lincoln made his “House Divided” speech, he made people think about this question with views if what the end result in America must be.
The American Civil War not only proved to be the country’s deadliest war but also precipitated one of the greatest constitutional crises in the history of the United States. President Lincoln is revered by many Americans today as a man of great moral principle who was responsible for both preventing the Union’s dissolution as well as helping to trigger the movement to abolish slavery. In retrospect, modern historians find it difficult to question the legitimacy of Lincoln’s actions as President. A more precise review of President Lincoln’s actions during the Civil War, however, reveals that many, if not the majority, of his actions were far from legitimate on constitutional and legal grounds. Moreover, his true political motives reveal his
James Oakes gave a brilliant and unique perspective to a relationship between two well known historical figures of their time. Abraham Lincoln is a well-admired president for the United States because as Americans culture teaches that he was an honest and well-respected man. He heard about a young African American man, who had high aspirations for his life and the blossoming United States. This man’s name was Frederick Douglass. James Oakes demonstrates how both Douglass and Lincoln worked towards the abolishment of slavery and effectively producing better outcomes within antislavery politics.
Franklin, J., Moss, A. Jr. From Slavery to Freedom. Seventh edition, McGraw Hill, Inc.: 1994.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery was the belief that the expansion of it to Free states and new territories should be ceased and that it eventually be abolished completely throughout the country. He believed simply that slavery was morally wrong, along with socially and politically wrong in the eyes of a Republican. Lincoln felt that this was a very important issue during the time period because there was starting to be much controversy between the Republicans and the Democrats regarding this issue. There was also a separation between the north and the south in the union, the north harboring the Free states and the south harboring the slave states. Lincoln refers many times to the Constitution and its relations to slavery. He was convinced that when our founding fathers wrote the Constitution their intentions were to be quite vague surrounding the topic of slavery and African-Americans, for the reason that he believes was because the fathers intended for slavery to come to an end in the distant future, in which Lincoln refers to the "ultimate extinction" of slavery. He also states that the men who wrote the constitution were wiser men, but obviously did not have the experience or technological advances that the men of his day did, hence the reasons of the measures taken by our founding fathers.
Altman, Linda Jacobs. Slavery and Abolition in American History. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 1999. Print.
Lincoln is famously known for ending slavery. He Issued the Emancipation of Proclamation. The presidential proclamation was issued during the American Civil War. Lincoln stated in his speech, "I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of states, and henceforward shall be free." The states he was referring to were the 11 out of 22 states that still had slavery. It was because of Lincoln that millions ...
Then, once the Civil War began, he was merely trying to preserve what was left of an unstable union. The true “Emancipators” of slavery lie in the grass roots people of that time, the abolitionists, Frederick Douglas, and the slaves themselves. The slaves earned their freedom. Lincoln was merely a man who let the events of his era determine his policy. “I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events controlled me.”
As a child in elementary and high school, I was taught that President Abraham Lincoln was the reason that African slaves were freed from slavery. My teachers did not provide much more information than that. For an African American student, I should have received further historical information than that about my ancestors. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity or desire to research slavery on my own until college. And with my eagerness and thirst for more answers concerning my African American history, I set out to console my spirit, knowledge, and self-awareness of my ancestors’ history. I received the answers that my brain, mind, and soul need. Although Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, courageous African American slaves were the real heroes and motivation of the movement.
Abraham Lincoln’s original views on slavery were formed through the way he was raised and the American customs of the period. Throughout Lincoln’s influential years, slavery was a recognized and a legal institution in the United States of America. Even though Lincoln began his career by declaring that he was “anti-slavery,” he was not likely to agree to instant emancipation. However, although Lincoln did not begin as a radical anti-slavery Republican, he eventually issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves and in his last speech, even recommended extending voting to blacks. Although Lincoln’s feeling about blacks and slavery was quite constant over time, the evidence found between his debate with Stephen A. Douglas and his Gettysburg Address, proves that his political position and actions towards slavery have changed profoundly.
Contrary to what today’s society believes about Lincoln, he was not a popular man with the South at this time. The South wanted to expand towards the West, but Lincoln created a geographical containment rule keeping slavery in the states it currently resided in. Despite his trying to rationalize with the South, Lincoln actually believed something different ”Lincoln claimed that he, like the Founding Fathers, saw slavery in the Old South as a regrettable reality whose expansion could and should be arrested, thereby putting it on the long and gradual road ”ultimate extinction” (216). He believed it to be “evil” thus “implying that free southerners were evil for defending it”(275). Lincoln wanted to wipe out slavery for good, and the South could sense his secret motives.
Abraham Lincoln deserves the accolade “The Great Emancipator”. The title “Great Emancipator” has been the subject of many controversies. Some people have argued that the slaves themselves are the central story in the achievement of their own freedom. Others demonstrate that emancipation could result from both a slave’s own extraordinary heroism and the liberating actions of the Union forces. However, my stance is to agree that Abraham Lincoln deserves to be regarded as “The Great Emancipator” for his actions during and following the Civil War.
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
There are certain historical facts, which have been lost in the public memory, as certain legends have taken the place of reality. In order to fully understand what happened, it is necessary to comprehend that the Northern states were far from being uniformly the champions of equal rights that is generally indicated by popular belief. By this understanding, that is that the abandonment of African-Americans did not constitute a drastic change of moral position for many people in the North, it is easier to understand their subsequent actions in ignoring the plight of African-Americans in the South after the Reconstruction era. An example of one of these overlooked historical facts would be that there were still slaves in the nation’s capital in 1860; and, at that time, the President-elect, Abraham Lincoln, offered, “to support a constitutional amendment to insulate the institution of slavery in the slave states from federal interference. ”6....
Knowles, H. J. (2007). The Constitution and Slavery: A Special Relationship. Slavery & Abolition, 28(3), 309-328. doi:10.1080/01440390701685514