Essay About Obvious Legal Tone And Private Letters

Lincoln And The Emanciption
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What were President Lincolns attitude emancipation of
slaves before and during the early days of the Civil War?
The Emancipation Proclamation was a declaration by Abraham
Lincoln that seemed like it was a revolutionary idea on the
potential treatment and freeing of blacks, but really, the
Emancipation Proclamation was just a politically inspired
hoax. It did not give freedom to slaves, or create a bigger
hope for equality. Although the Emancipation Proclamation
sounded like a realistic and impressive demand for the stop
of slavery in the South, its function as a political
declaration is clear in the language. Consider the
beginning, which states,
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; and the Executive Government of the United States,
including the military and naval authority thereof, will
recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will
do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them,
in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
The obvious legal tone to this declaration makes it clear
that the military and battle are evenly significant in this
proclamation. It is not until later on that Lincoln made it
clear about the issues of human rights and freedoms for
blacks, but instead seemed focused on the function of the
military forces and more notably, he initially addressed the
rebellion as one of the foremost elements. (1)
What Lincoln did was free the slaves in Confederate
territories where he could not free them and to leave them
in slavery in Union-held territory where he could have freed
them.
It was not to end slavery that Lincoln initiated an invasion
of the South. He stated over and over again that his main
purpose was to ’save the Union,’ which is another way of
saying that he wanted to abolish states’ rights once and for
all. He could have ended slavery just as dozens of other
countries in the world did during the first sixty years of
the nineteenth century, through compensated emancipation,
but he never seriously attempted to do so. A war was not
necessary to free the slaves, but it was necessary to
destroy the most significant check on the powers of the
central government: the right of secession.
Lincoln comes across as seeming extremely committed to
spreading liberty and equality in the Emancipation
Proclamation.(2)
While his private letters expose the more indecisiveness
about the topic of slavery against more direct political
problems. In his letter to Horace Greeley Lincoln, who
already had a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation formed,
said, My vital point is to save the Union, and is not to
either save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union
without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could do
it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would
also do that. The primary goal in this letter shows that
Lincoln is using slavery for political purposes and it is
merely the issue of the day rather than a cause that he
seems genuinely committed to. (3)
The Emancipation Proclamation was an effort to mask
Lincoln’s political obligation since he is halfhearted about
the issue of slavery. While it does seem that the past may
have led many to consider in the general figure of Lincoln
as a liberator of the country, this may not be an entirely
correct assumption. When addressing Charleston in southern
Illinois he stated:
I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in
favor of bringing about in any way the social and political
equality of the white and black races (applause); that I am
not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors
of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to
intermarry with white people
It is clear that the Emancipation Proclamation was not as
simple as it may have seemed at first and in fact, Lincoln