Abraham Lincoln: How Harmful Is The Emancipation Proclamation?

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Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation of slaves defined a profound moment in history. It was not the end but the beginning for all African Americans. However, this well thought out plan did not free slaves, but it was a great place to start. Abraham Lincoln who is known as the great emancipator knew that he wanted to save the union, but in doing so he had to find a way to end slavery which is the farthest from what he really wanted to do. Looking back at the time before Lincoln was even president it was known that he had many other ideas when it came to African Americans. Even though he was not a cruel man, in a way he thought like everyone else at the same time he had many people to please before…show more content…
There was a lot of pressure between the north and south. Just like any other large group of people, of course there were some disagreements, which is probably why the whole thing escalated the way it did. What one liked the other did not, for example, the confederate states (South) wanted to keep slavery around because it was very important to them and the union (North) did not find the need to keep it around. The emancipation of slaves depended on who won the war or not which caused more problems than expected. President Lincoln, just by going off of the fact that he asked the soldiers to only sign up for three months shows that he did not expect the war to last as long as it did. A resolution/act that was passed on July 25, 1861 called the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution made it where Lincoln along with the union could not do anything about slavery or anything that was going on within any of the southern states. The main purpose was of this resolution was to try to keep everyone and everything together. John J Crittenden along with Andrew Johnson were the leaders of this resolution, and they were big on compromise. Just like these two there were many people who did not even like that there was a war in the first place but there was really no choice. Lincoln at one point did not even feel that he was capable enough of completely getting rid of slavery because he knew that it would cause problems in the future. He knew that abolishing slavery would turn the north and south against each other even more than it already had. (Pederson, Estell, & Kenneth, 1994). Just because he did not immediately take advantage of his position, probably do what any other would do today, and abolish slavery does not mean he supported it. Lincoln was simply being smart and put thought into every idea that came to mind, knowing that any little thing he did could cause a big problem. This was a matter of knowing
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