How Did Lincoln Free The Slaves

June 22, 1865 marked the end of the Civil War of the United States. Slavery had been practiced in North America since the colonial days. It was more common in the southern region of the United States, where most of the plantations were located. They needed slaves to help gather cotton and other plantation crops. The North was an industrial area, so they had less of a need for raw manpower than the South.

Emancipation came through a series of gradual events; beginning with the presidential election of 1860 all the way till the end of the war. When the war began, Lincoln never imagined it to be a long and hard war; where thousands of lives would be lost. The process of Emancipation is more that just Lincoln because so much occurred that led up to emancipation, in fact, many northerners didn’t even believe in Emancipation, “Many Northerners considered enslavement an appropriate status for blacks.” As the war went on, the Lincoln administration and the civilians of the North, saw this as a method to end the war, so its difficult to say that just one person passed emancipation because there were many factors that went in hand before he decided to

Abraham Lincoln did believe that status quo should be maintained because of his belief that slave states should remain slave states and free states should remain free states, that slavery should not extend into states that it is not already in. In a letter to Alexander H. Stephens, Lincoln assures the people of the South that there is no cause to fear that his “Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with the slaves, or with them about the slaves” (12). He is telling them that they will be allowed to keep their status on slaves, and that they should not worry that his administration will change that. This will therefore make the nation partially slave. But it will also be partially free as well; all new states/territories

The novel Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt is based on the story of the childhood of Hunt’s grandfather during the Civil War in the United States. The story takes place in Southern Illinois in 1861-1865, ruled by Abraham Lincoln. The Creighton family live in Jasper County, Illinois and Matt guessed that eighty percent of the people in the part of the country count Missouri or Kentucky or Tennessee as somehow being their own. Missouri and Kentucky historically stay Union while Tennessee turns Confederate, and this was why there were complicating attitudes about the war in the Creighton’s community. Between 1861 and 1865, political emotions were growing long before that.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand -- I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free” (Riggs 1). In the 1850’s the North’s economy and the South’s economy were very different from each other. The North relied on industries and had no need for slavery. While the South mostly relied on agriculture and slavery. After many disagreements over slavery it led to the Civil War.

The Civil War was the result of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won the election in 1860, as the first Republican president on a platform promising to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. Military during the Civil War was off, but equalled out in terms of stats, North having better leadership and South having better weapons. As the United States expanded westward, two new territories were created from the issue of slavery in the United States. The U.S. government let the two new territories decide whether or not to allow slavery.

The Emancipation Proclamation- How it Changed the Civil War The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in some areas. Some places still held rebellion. According to History.com, “Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, which declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebel states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

Thomas Jefferson always viewed slavery as a “moral depravity and a hideous blot. ”(5) Jefferson felt it also was a great threat to the nation 's survival and opposing the laws of nature, which every person had the right liberty. When the American Revolution was taking place, Jefferson was connected with the legislation in hopes it result in abolishment of slavery. In his attempts to abolish slavery Jefferson drafted the Virginia law in 1778 “that prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans.

The Battle of Gettysburg happened from July 1st to 3rd, 1863, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. During those days, the major defeat of the Confederates was documented by Northern reporters present at Gettysburg. The Confederates’ defeat was expressed in many articles and editorials, further disheartening the South. The Battle of Gettysburg was the major turning point of the Civil War. This decisive battle determined whether the Union or the Confederates win the Civil War.

The Civil War not only abolished slavery, but also threw the significant challenge of rebuilding a war-torn nation. Although initiated with the best hopes and intentions, the ‘Reconstruction’ of the USA had collapsed miserably for it had failed to establish a nation with equal rights for all. As a consequence, class discrimination and racial injustice had engulfed the American society. Besides having similarities and differences, the struggles for racial justice in the late 19th century and the struggles for economic justice in the Gilded Age are not only reminders of the failed ideology of the reconstruction, but are also evidence which shows us that the upper class of the society in that era were reluctant about the upward mobility of the poor.