Allen Guelzo and Vincent Harding approached Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the eventual abolition of slavery from two very different viewpoints. The major disagreement between them is whether the slaves freed themselves, or Abraham Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation freed them. Harding argued the former view, Guelzo took the later. When these essays are compared side by side Guelzo’s is stronger because, unlike Harding, he was able to keep his own views of American race relations out of the essay and presented an argument that was based on more than emotion. Allen Guelzo’s Thesis was centered around the idea that Lincoln viewed emancipation as “a goal to be achieved through prudential means, so that worthwhile consequences might result.” He argued that every gradual step Lincoln took towards the abolition of slavery was done to “balance the integrity of ends with the integrity of means,” to accomplish this while still placing the constitution above all of his personal opinions. Guelzo then presented and answered four questions that he believed arose as a result of his prudence argument; why is the language of the Proclamation bland, did the Proclamation actually do anything, did the slaves free themselves, and finally did Lincoln issue the Proclamation to only to prevent European intervention or inflate Union morale? In response to the first, Guelzo makes the point that the Proclamation was a legal document, and that “every syllable was liable to… legal
Benjamin Banneker, the son of former slaves, wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1791 to argue against slavery and that the freedom and tranquility we enjoy is a blessing from heaven. The author uses quotes, diction and rhetorical questions to develop and support his claims. Banneker’s purpose is to get Thomas Jefferson to consider the morals of slavery. The intended audience is Thomas Jefferson and any other government official who reads this letter. To begin, Banneker uses an intricate choice of words to express how unhappy he is with slavery and those who allow it.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, wrote this book to scavenge the documentary record in an attempt to show Lincoln as a revolutionary centralizer who used national sovereignty to establish corporate-mercantilist control at the expense of open economic liberty. Through lots of research and careful documentation, DiLorenzo describes the sixteenth president as a man who devoted his political career to revolutionizing the American form of government from one that was very limited in choice and highly dispersed as the Founding Fathers intended, to a highly centralized, activist state. Americans consider Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the greatest president has created hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington,
Presidential Courage, written by Michael Beschloss, takes the reader through a series of events over 200 years involving 9 different presidents and how America grew to highly respect them. Out of the 9, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Harry Truman were the top 3 most revered Presidents. Beschloss uncovers the troubles each and every single one of the president’s moment of crisis and how they all overcame these problems while risking the stability of the country. George Washington had faced his biggest challenge in the political field and surprisingly not the battlefield in 1795 when he attempted to turn away from a new war against Great Britain that he knew the United States could not succeed.
Washington was joined by slaves while leading the Continental Army in the field of battle, as well as during his time as president. Yet Wiencek also argues that the Revolution and the establishment of the new democracy changed Washington’s beliefs on slavery. By the end of his life, Washington had changed completely and “sickened by slavery, willing to sacrifice his own substance to end it.” (Wiencek 274) Many of the founding fathers recognized the problems created by slavery.
In Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address to the nation, he delivers a surprisingly short but extremely effective speech to a country deeply divided in the midst of a civil war. The “Great Emancipator” uses a myriad of rhetorical strategies throughout his address, with the hopes that this moving delivery will help mend fences on the path to a unified nation. Lincoln begins his Inaugural Address with a passive voice. He reminds his fellow listeners that: "Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came” (line 24-27).
Slavery has sadly been in America from the start. Many have different opinions about slavery whether it should stay or be abandoned and forgotten. Although one person has written to Thomas Jefferson about one of history’s most important subject. Banneker starts it off by writing his strong views on how wrong slavery is not just listing all the problems, but in a letter that he uses strategies to make his view convincing. Benjamin Banneker uses rhetorical strategies such as ethos, logos, and various style elements to argue against slavery.
Sources Analysis Freedom During the Reconstruction era, the idea of freedom could have many different meanings. Everyday factors that we don't often think about today such as the color of our skin, where we were born, and whether or not we own land determined what limitations were placed on the ability to live our life to the fullest. To dig deeper into what freedom meant for different individuals during this time period, I analyzed three primary sources written by those who experienced this first hand. These included “Excerpts from The Black Codes of Mississippi” (1865), “Jourdan Anderson to his old master” (1865), and “Testimony on the Ku Klux Klan in Congressional Hearing” (1872).
The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. This one proclamation changed the federal legal status of about than 3 million enslaved people. In the designated areas of the South from the cages of slavery to the gates of freedom. It had an effect that as soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through the help of federal troops, the slave will become legally free. Eventually it reached and freed all of the designated slaves.
Not Who You Believe Him To Be President Lincoln is viewed as one of America’s greatest presidents. Although this is believed to be true, that is not the case. President Lincoln had many faults within his term, that started right before the Civil War. In the story Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative written by Melvin E. Bradford, talks about five keys points as to why Abraham Lincoln was not America’s greatest president. Starting with Lincoln’s well known legacy; his name was simply just that, but without the help of others in his life he would of been no one.
William Lloyd Garrison was a white abolitionist in colonial America, and whose most well known exploit was running the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. He was also one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Though Garrison’s abolitionist efforts were certainly admirable and impactful, much of the logic and rationale that he used when appealing to the white public for emancipation used the same racist beliefs about enslaved black people that led to their enslavement in the first place. Because of his arguments’ foundation in the basic racist belief in black inferiority, Garrison’s appeals for emancipation and his methods for inspiring the white public to abolitionism were unattractive to black abolitionists, and as a consequence,
A common controversy in American history is the fact that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Many claim that he freed them with the Emancipation Proclamation but it’s more complex than that. There were many events that helped free slaves and the Emancipation was only a small portion of America’s journey to freedom and “equality”. In reality, Lincoln helped the process of freeing the slaves but, he did not do it himself. Lincoln was not an abolitionist.
One of the strategies Douglass uses to convince his audience slavery should be abolished is by “calling out American hypocrisy in his Fourth of July oration” (Mercieca 1). He shames them with no remorse. He speaks on the opposite treatments that enable whites to live in a state of freedom and liberty, while the blacks are living in a state of bondage. As the audience listens, he reminds them, there are men, women and children still held hostages to the chains of
Guelzo proposes in his essay that Lincoln intended on abolishing slavery and completed this by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, crediting the Emancipation Proclamation as the most revolutionary pronouncement ever signed by an American president. He supports his thesis by compiling different evidence and
This will get the listeners thinking about what sincerely is happening with the issue of slavery and stimulate interest in the abolitionist mindset. Additionally, the author laconically questions, “What to the American Slave is your Fourth
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