Emancipation Proclamation Dbq

The Emancipation Proclamation is perhaps the most misunderstood document that has shaped American history. Contradictory to the legend, Abraham Lincoln did not simply free four million slaves with a stroke of his pen. The proclamation barely ensured the eventual death of slavery, the matter left as a possibility - assuming the Union won the war. In reality, the Emancipation Proclamation was no more than an act of propaganda, issued for the purpose of weakening the Confederacy and assuring Union victory.
July 1862, Congress established 2 laws based on the premise of weakening the Confederacy. The first was a confiscation act that freed slaves of people who had engaged in rebellion against the U.S. The second a militia act that empowered the

With the declaration of this document, the Union first and foremost won a great deal of fighters for their cause. As mentioned earlier, the North acquired nearly 200,000 soldiers for their army when Southern slaves were emancipated, 190,000 those of who fought in the Union army and 10,000 in the navy. This addition of freed slaves was major factor for the North winning the Civil War. Furthermore, with many Northerners drifting towards Abolitionist thinking, the Union gained a stronger moral position in an international perspective. The British, for example, were pro-South but anti-slavery, and up until the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation nearly acknowledged the Confederacy as its own nation. As Lincoln had hoped, the Proclamation turned foreign perspective in favor of the Union by gaining the support of anti-slavery countries. The last contribution the supposed emancipation of slaves made to the North was that the slaves in the North were in fact not emancipated at all. The crucial wording of the proclamation indicated that only slaves residing in rebellious states would be freed from that day forth. Slaveholding border states such as Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware were exempted from surrendering their human property. These slaves, who were living on the “good” side of the U.S., would be required to wait until April 8, 1864, the passing of the 13th Amendment. The Proclamation, in the end, did not compensate slave owners, did not outlaw slavery, and did not grant citizenship to former slaves. It established the eradication of slavery as a war goal, nothing