Talk:Emancipation Proclamation
From Academic Kids
Why?
Lincoln said in his inaugural address that he wouldn't meddle with the institution of slavery. What changed his mind to issue this?
-- times changed. By giving a moral cause to the war he forced europeans like britian to acknowledge that they can't support the south because that would be supporting slavery(note britain supplied the south with hundreds of small ships in the beginning of the war). it also gave most people in the union a better reason for fighting the war other than to "save the union".
When he was elected Lincoln was attempting to save the union from collapse, however when the south seceded that changed the game.
Slaves were part of the war machinery - he did not say anything as simple as he "would not meddle with slavery"--JimWae 06:22, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)
At first, Lincoln fought the war for the Union, to keep it together; not to free slaves. He changed his mind almost a year later. That is when he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. He wrote it in secret, thinking that when all the slaves in the states of rebellion were freed, they would join the Union army. His advisers advised him to wait to release the Emancipation Proclamation until a victory in battle, that way it wouldn’t look like the Union government needed the blacks to help save them. Then the Union army won Antietam in 1862, Lincoln warned the Confederacy that if they did not return to the Union by January 1, 1863, he would put the Emancipation Proclamation to work. Although Lincoln gave the Confederacy three months to change their minds, they ignored him. On the contrary to what the title of this proclamation is though, Lincoln didn’t free a single slave. It “emancipated slaves where it could not reach them, and left them in bondage where it could have set them free.” (http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n5p-4_Morgan.html) Mary Jones, a woman in Georgia, thought that the emancipated slaves would be the ones to suffer most through the war. In her journal, she wrote: “With their emancipation, must come their extermination.”
In a letter to Horace Greeley, Lincon said to the world, as Greeley was a newspaper editor, that "If I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would do that. If I could save the Union by leaveing all the slaves alone, I would do that. And if I could save the Union by freeing some, and leaveing others be, I would also do that." Note that that quote was from memory and likly slightly off, which is why I didn't add this to the artical. --KinkoBlast 17:34, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
Ah, here is the exact wording: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save 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." Gota love Project Gutenburg, great source. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14721 --KinkoBlast 17:43, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
Why the cleanup tag?
I'm not knowledgeable on the topic, but this article seems informative and well-written to me (one minor issue: it could do with sections). So I was wondering why/whether it deserves to be marked as requiring cleanup.
Crust 19:31, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
If I read the page and tag corectly, the info is correct, but the page needs cleanup in structure and "Wikification." The format is more like a print encyclopedia at the moment --KinkoBlast 17:27, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
