Short And Long Term Political Effects Of Emancipation Proclamation

747 Words3 Pages

The Short and Long Term Political Effects of the Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation or Proclamation 95, signed and passed by president Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, was an executive order that changed the federal legal status of more than 3 to 4 million enslaved people in the designated areas of the South from slave to free. With the freedom of slaves across several rebellious states whose economies ran on slavery, the reception of the order was far from exceptional. The Proclamation ordered the freedom of all slaves in ten states, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas and North Carolina, and because it was issued under the president's authority to suppress rebellion, …show more content…

During Abraham Lincoln’s campaigning for presidency, Lincoln expressed his contemporary view that he believed whites were superior to blacks, not as a race, but as a stigma that history had placed, especially amongst the 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, so when Lincoln passed the Proclamation, he truly believed that he was doing the right thing. This gained the support from people in the Union and the Union as a whole, but ended up putting the Confederates at much more unrest. Even though all of this occured, the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t given without some type of warning. Abraham Lincoln passed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd, 1862. It stated that if the Southern states did not cease their rebellious acts by January 1st, 1863, then Proclamation would go into effect. When the Confederacy did not yield, Lincoln put the final Emancipation Proclamation into effect. After it was put in effect with the civil war was concluded, Lincoln could not have been prouder of enacting the order. “Heralded as the savior of the Union, President Lincoln actually considered the Emancipation Proclamation to be the most important aspect of his legacy. “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper,” he declared. “If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my …show more content…

This Proclamation removed the Confederate’s strongest form of production and disarmed a large amount of their army. During the Civil War, the South’s economy was based off of slavery, primarily, so taking away many slaves had a great effect on the economy. In a letter to President Lincoln, sent in August 1863, Confederate general Ulysses S. Grant observed that the Proclamation, combined with the usage of black soldiers by the U.S. Army, profoundly angered the Confederacy, saying that “the emancipation of the Negro, is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy. The South rave a great deal about it and profess to be very angry.” Thus, no compromise was made and the Union and Confederacy went to

Open Document