Four Slave Holding States example essay topic

The Emancipation Proclamation led to the end of slavery, and is one of the most controversial documents in American history. Human slavery was the focus of political conflict in the United States from the 1830's to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for presidency in 1860, personally abhorred slavery and was pledged to prevent it from spreading to western territories. At the same time he believed that the Constitution did not allow federal government to prohibit slavery in states where it already existed. The election of Lincoln led to the secession of eleven slave-holding states and the beginning of the civil war. The states feared Lincoln would restrict their right to do as they chose about the question of black and white, so they went about creating the Confederate South.

Four slave-holding states remained in the Union however; Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. During the first part of the war, abolitionists and some military leaders urged Lincoln to issue a proclamation freeing the slaves. They argued that such a policy would benefit the North because slaves were contributing greatly to the Confederate war effort. By doing most of the South's farming and factory work, slaves made whites available for the Confederate army.

But still Lincoln feared that him freeing the slaves would divide the North, he believed that the four slave-holding states would secede if he adopted such a policy, and he saw them as vital to the survival of the Union By 1862 large numbers of slaves were escaping and seeking refuge with Union armies. Lincoln recognized that the extraordinary pressure of the war was gradually destroying the institution of slavery, even without legal emancipation. In July 1862 Lincoln read a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. One of his ministers suggested that the President wait to issue it until after the Union victory, so that it would not sound like the last desperate act of a loosing government. Lincoln agreed and waited for his generals to win the war. The battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day of the war.

Robert E. Lee's Confederate army retreated after the battle, allowing Union general George B. McClellan to claim victory. Five days later, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It stated that if the rebelling states did not return to the Union by January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves to be 'forever free'. The South rejected Lincoln's policy, and so the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free a single slave because it affected only areas under Confederate control.

It excluded slaves in the Border States and in such Southern areas under Union control as Tennessee and parts of Louisiana and Virginia. Bit it did however lead to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment, which became law on December 18, 1865, ended slavery in all parts of the United States. As the abolonists had predicted, the Emancipation Proclamation strengthened the North's war efforts and weakened the South's.

By the end of the war, more than 500,000 slaves had fled to freedom behind Northern lines. Many of them joined the Union Army or Navy or worked for the armed forces as laborers. By allowing blacks to serve in the Army and Navy, the Emancipation Proclamation helped solve the North's problem of declining enlistments. About 200,000 black soldiers and sailors, many of them former slaves, served in the armed forces. The Emancipation Proclamation also hurt the South by discouraging Britain and France from entering the war. Both of those nations depended on the South to supply them with cotton, and the Confederacy hoped that they would fight on its side.

But the Proclamation made the war a fight against slavery, and most British and French citizens opposed slavery, so they gave their support to the Union.