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KF5JRV > TODAY 22.09.18 13:17l 56 Lines 2698 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 21839_KF5JRV
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Sept 22
Path: IW8PGT<IR2UBX<IW2OHX<IW0QNL<VE2PKT<N9PMO<NS2B<KF5JRV
Sent: 180922/1115Z 21839@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.16
On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issues a preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation, which sets a date for the freedom of more
than 3 million black slaves in the United States and recasts the Civil
War as a fight against slavery.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, shortly after Lincoln’s
inauguration as America’s 16th president, he maintained that the war was
about restoring the Union and not about slavery. He avoided issuing an
anti-slavery proclamation immediately, despite the urgings of
abolitionists and radical Republicans, as well as his personal belief
that slavery was morally repugnant. Instead, Lincoln chose to move
cautiously until he could gain wide support from the public for such a
measure.
In July 1862, Lincoln informed his cabinet that he would issue an
emancipation proclamation but that it would exempt the so-called border
states, which had slaveholders but remained loyal to the Union. His
cabinet persuaded him not to make the announcement until after a Union
victory. Lincoln’s opportunity came following the Union win at the
Battle of Antietam in September 1862. On September 22, the president
announced that slaves in areas still in rebellion within 100 days would
be free.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation,
which declared “that all persons held as slavesö within the rebel states
“are, and henceforward shall be free.ö The proclamation also called for
the recruitment and establishment of black military units among the
Union forces. An estimated 180,000 African Americans went on to serve in
the army, while another 18,000 served in the navy.
After the Emancipation Proclamation, backing the Confederacy was seen as
favoring slavery. It became impossible for anti-slavery nations such as
Great Britain and France, who had been friendly to the Confederacy, to
get involved on behalf of the South. The proclamation also unified and
strengthened Lincoln’s party, the Republicans, helping them stay in
power for the next two decades.
The proclamation was a presidential order and not a law passed by
Congress, so Lincoln then pushed for an antislavery amendment to the
U.S. Constitution to ensure its permanence. With the passage of the 13th
Amendment in 1865, slavery was eliminated throughout America (although
blacks would face another century of struggle before they truly began to
gain equal rights).
Lincoln’s handwritten draft of the final Emancipation Proclamation was
destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871. Today, the original official
version of the document is housed in the National Archives in
Washington, D.C.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
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