Emancipation Proclamation Dbq

The Emancipation Proclamation was the federal action that ultimately freed the slaves and changed that narrative of the war, and was delivered on January 1, 1863. After nearly two full years of war, Union citizens were getting quite restless. The war was bogged down, and extremely bloody, and as a result both side suffered many causalities. As more and more sons, brothers, fathers, and friends were dying in the battlefield, the general feeling in the Union was to let the Confederacy have its independence. Lincoln recognized the animosity towards fighting the war, and realized he needed to give his countrymen a real reason to fight. Lincoln could see it in his soldiers as well. The North clearly had the military superiority over the Confederacy.

The factories, the training quality facilities, resources, and population were all on the side of the Union.

The only reason the war wasn’t over already was because the South was fighting with purpose. As much as any battle, the Emancipation turned the tide of the war. Lincoln highlighted the moral wrongs of the evil of slavery, and created a humanitarian drive to overcome the Confederacy. This document also lead to the inclusion of African Americans against the Confederacy, a group of people that needs no explanation to why they were motivated to fight. However, this did not mean Lincoln believed in equality. A big part of his plan of emancipation included the Panama Plan, or starting a colony for the freed African Americans, and he did not believe African Americans could fit into a normally functioning society with the whites. Again, reiterating the fact this war was not about equality, even when the narrative switched to a war on slavery. The result, just over two years later, the Union forced General Robert E. Lee to surrender at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865 and ended the American Civil

War.
Was the American Civil War an issue of slavery? Absolutely it was, the reasons that caused these disagreements all rooted to slavery. The right to secession had to do with slavery. The political disruption had caused the South to feel their rights were being infringed on, which included slavery. The economic prosperity of the South was on the backs of slaves, and the taxes the Union were able to collect would have never been their if it wasn’t for this inhumane act. However, if we look into why the war broke out, we see that the moral issue of slavery was not one of them. In other words, slavery may have created the issues between the two sides, but neither side viewed African Americans as equal, and neither side viewed slavery to be illegal in the areas in which it already existed. In no ways does this research project justify slavery. Slavery was and always will be a stain on this countries legacy. When addressing historical evidence however, we have to take a look into the people and the opinions of the people of the time. At this particular moment in history, almost every white person within the Confederacy and Union believed African Americans to be inferior. With this fact given, we can conclude that the Union and Confederacy originally did not fight for the African Americans, because unfortunately, they did not care about this group of people. What they did care about however, were the political differences, legal actions, and economic and taxation factors that came as a result of slavery.