Abraham Lincoln, Slavery and the Civil War - Essay Example

As a leader from the Republican Party, Lincoln faced a number of challenges; there were demands by the republicans for harsher and cruel treatment against the South, extension of compromise towards the war democrats and last but not least, copperheads hated him. Hence South Carolina seceded from the union on December 20th 1860, followed by six states namely: Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida. The six states went ahead and formed the confederate states of America with Jefferson Davis, senator from Mississippi elected as their provisional president.

In the beginning of the civil war, union victory required Lincoln to address the problem of slavery, as majority of the whites were anti-black (Johnson 113). Preventing the formal foreign recognition of the confederacy, building a citizen’s army that was ready to fight and die for the union, raising the American economy to meet the vast war needs and dealing with hatred by his people without infringing their democratic rights on which the nation built were Lincoln’s goals.. ditionally, the northern free blacks encouraged Lincoln to support slave rebellion and called for him to issue an emancipation proclamation (Johnson 134).

Lincoln’s cabinet also advised him to wait till the union’s emphatic victory had happened, to announce the emancipation proclamation lest it would appear as an act of desperation. Its issue meant that all the slaves from the confederacy states began rebelling. They abandoned works at the farms and industries and mass action demanding their freedom and rights as human beings and citizens’ of the United States of America. Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation in order to cripple the Southern labour force and render them vulnerable.

Emancipation proclamation was to free all the black slaves. Union states such as Kentucky, Missouri, New Orleans, Tennessee and Maryland rejected the move. Moreover, the moment Lincoln gave the 100 day period for the emancipation proclamation before it would go into effect, he went ahead and offered individual members from the confederate states three months gross period to rejoin the union. This meant that they would continue to enjoy the services slaves within their borders enjoyed. In conclusion, during the preliminary emancipation proclamation it is so clear that Lincoln goal was to end the civil war because, limitations included: not freeing all the slaves, and not overstepping constitutional authority.

In the final Emancipation proclamation on Jan 1, 1863, Lincoln finally named the ten states that had not freed their slaves: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi and Arkansas. The main goal in this second proclamation was to end slavery and maintained that the blacks would be considered in the Union army and the