5 Things About Slavery You Didn't Know

i. Lincoln wasn't an abolitionist.

Abraham Lincoln did believe that slavery was morally wrong, but there was 1 big problem: It was sanctioned by the highest law in the country, the Constitution. The nation's founding fathers, who as well struggled with how to address slavery, did not explicitly write the word "slavery" in the Constitution, merely they did include primal clauses protecting the institution, including a fugitive slave clause and the three-fifths clause, which allowed Southern states to count enslaved people for the purposes of representation in the federal government.

In a iii-hour speech in Peoria, Illinois, in the fall of 1854, Lincoln presented more conspicuously than ever his moral, legal and economic opposition to slavery—and so admitted he didn't know exactly what should exist done near it within the current political system.

Abolitionists, by contrast, knew exactly what should exist done about it: Slavery should be immediately abolished, and freed enslaved people should be incorporated every bit equal members of lodge. They didn't care nearly working within the existing political system, or under the Constitution, which they saw every bit unjustly protecting slavery and enslavers. Leading abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution "a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell," and went then far as to burn a re-create at a Massachusetts rally in 1854.

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Though Lincoln saw himself as working alongside the abolitionists on behalf of a common anti-slavery cause, he did non count himself among them. Only with emancipation, and with his support of the eventual 13th Amendment, would Lincoln finally win over the well-nigh committed abolitionists.

ii. Lincoln didn't believe Blackness people should have the same rights as white people.

Though Lincoln argued that the founding fathers' phrase "All men are created equal" practical to Black and white people alike, this did not mean he thought they should have the aforementioned social and political rights. His views became clear during an 1858 series of debates with his opponent in the Illinois race for U.S. Senate, Stephen Douglas, who had accused him of supporting "negro equality."

In their 4th debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September eighteen, 1858, Lincoln made his position articulate. "I will say and so that I am non, nor ever take been, in favor of bringing nigh in any way the social and political equality of the white and Blackness races," he began, going on to say that he opposed Black people having the correct to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites.

President Abraham Lincoln with African Americans outside of the White House, circa 1863.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

What he did believe was that, like all men, Black men had the right to improve their condition in society and to savour the fruits of their labor. In this style they were equal to white men, and for this reason slavery was inherently unjust.

Like his views on emancipation, Lincoln's position on social and political equality for African Americans would evolve over the class of his presidency. In the final speech of his life, delivered on April 11, 1865, he argued for limited Blackness suffrage, saying that whatsoever Blackness man who had served the Union during the Ceremonious War should have the right to vote.

READ More: Abraham Lincoln's Inner Circle: Family, Friends, Cabinet and More

3. Lincoln thought colonization could resolve the issue of slavery.

For much of his career, Lincoln believed that colonization—or the idea that a majority of the African American population should go out the United States and settle in Africa or Central America—was the best way to confront the problem of slavery. His two smashing political heroes, Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson, had both favored colonization; both were enslavers who took issue with aspects of slavery merely saw no way that Black and white people could live together peaceably.

Lincoln first publicly advocated for colonization in 1852, and in 1854 said that his outset instinct would exist "to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia" (the African state founded by the American Colonization Club in 1821).

Virtually a decade later, even as he edited the draft of the preliminary Emancipation Announcement in August of 1862, Lincoln hosted a delegation of freed Black men and women at the White House in the hopes of getting their support on a plan for colonization in Central America. Given the "differences" between the two races and the hostile attitudes of white people towards Black people, Lincoln argued, it would be "better for us both, therefore, to be separated."

Lincoln's back up of colonization provoked great anger among Black leaders and abolitionists, who argued that African Americans were as much natives of the land as white people, and thus deserved the aforementioned rights. After he issued the preliminary Emancipation Annunciation, Lincoln never once more publicly mentioned colonization, and a mention of information technology in an earlier draft was deleted by the time the final proclamation was issued in January 1863.

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iv. Emancipation was a military policy.

The Civil War was fundamentally a conflict over slavery. Even so, the way Lincoln saw it, emancipation, when information technology came, would have to be gradual, as the most of import thing was to forestall the Southern rebellion from severing the Marriage permanently in two. But as the Civil State of war entered its 2d summertime in 1862, thousands of enslaved people had fled Southern plantations to Marriage lines, and the federal government didn't have a clear policy on how to deal with them. Emancipation, Lincoln saw, would further undermine the Confederacy while providing the Union with a new source of manpower to beat out the rebellion.

Lookout: Lincoln's Emancipation Declaration

In July 1862 the president presented his draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Secretary of State William Seward urged him to look until things were going improve for the Union on the field of boxing, or emancipation might look like the last gasp of a nation on the brink of defeat. Lincoln agreed and returned to edit the typhoon over the summertime.

On September 17 the bloody Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the opportunity he needed. He issued the preliminary announcement to his cabinet on September 22, and it was published the post-obit 24-hour interval. As a cheering crowd gathered at the White Business firm, Lincoln addressed them from a balustrade: "I tin can only trust in God I have fabricated no mistake … Information technology is now for the country and the world to pass judgment on it."

5. The Emancipation Announcement didn't actually complimentary all enslaved people.

Since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Declaration as a military mensurate, it didn't apply to edge slave states similar Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which were loyal to the Union. (Missouri actually had two competing governments; one loyal to, and recognized past the Wedlock, and one loyal to the Confederacy). Lincoln as well exempted selected areas of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining the loyalty of white people in those states. In do, then, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't immediately free a single enslaved person, equally the only places it practical were places where the federal government had no control—the Southern states currently fighting against the Union.

Despite its limitations, Lincoln's proclamation marked a crucial turning point in the evolution of Lincoln's views of slavery, every bit well as a turning point in the Ceremonious War itself. By war'due south stop, some 200,000 Black men would serve in the Matrimony Army and Navy, striking a mortal blow against the establishment of slavery and paving the style for its eventual abolition past the 13th Subpoena.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation

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