As Doris Kearns Goodwin makes clear, the Emancipation Proclamation was a military decision to help the war. It only applied to slaves in the Confederacy, not to border states still in the Union.
Lincoln: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.”
Doubt it? From Team of Rivals:
On August 14, Lincoln invited a delegation of freed slaves to a conference at the White House, hoping to inspire their cooperation in educating fellow blacks on the benefits of colonization. “You and we are different races,” he began. “We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races.” Lincoln acknowledged that with slavery, the black race had endured “the greatest wrong inflicted on any people.” Still, he continued, “when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoy. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours.” Meanwhile, the evil consequences of slavery upon the white race were manifest in a calamitous civil war that found them “cutting one another’s throats.” Far “better for us both, therefore, to be separated,” Lincoln reasoned.
It took a pragmatist, not an abolitionist, to actually free the slaves in the United States.
1 comment:
Wait. Whoa, whoa! Are you saying I should be happy with accepting the achievable rather than trashing on gestation crate bans because they don't end the enslavement of honey bees?
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