After the defeat of the confederate army at Antietam President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. The issue under investigation is as follows: what the proclamation actually stated, what it meant for the American Civil War and interested parties in Europe, and what relevance this document has on today's world.
The common misunderstanding concerning the Emancipation Proclamation is that it freed the slaves during the American Civil War. If this video is no joke, it is a question on our citizenship test (it’s the second to last question asked of Craig in the video).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvV6V3IJLX8.
The question: what did the Emancipation Proclamation do? The answer: it freed the slaves. He and the test are wrong. The Emancipation Proclamation, as written, meant that any slave in territory not controlled by the Union (or, any territory under the control of the confederacy as of 1863) is free. Clearly, this proclamation did not free the slaves in any direct and immediate manner. The official defeat of slavery came in the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. These are the facts.
So why did Lincoln issue this executive order? It was an incredibly risky political move. The war, up to this point, had solely been focused on the preservation of the Union. The war was not over slavery, but over state and federal power. Issuing this order could risk destroying Lincoln’s support and hinder the war effort. That said, there were two reasons to do this. A minor reason was economic. The most important reason, international.
The economic argument is thus: slaves provided the south with easy labor. Slavery was a part of the confederate war machine. Entice the slaves with freedom and the economy and war machine of the states in rebellion would collapse. However, the South never really had that strong a manufacturing base. It was the agricultural basin of the United States before the war, importing most of its heavy machinery from Great Britain and other European nations in exchange for cotton. The Union naval blockade of confederate ports was highly effective in shutting down this trade and the southern economy.
Perhaps the international aspect holds the key. The naval blockade went into affect by May 1861, and by the end of the year trade in the South was effectively shut down. If the South was to win, they would need allies. In some sense the confederacy already had an ally in Great Britain. Britain issued a proclamation of neutrality that while not recognizing the Confederacy allowed its ships use of Britain’s ports. Also, Great Britain had been building confederate ships and fighting Union ships. Further, it wanted to see the Union destroyed, thus eliminating a potential merchant-marine rival. The alliance, however, was far from being cast in concrete.
Before Britain would enter the war on the side of the confederacy they would have to show that victory against the Union was possible. The south just about did this. Ultimately, Great Britain (and the rest of Europe) stayed out of the civil war (even if the Trent Affair threatened to force the Union and Great Britain into war). This is where the Emancipation Proclamation becomes extremely important. Western Europe had abolished slavery in the early 1800s. The Emancipation Proclamation turned the war into a question over slavery. No longer was Lincoln fighting to preserve the Union but also to eliminate slavery. By issuing the proclamation after a tremendous Union victory, a moment of strength, and turning the war from a legal and constitutional matter into a moral test, Lincoln managed to prevent the south from finding any allies. It would be extremely hard for the British parliament to explain why it was fighting to preserve slavery when they had abolished it a generation ago. As Henry Adams said it so well “The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us than all our former victories and all our diplomacy." This executive order, while not directly abolishing slavery, gave the Union a tremendous advantage in fighting the Civil War, helping ensure victory against the rebellious south, which then led to the end of slavery.
This leaves us with one question: why is the Emancipation Proclamation important today? As an executive order it is not. After all, the Thirteenth Amendment ends slavery. However, it was part of the reason why the Union defeated the Confederacy. This victory in the civil war answered some key questions: who has more power, the state or federal government? can a state legally secede from the Union? This war saw an increase in the power of the federal government and is the base justification for all further expansion of federal power, such as the New Deal, the Great Society, and the imperial presidency. It’s what enabled Carter to force the states to lower the speed limit to 55mph. States cannot secede from the Union unless they can successfully fight a war against the remainder of the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation also demonstrates the power of a properly executed moral claim for war and propaganda. In this case it prevented the Confederacy from building concrete alliances, enabling the Union to win. Russia’s war with Georgia is a good example of bad use of propaganda. They did not manage to prevent Georgia from building alliances with powerful Western nations, and because Russia has not successfully demonstrated the authenticity of its moral claim for the war, it will have little luck in its quest. The War on Terror is another good example. Initially the U.S. had the moral support of most of the world. It allowed us to declare war on Afghanistan. But we have since lost a great amount of that support. Had people paid attention to the lessons of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War, perhaps, Russia and the US would have an easier time.
The rest is up to you, the reader. Comment on the paper, on things left out, different interpretations, and so forth. Participation, not mere reading, is the key to learning and understanding.
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