Emancipation proclamation what was the purpose

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:. Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:.

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth , and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

Being careful to respect the limits of his authority, Lincoln applied the Emancipation Proclamation only to the Southern states in rebellion. When President Lincoln first proposed the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet in the summer of , many of the cabinet secretaries were apathetic, or worse, worried that the Proclamation was too radical. President Lincoln had first proposed the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet in July , but Secretary of State William Seward suggested waiting for a Union victory so that the government could prove that it could enforce the Proclamation.

The Southern states used slaves to support their armies on the field and to manage the home front so more men could go off to fight. Up until September , the main focus of the war had been to preserve the Union. With the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation freedom for slaves now became a legitimate war aim. Fact 7: The Emancipation Proclamation helped prevent the involvement of foreign nations in the Civil War.

Britain and France had considered supporting the Confederacy in order to expand their influence in the Western Hemisphere. However, many Europeans were against slavery. Although some in the United Kingdom saw the Emancipation Proclamation as overly limited and reckless, Lincoln's directive reinforced the shift of the international political mood against intervention while the Union victory at Antietam further disturbed those who didn't want to intervene on the side of a lost cause. Fact 8: The Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for African-Americans to fight for their freedom.

By the end of the war, over , African-Americans would serve in the Union army and navy. Fact 9: The Emancipation Proclamation led the way to total abolition of slavery in the United States. Resource Bank Contents. Click here for the text of this historical document. As early as , Abraham Lincoln believed that slaves should be emancipated, advocating a program in which they would be freed gradually.

Early in his presidency, still convinced that gradual emacipation was the best course, he tried to win over legistators. To gain support, he proposed that slaveowners be compensated for giving up their "property. In September of , after the Union's victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary decree stating that, unless the rebellious states returned to the Union by January 1, freedom would be granted to slaves within those states.