Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the end of slavery in America

Lincoln -- Guelzo

SYNOPSIS OF ALLEN C. GUELZO'S

LINCOLN'S EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION:

THE END OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA

According to Richard Hofstadter, Lincoln's opposition to slavery "was kindled only by the threat it posed to free white labor and the development of industrial capitalism.

Guelzo points out that Lincoln "was the last of our Enlightenment politicians.

Guelzo maintains that only through prudence can we understand Lincoln's "mighty experiment of emancipation."

Thus, prudence demanded that Lincoln "balance the integrity of the elimination of slavery with his integrity to uphold the Constitution and his near-religious reverence for the rule of law."

Lincoln "had all the racial goodwill necessary for emancipation but had to wait for the Northern acceptance of emancipation."

Lincoln also knew that "his administration was the beginning of the end of slavery."

Lincoln's Proclamation was "one of the biggest political gambles in American history."

Also, Lincoln "came to see the Proclamation as the only alternative God had left to emancipation."

In the end, it would be safe to say that Lincoln "was the most perfect friend black Americans ever had."

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation "itemized the destinies of four million human beings."

In his introduction, author Allen C. Guelzo declares that President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was "surely the unhappiest of all of Lincoln's great presidential papers," due to the fact that the proclamation is now "best known for what it did not do," meaning that it failed to truly free the slaves from bondage in the South (1). Scholar Richard Hofstadter adds that the proclamation "had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading. It accomplished nothing because it was intended to accomplish nothing beyond its propaganda value" (2). Oddly enough, Lincoln proclaimed in 1858 that he hated slavery -- "I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself" (4).

1): Thus, Lincoln's motives for issuing the proclamation were apparently more politically-based rather than an expression of his hatred for slavery and his desire to abolish it in the U.S.

CHAPTER ONE -- "FOUR WAYS TO FREEDOM":

Lincoln's election "was the first sign in the eyes of Southerners that slavery's national political power was slipping."

From the day of Lincoln's election, "wildfire stories had been spreading that the slaves would be freed on that very day." slaveholding planter in Tennessee remarked that "a servile rebellion is more to be feared now than it was in the days of the revolution... "

This fear of "servile insurrection" was even greater in the national capital, only thirty miles downriver from Harper's Ferry and the specter of John Brown."

William Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state, declared in 1858 that "slavery and freedom were locked in an irrepressible conflict" which served as a prediction of a war against slavery.

Lincoln himself declared that "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong."