Title: The Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation [Video]
Headings: The Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation
The Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation
Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation

Content: Its issuance by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22nd, 1862 marked a major turning point in the American Civil War. In the document, eradicating slavery became a concrete goal of the Union in its bitter military struggle with the Confederacy. Let’s start things off by looking at what caused this document to be written in the first place. It had taken the U.S. president some time to arrive at a point when he was comfortable stating abolition as a war aim. We know from the time he first took office in March 1861 that Lincoln believed slavery to be repulsive. Just one month after he took office, the Civil War broke out after rebels in South Carolina captured Fort Sumter, and though much of the momentum propelling the country into war had come from the violent national division on the question of slavery, Lincoln refused to proclaim the Union as fighting for slavery’s abolition. At least, not right away. There wasn’t exactly a clear line between the Union and the Confederacy as being pro-abolition and pro-slavery. The Union had taken over the slave-holding states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, West Virginia, and Missouri on its southern flank – and much as the abolitionists and so-called “radical Republicans” who supported Lincoln would be loathe to admit, the Union needed the resources and manpower of these slave states to defeat their Southern opponents. Lincoln couldn’t risk alienating that support as the war entered its opening stages – especially since the Union soon found it had a much-tougher foe on its hands than originally thought.