(Strusky) The Emancipation Proclamation

Americans tend to think of the Civil War as being fought to end slavery. Even one full year into the Civil War, the elimination of slavery was not a key objective of the North. Despite a vocal Abolitionist movement in the North, many people and many soldiers, in particular, opposed slavery, but did not favor emancipation. They expected slavery to die on its own over time. In the BORDER STATES — Union states that still permitted slavery — the situation was full of problems.

When Lincoln indicated he wanted to issue a proclamation of freedom to his cabinet in mid-1862, they convinced him he had to wait until the Union achieved a significant military success.

That victory came in September at Antietam. No foreign country wants to ally with a potential losing power. By achieving victory, the Union demonstrated to the British that the South may lose. Five days after the battle, Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863. Unless the Confederate States returned to the Union by that day, he proclaimed their slaves "shall be then, thence forward and forever free."

The proclamation would only apply to the Confederate States, as an act to seize enemy resources. By freeing slaves in the Confederacy, Lincoln was actually freeing people he did not directly control.

The Emancipation Proclamation created a climate where the doom of slavery was seen as one of the major objectives of the war. Overseas, the North now seemed to have the greatest moral cause.

1. Why didn’t many Northerners want emancipation of the slaves?

2. What were the Border States? Why wouldn’t Lincoln free the slaves there?

3. Which battle victory gave Lincoln the excuse to issue the Emancipation?

4. When did the Emancipation Proclamation go into effect?

5. Why would some say the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t really free any slaves?

6. What were the 2 military purposes of the Emancipation Proclamation? (Strusky) Gettysburg Address- 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

1. What was the purpose of this address?

2. Who was the speaker?

3. According to the speaker, why can’t the ceremony “consecrate the ground” properly?

4. What happened “Four Score and Seven years ago”? What is a “score”?

5. According to the speaker, what is the purpose of the Civil War?