Abe Lincoln

Politically, Abe Lincoln told people what they wanted to hear, to get himself elected. Declaring war to bring about economic destruction of a big proportion of the country is hardly the tactic to take to bring about economic prosperity for all.

...Bob

 

I give him a B+. He really did display strong leadership in a time of crisis, and it is unfortunate that he did not survive to see reconstruction, as his policies likely would have been much better for the country than the policies of the Radical Republicans.

I do think there are some legitimate questions of constitutional authority that one could raise against Lincoln, and I do think that the Emancipation Proclamation's significance is generally overblown. It didn't free a single slave. The slaves in border states still in the Union were just simply out of luck, and it's easy to say that you are going to free slaves in an area you don't control.

All in all, though, I think he did a good job.

 

The significance of the Proclamation was in preventing European countries from recognizing Confederate sovereignty, since it turned the war into a war against slavery.

The 13th Amendment, passed in April 1864, abolished slavery in all states, including those occupied by US forces.

 

It has been said concerning Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation that what slaves he could free, he didn't; what slaves he could not free, he did.

 

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was little more than a political gimmick, and he admitted so in a letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase: "The original proclamation has no...legal justification, except as a military measure." Secretary of State William Seward said, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." Seward was acknowledging the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to slaves in states in rebellion against the United States and not to slaves in states not in rebellion.

Abraham Lincoln’s direct statements indicated his support for slavery; He defended slave owners’ right to own their property, saying that "when they remind us of their constitutional rights [to own slaves], I acknowledge them, not grudgingly but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the claiming of their fugitives" (in indicating support for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850).

In XC
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It passed the Senate in April 1864. It did not pass the house until 1865, and it was not ratified until after the end of the war.

 

Alright, but the point is that the institution of slavery did not survive the war. And btw Tennessee was exempt from the Proclamation right along with the border states.