Someone said, "The Emancipation Proclamation freed all of the slaves."
Where This Comes Up
The Civil War was a complicated affair and the Emancipation Proclamation was a complicated document. Broadly speaking, the American school system teaches the axiom that the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves.
When This Started
People contemporary to the Emancipation Proclamation said it freed slaves, though others disagreed.
What Part is True
The Emancipation Proclamation is considered the largest emancipation event in history by modern historians. It certainly was the catalyst in a series of events that led to mass emancipation.
Why It's Complicated
- The Emancipation Proclamation forces us to ask a question central to every aspect of the Civil War: Just how much control could the US government exert over the Confederate States?
- If we assume that the US had zero control over the CSA, then the document was worthless because it only emancipated people in the areas of the country in active rebellion and not reoccupied by US forces.
- If we assume that the CSA was always in control of the US government, then the Emancipation Proclamation freed 4 million people.
- It's important to note that the document explicitly allowed slavery to continue in slave states that remained in the Union: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri.
- The document added energy to the growing movement of self-emancipation-- what enslavers considered running away-- by enslaved people to work for the Union army for wages.
- By the time it was issued, even the slaveholding Union states were under the impression that the institution was in its dying days.
Who Talked About It
"Thus, excepting a few hundred slaves here and there with the lines of our armies, not excluded by the proclamation, it is practically a dead letter, and for the present, at least, amounts to nothing as a measure of emancipation. The advocates of 'human rights' upon the basis of negro equality will be sorely puzzled to comprehend the humanity, justice or consistency of these remarkable discriminations of Mr. Lincoln in favor of slavery where he may practically proclaim freedom, and in favor of liberty where he has no power to enforce it; but it must be remembered that this edict is a war measure, and that negro philanthropy has nothing to do with it."
New York Daily Herald, 3 January 1863
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