(August 13, 2015 at 7:43 am)Drich Wrote: It's like no one cares about truth anymore. People just want someone who looks smart and is well dressed to tell them what to think and do.
I'm sure you cannot see the irony there but no matter.
Quote:If slavery was a moral issue for the north then why did Lincoln wait till the north was loosing to emancipate them? Why did he fire generals for freeing slaves as they marched on southern bordered states? Why did he write this proclamation giving confederate 100 days to stop fighting OR threaten them with freeing their slaves? Why did Lincoln write this letter?
1. Lincoln decided to issue the EP on 9-22-62...five days after the Battle of Antietam. Although it was far from a "victory" ( bloody, stalemated, slaughter, might be a better description) at least it was not an outright disaster as Second Manassas had been a month earlier. Lee, with only a portion of his army, was sufficiently impressed by union resolve that he withdrew back south thus giving the field to McClellan....who scarcely knew what to do with it. Lincoln fired McClellan a month after his "victory" because McClellan with an army which had been mauled failed to pursue Lee as winter approached. Lincoln announced that the EP would be effective on 1-1-63 which, coming just a mere three weeks after the outright fucking fiasco of Fredericksburg made it look like something of an act of desperation but, technically the decision was made when Lincoln thought the war was turning his way. Lincoln was no soldier.
2. Preventing the border states from joining the confederacy was a steadfast principle of Lincoln's war philosophy. The surest way to fuck that up would have been to attack the property of the aristocracy in those border states. Pure political decision.
3. Speculation here, but it seems probable that he was listening to too many abolitionists - the republican party then was full of them - who were telling him that the south was fighting to preserve slavery and dismissed other causes. The Civil War had many causes and while the upper 1% may have wanted to retain their slaves the bottom 99% was less than thrilled with the idea of millions of freed blacks running around "emancipated." There were other issues in which the south felt bullied by the north and saw itself being marginalized by the growing industrial power of the north. Most major events have more than one cause. In any case, by thinking that the only issue was slavery Lincoln deluded himself into thinking that the south would come running back to the union. A more cynical position is that the EP had little to do with slavery and everything to do with stopping the British and French from recognizing the Confederacy after the string of union disasters in the summer of 1862.
4. What else could he do? There was no Twitter to post it on.
