Lincolns Journey to Emancipation
He comes to us in the mists of legend as a kind of homespun Socrates, brimming withprarie wit and folk wisdom. There is a counterlegend of Lincoln, one shared ironicallyenough by many white Southerners and certain black Americans of our time. Neither ofthese views, of course, reveals much about the man who really lived--legend and political As a man, Lincoln was complex, many-sided, and richly human. He was anintense, brooding person, he was plagued with chronic depression most of his life. At thetime he even doubted his ability to please or even care about his wife. Lincoln remained amoody, melancholy man, given to long introspection about things like death and mortality. Preoccupied with death, he was also afraid to insanity. Lincoln was a teetotaler becauseliquor left him "flabby and undone", blurring his mind and threatening his self-control. One side of Lincoln was always Supremely logical and analytical, he was intrigued by theclarity of mathematics. As a self-made man, Lincoln felt embarrassed about his log-cabinorigins and never liked to talk about them. By the 1850s, Lincoln was one of the most
As in turned out, the preliminary Proclamationignited racial discontent in much of the lower North, escpecially the Midwest. At the same time, the federal government would sponsor acolonization program, which was to be entirely voluntary. In the past paragraphof his address, Lincoln said he would bind the nation's wounds "with malice toward none"and "charity for all". Lincoln lost the 1857Senate contest to Douglas. Then came 1854 and the momentous Kansas-Nebraska Act , brainchild ofLincoln's archrival Stephen A. Unhappily,the blacks fought in segregated units and until late in the war received less pay thanwhites. In March 1862, he proposed a plan to Congress hethought might work: a gradual, compensated emancipation program to commence in theloyal border states. Contrary to what many historians have said Lincoln'sprojected Proclamation went further than anything Congress had done. ' On July 22, 1862,Lincoln summoned his cabinet members and read them a draft of a preliminaryEmancipation Proclamation. "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escapehistory. The fiery trail through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, tothe latest generation. At the outset of the war, Lincoln strove to be consistent with all that he and hisparty had said about slavery: his purpose in the struggle was strictly to save the Union. He opposed slavery, too, because he had witnessed someof it's evils firsthand. The Proclamation also opened the army to the black volunteers, and theNorthern free Negros and Southern ex-slaves now enlisted as Union soldiers.
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