A happy new year indeed. On this date in 1863, a different United States president hailing from the state of Illinois; Abraham Lincoln, brought forth the Emancipation Proclamation.
What I remember being taught about the Emancipation Proclamation in elementary school was that it freed the slaves and brought a victorious end to the American Civil War for the North (i.e. armies of the Union). While this is not false, it's not the complete picture. Still, it was appropriate for that point in my elementary education.
It wasn't until I read, several years ago, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, did I get a deeper perspective of the Emancipation Proclamation. Most importantly the path to its birth, including the political jousting between President Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
I learned that its purpose was primarily to end a costly war and reunify the fractured United States by defeating the South economically and militarily. More specifically, to end the economic engine of slavery in the South and enlist black men, able and willing to fight, for the the Union army. To expedite this, the Emancipation Proclamation declared that all slaves in states that had seceded from the Union were free. Now if you were a black man in 1863, that was a heck of an incentive, considering the alternative.
Without the Emancipation Proclamation and what it brought to pass in the history of the following century, odds are I wouldn't have volunteered for the military, nor I suspect hundreds of thousands of black men over the decades. I salute you comrades.
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