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Slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation - facts about Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln's actual position on freeing enslaved African-Americans is somewhat surprising today. Though he is well known for ending slavery in the USA, he was prepared to accept it in existing states and also spoke against full equality for freed slaves. He believed that the Declaration of Independence's statement that "all men are created equal" should have been applied also to black slaves, and that slavery was a profound evil which should not spread to the Territories. However, Abraham Lincoln maintained that the federal government did not possess the constitutional power to bar slavery in states where it already existed, and he supported colonization, believing that freed black slaves were too different to live in the same society as white Americans. Abraham Lincoln addresses the issue of his consistency (or lack thereof) between his earlier position and his later position of emancipation in an 1864 letter to Albert G. Hodges
Abraham Lincoln is often credited with freeing enslaved African-Americans with the Emancipation Proclamation, though in practice this only freed the slaves in areas of the Confederacy as those areas came under control of Union forces; in territories and states that still allowed slavery but had remained loyal to the Union, slaves were not initially freed. Abraham Lincoln signed the Proclamation as a wartime measure, insisting that only the outbreak of war gave constitutional power to the President to free slaves in states where it already existed. He later said: "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper." The proclamation made abolishing slavery in the rebel states an official war goal and it became the impetus for the enactment of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery. Politically, the Emancipation Proclamation did much to help the Northern cause; Lincoln's strong abolitionist stand finally convinced Britain and other countries that they could not support the South.
Mid-term - Facts abouf Abraham Lincoln
Perhaps Lincoln's most important contribution as President, outside of his military leadership as Commander-in-Chief, was his signing of the Homestead Act in 1862. Considered by some to be the most important piece of legislation in American history, the Act made available millions of acres of government-held land in the Mid-West for purchase at very low cost. Any male over 21 could obtain a Homestead tract of 160 acres simply by filing a claim and paying a processing fee of $18. The land had then to be lived upon, built up, and improved, for a period of no less than 5 years. Many were more than willing to take up this challenge.
In the history of the world, land ownership had been a great privilege available only to a tiny elite. The self-empowerment, entrepeurship, and social responsibility that followed this privilege were likewise unavailable to the great majority of the world's population. The Homestead Act, for a short time and in a singular place, reversed this balance, and changed the course of American history forever. The real property thus afforded to impoverished East-coast city dwellers and masses of new Northern European immigrants created huge amounts of wealth distributed evenly among a working populace, greatly increasing the stakeholdership of the American Dream. The fact that the Homestead tracts were often excellent farmland not only provided a source of steady subsistence but also a steady income beyond subsistance level; Homestead farmers in time became the agricultural producers to the nation as a whole. Additionally, strong communities with a commitment to social values, education, and personal responsibility were spawned throughout the Territories (eventually, new States) covered by the Homestead lands.
The economic, agricultural, and social stability generated by the Homestead Act was utterly inconceivable in other times and places -- and formed a large part of the foundation of American prosperity in the 20th century. Abraham Lincoln, having grown up in land like that covered by the Homestead Act, saw and acted upon one of the great potentials that the American continent held for its people. The Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, also signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, provided government grants for agricultural universities throughout the American states. Such universities -- often founded in Homesteading states -- provided education and know-how for masses of local Homesteaders. They helped found the concept of scientific Agriculture and, perhaps more importantly, were the centerpiece of America's democratic revolution in education.
After the "Sioux Uprising" of August 1862 in Minnesota, Abraham Lincoln was presented with 303 death warrants for convicted Santee Dakota who had taken part. Of these, Abraham Lincoln only affirmed 39 men for execution (one was later reprieved). Abraham Lincoln was strongly chastised for this action in Minnesota and throughout his administration because many felt that all 303 Native Americans should have been executed. Reaction in Minnesota was so strong concerning Lincoln's leniency toward the Native Americans that Republicans lost their political strength in the state in 1864. Lincoln's response was: "I could not afford to hang men for votes."
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