Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation Did Not End Slavery, Led to Cancel Culture and Black Lives Matter
By Carole Hornsby Haynes September 21, 2022
On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed an executive order that led the way to cancel culture, Black Lives Matter and "white guilt." The order stated:
"That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free...."
He understood that, under the Constitution, states and not the federal government had control over whether slavery existed in their territory. In his 1861 Inaugural Address he said,
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
However, nearly two years into the war, Lincoln decided to use slavery as a war tactic and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Contrary to what American students are taught, the proclamation did not end slavery, though it hastened its demise. The proclamation did not contain any anti-slavery rhetoric and was not intended for engaging the North in a war to free slaves.
The executive order freed only those slaves in territory controlled by the Confederate States of America – over which the U.S. government had no control. Slavery remained in the territory over which the U.S. government did have jurisdiction – including those in Northern states. Once the proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, Lincoln exempted from emancipation those slaves in Southern territory that had been conquered by the Union after the issuance of the executive order.
Lincoln’s executive order was not intended to free slaves but for political gain.
First, he believed that freed slaves would rise up in mass rebellion against Southerners. Yet freed blacks did not because they understood the South’s reason for fighting the war was to defend their nation, their homes, and their families against subjugation by the North.Some freed blacks actually fought in the Confederate Army.
Second, Lincoln would free slaves who would then be forced to fight in the Union Army that badly needed more recruits.
Third, Lincoln wanted to provide moral justification for France and Great Britain to ignore the blatant war of aggression against the South and to continue to deal primarily with the North because of their strong economic ties. Even so, the proclamation was excoriated in much of the British press for being precisely what it was.
Fourth, Lincoln needed to pacify the Northern rabid abolitionists of the Republican Party without alienating the slave holding Southern Border States. With the proclamation, he bought some time against the Radical Republicans who wanted to take him out of office but, in the process, he alienated the Border States.
Although most wars are fought over economic and political issues, the aggressor nation is obliged to present a high road moral justification to garner citizen support. President Woodrow Wilson, in his History of the American People, explained the purpose behind the exaggeration of the issue of slavery:
“It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery.”
Secular humanist public schools teach students that the South seceded because it wanted to keep slavery while concealing the facts about the Northern economic rape of the South. Yes, slavery was one of the issues that divided the North and South but it did not trigger secession. Economics did. At that time, 95% of the federal revenue came from a tariff on imported goods of which the South provided 83% even though it had only 29% of the nation’s population. Of that tax revenue, four out of every five dollars were used for Northern improvements.
The Emancipation Proclamation served Lincoln’s immediate goals but it did not include abolition. Instead, it served to provide Northern liberals with the perpetual lie that the North fought the war to free slaves.
Civil War historian, Frank Conner, notes that it is Northern secular humanist propagandists, in their zeal to demonize the Christian South, who have made the word “slavery” synonymous with “guilt” and “the white south.” (The South Under Siege, p. 48) And, of course, the latest buzzword of the left – “white supremacist.”
Confederate monuments, intended to be local community memorials to the Confederate dead, are being torn down by Marxist Black Lives Matter protesters who claim they are symbols to traitors who fought to keep slavery in the South and, therefore, are “racist.”
After years of being indoctrinated by secular humanists about slavery and white guilt, students are leaping into the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement to end the “systemic racism” and cancel American culture.Next will come the toppling of our Republic and a totalitarian government with its own constitution.
On this anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, let us remember that despite Lincoln’s call to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” his executive order his executive order probably triggered the death of tens of thousands more men than would otherwise have occurred and contributed to the racial hostilities and violence that are tearing our nation asunder.