Existing comment:
The Emancipation Proclamation: "Henceforward and Forever Free":
-- "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history... The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation... In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." -- President Abraham Lincoln -- Annual Message to Congress -- December 1, 1862
President Lincoln used the occasion of Antietam to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. The Proclamation declared that the slaves in the Southern states would be "henceforward and forever free." By this act, Lincoln transformed the war into a moral crusade for human freedom rather than simply a conflict to restore the Union as it had been in 1860. President Lincoln also urged Blacks to volunteer for service in the Union army. More than 186,000 Blacks had joined the Union forces by 1865. |