what were the reasons for lincoln's abolition of slavery, other than moral?

Question

Did economics come into it? Do you think he was sincere?

Answer 1

Please allow me to interject an honest answer one from the Library of Congress Records of the Rebellion and Lincolns own correspondence. Lincoln was reluctant to issue an Emancipation Proclamation but you would have thought from what one is taught in class these days this was his primary concern. He issued the proclamation to save the Union making impossible for foreign Governments to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy. Even though the English supported (indirectly) slavery, they like other countries were officially against the practice. By his actions, Lincoln was showing the US was against slavery but not the Confederacy. If like the leaders of these countries at the time, you took the time to read and study the act you would see it does nothing and in fact, Lincoln thought that the Afro American was not the equal of whites and his plan was to resettle the slaves in either the Amazon or Western Texas.

Most people are not aware that there was a series of action and even proclamations for instance Lincolns correspondence of October 14, 1862 to the military and civilian authorities of occupied Louisiana.

“Major General Butler, Governor Shepley, & and [sic] all having military and naval authority under the United States within the S[t]ate of Louisiana. The bearer of this, Hon. John E. Bouligny, a citizen of Louisiana, goes to the State seeking to have such of the people thereof as desire to avoid the unsatisfactory prospect before them, and to have peace again upon the old terms under the constitution of the United States, to manifest such desire by elections of members to the Congress of the United States particularly, and perhaps a legislature, State officers, and United States Senators friendly to their object. I shall be glad for you and each of you, to aid him and all others acting for this object, as much as possible. In all available ways, give the people a chance to express their wishes at these elections. Follow forms of law as far as convenient, but at all events get the expression of the largest number of the people possible. All see how such action will connect with, and affect the proclamation of September 22nd. Of course, the men elected should be gentlemen of character willing to swear support to the Constitution, as of old, and known to be above reasonable suspicion of duplicity. (CW 5:462-3, italics added).

NOTE: The italic show that Lincoln rather then issue an Emancipation Proclamation or free the slaves was still willing to allow the Southern States back into the Union. One will find this all the way up to the 1865 visit to Camp Lookout.

At the same time Lincoln was issuing the Emancipation Proclamation he was petitioning his cabinet to negotiate and appropriate funds to force the Blacks else where.

In July 1862, Lincoln read a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet. Secretary of State William Seward suggested that Lincoln wait to issue it until after the Union victory, so that it would not sound like the last desperate act of a losing government. Lincoln agreed, and waited for his generals to win a battle.
The battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day of the war. Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army retreated after the battle, allowing Union general George B. McClellan to claim victory. Five days later, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
The preliminary Proclamation announced that slaves in rebel states not under Union control would become free on January 1, 1863. Lincoln thus gave the Southern states one last chance to end the war before losing their slaves, which they did not accept. The Proclamation did not affect slaves in the Union states; Lincoln still needed the allegiance of the border states in order to win the war. It was clear to all; however, that slavery would not long survive anywhere once the Proclamation took effect. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the final Emancipation Proclamation. In 1864, Jeff Davis and other Southerner leaders would contemplate outlawing slavery and probably would have if the opportunity had arisen.

God Bless You and The Southern People.

Answer 2

Lincoln campaigned on a non slavery platform, so to campaign for something without taking any action once elected is a privilege reserved to modern politicians.

His party would hold him to this commitment. The GOP was formed mostly of anti slave parties. There is no way around the abolition of slavery issue. Lincoln had no choice but to forward the slavery agenda in any form.

Did economics play a roll? Yes.

The US is a capitalist society; economics have a roll in everything. The economy of the South was base upon slavery; they had little to no industry, a very small amount of rail road mileage, and a minor shipping industry. They sold raw material to Europe & the Northern States that were manufactured into goods and resold throughout the world.

Slaves were counted as property, and were used as capital; slaves had a monetary value, a value that was often held against a loan from a New York bank or shipping agent. Money was loaned and borrowed based upon the value of the slave property; Southern would borrow money, buy slaves and land, raise and sell a crop. Many northerners did not want to fight over slavery. To think that the south was the only ones involved in slavery is wrong because many northern banks and shipping companies were as involved but without actually having slave quarters on the property.

Needing slaves to prosecute the war. Not Hardly. Although free slaves and blacks did fight in the war the outcome of the war would not have changed. The Division between state and federal government doomed the Southern States. The war was not progressing as fast as desired and with a greater cost than originally thought but even with the bumbling of the Union Commanders, and the political involvement and influence that hampered the effort the Union was making solid progress. A navy was built and the south was under blockade, New Orleans was in Union hands and the Mississippi was soon to follow. Kentucky, and Tennessee, had fallen to the Union.

Back to Africa, as mentioned above there was a Bill submitted to congress to compensate the South for the slaves, and return the slaves back to Africa. The bill never made it to committee, and Lincoln did voice his support for the matter.

And as mentioned above Britain and France did continue to fund& support the Confederacy but the chance of recognizing the Confederacy was dead.

Do I think he was sincere?

Yes. I believe that he was, except for the present president I do not think that we have had a president that took such critics’, and had everything he said examined and twisted one way or another. Nor was their every a more hated president, after all nearly half the country did leave the union and wage war on the other half. He watched people he knew die, including his children, his son fought in the war; he tried everything he could to avoid war but to back away for the slavery issue. Who could put up with so much grief unless they were sincere? His belief had to be the only thing he had left to give.

Answer 3

Was slavery the ONLY reason for the Civil War? Maybe to the North it was but not as far as the South was concerned. The slavery issue was not a factor in the Civil War until the Emancipation Proclamation. The Confederate states seceded from the union over the issue of states rights and the power of state governments to totally rule over its land and decide its own issues.

Answer 4

The first answer only tells you what the proclamation was, and doesn't even attempt to answer your question. The second answerer is simply wrong.

The Emancipation Proclamation had nothing to do with recruiting black soldiers into the army. From day one, black leaders like Frederick Douglass were clamoring for Lincoln to allow blacks into the army. Nothing more was needed.

The real reason behind the proclamation was to keep the British and French out of the war. Lincoln knew that there was considerable pressure in both London and Paris to give aid to the Confederacy. This was particularly the case in England, where the textile industry was heavily dependent (at the time) on southern cotton.

Lincoln rightly judged that by raising the stakes of the conflict to something more than a fight over "state's rights" he would energize public opinion in European capitals against giving aid to slaveholders. he was right. After the issuance of the proclamation, support for aiding the Confederacy all but disappeared. It was a shrewd and very calculated move on Mr. Lincoln's part.

Answer 5

The war was going badly for the north, Lincoln need more troops but there were only blacks. So by abolishing slavery he was able to get the needed troops. Blacks at the time were willing to help out knowing that if the north won the war they would be free. So yes economics did come into play. If you were running a country you would do what ever it takes to win a war. Sincere doubt it. I hope you don't think the civil war was over slavery.

Answer 6

Moral?

He was the guy that wanted to ship them all back to Africa, I don't think morals had anything to do with it.

It was purely political.

If economics had anything to do with it, he'd have at least attempted to persuade Congress to address the economic reasons the Confederacy seceded in the first place, none of which had anything to do with slavery.

Stop focusing on slavery when analyzing the Civil War. There were no threats to slavery on the political horizon when the Secession occurred, especially considering the relatively recent Dred Scott Decision. The Confederacy did not secede over slavery, and without the secession, there would have been no Civil War. Lincoln didn't even mention slavery publicly until Gettysburg, in 1863.

The end of slavery was a result of the Civil War, but the war was about other issues, totally unrelated.

Slavery was added because of purely political considerations, and attributed by History as a cause to justify what was, in fact, an illegal war.

Answer 7

1) By announcing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln hoped to keep England and France from supporting the Confederacy.
2) It also allowed the arming of approximately 180,000 blacks for the Union army.
3) Lincoln was a progressive abolitionist; he underscored this and stated that his only desire was to preserve the Union. Whether slavery was intact or abolished, Lincoln stated that either was completely acceptable. The progression of the Civil War, however, demanded views and positions, including the North's position on slavery, to adapt. From a military standpoint, moreover, Lincoln made a great political maneuver.

The Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free a single slave, it fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

Note to Jack: Obviously you didn't read my first paragraph.

Sources:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/
http://thomaslegion.net/war.html
http://thomaslegion.net/africanamerican.html
http://thomaslegion.net/presidentabrahamlincoln.html

Answer 8

The hard truth is that lincoln really didn't want to abolish slavery. He signed it due to the vast amount of Union troops that were coming home in killed, or severly injured the US army didn't have that many options. Plus the south has a huge advantage over the north economically, the south had huge workforce of labor that performed operations for free, the north mostly had to pay for everything. The north couldn't afford all that free labor, and so the only thing that lincoln could do was provide a huge incentive for the slaves down south if they wanted to contribute to the war. That was to greant them freedom from everything.

Answer 9

I think the best brief summary list of Lincoln's reasons is the following by historian Stephen Oates:

"We now know that Lincoln issued his proclamation for a combination of reasons: to clarify the status of the fugitive slaves, to solve the Union's manpower woes, to keep Great Britain out of the conflict, to maim and cripple the Confederacy by destroying its labor force, to remove the very thing that had caused the war, and to break the chains of several million oppressed human beings and right America at last with her own ideals."
http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=3&subjectID=1

This also answers your other questions

a) Economic reason "crippling the South. . . ". Encouraging their labor force to desert them (with the PROMISE to fleeing slaves that they would NOT be returned to their masters) is a strong move to undermine the southern economy... and indeed part of the reason Lincoln expressly gives in the Proclamation

This was one piece of the "complete war" strategy Lincoln was moving toward (and seen later in the war in such things as Sherman's march to the sea and Sheridan's valley campaign, to take away the "breadbasket")

b) as for sincerity - this is tied to the MORAL issue. On this, note Lincoln's own words in the final form of the Emancipation Proclamation "sincerely believed to be an act of justice"

Oates expresses this in "breaking the chains of millions" (as well as "removing the cause of the war" as he had come to understand slavery to be).

I see no reason to question his sincerity. Indeed, this is consistent with his repeated statements that slavery was WRONG in numerous speeches and writings from at least 1854 on.

A great example is the second half of Lincoln's "Cooper Union" address of Feb. 1860
-http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm

Better than that, look at ALL the steps he took to end slavery in the war years -- from his urging the border states in the Union to institute compensated emancipation, to his push for the 13th amendment (including a lot of logrolling for the votes.. and even pushing for expedited statehood for Nevada, to gain extra votes it might need for ratification)

One other thing -- the argument for the move being "purely political" runs up against the fact that a LARGE group in North very much opposed making the war into one against slavery... and Lincoln was aware of this. (Proof of this opposition? The Republicans took a MAJOR hit in the polls in the fall of 1862 after the initial announcement of the Proclamation)

Answer 10

He didnt start the war to abolish slavery. He did it to keep the South from seceding from the Union. He didnt actually try to save the slaves, in fact, he tried to get Libya to take all the American slaves, and Libya refused