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Abraham Lincoln: The Great Emancipator

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Introduction

Context
Abraham Lincoln was the president of the United States of America from March 1861 until April 1865. During his term, he issued the famous Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which declared that all slaves in rebel states would be “henceforth and forever after free”. This led to the ultimate abolition of slavery in the United States of America in January 1865, after more than 200 years of its existence there. This act, Lincoln said himself was, "the central act of my administration, and the greatest event of the 19th century." Since then, popular belief has held that Lincoln was the heroic “Great Emancipator”, who abolished slavery for humanitarian reasons, which are, by definition, reasons that are concerned with the welfare …show more content…

The source was produced to tell the story of the abolitionists, and therefore may exaggerate the role played by these abolitionist groups in the Emancipation of the Slaves. In this way, the source may deliberately downplay Lincoln’s role in the abolition of slavery. It is therefore biased against Abraham Lincoln, and cannot be a valid source. As a form of entertainment, the source may have over-simplified aspects of Lincoln’s presidency to make it understandable for its target audience. It may have also over-dramatized the argument in order to make it more entertaining. This possible exaggeration or emission of certain factors contributing to slavery’s abolition, make the source …show more content…

Due to this, most sources I encountered were heavily biased towards this interpretation, and it was difficult to find sources to counteract this. I would therefore recommend that research should have been conducted into an issue that is not commonly perceived to have such a one-sided solution, but that is openly debated from both sides.
Due to these limitations, it is clear that this issue requires a much more in-depth analysis than what is given to find an accurate conclusion. Despite this, the evidence provided does go some way to proving Lincoln’s actions to be motivated more by his own greed for power than by selfless compassion for the

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’s Thesis was centered around the idea that Lincoln viewed emancipation as “a goal to be achieved through prudential means, so that worthwhile consequences might result.” He argued that every gradual step Lincoln took towards the abolition of slavery was done to “balance the integrity of ends with the integrity of means,” to accomplish this while still placing the constitution above all of his personal opinions. Guelzo then presented and answered four questions that he believed arose as a result of his prudence argument; why is the language of the Proclamation bland, did the Proclamation actually do anything, did the slaves free themselves, and finally did Lincoln issue the Proclamation to only to prevent European intervention or inflate Union morale? In response to the first, Guelzo makes the point that the Proclamation was a legal document, and that “every syllable was liable to… legal

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