Civil War Dbq Essay

In the year 1863, as the nation approached its third year of the civil war, Abraham Lincoln issued two executive orders. On January 1st, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and on March 3rd 1863 he suspended Habeas Corpus in the entire North territories. Both directives were closely related with the ongoing civil war. As Milkis and Nelson write in their book “The American Presidency”…” Lincoln was no abolitionist. Indeed, his relative moderation on the slavery issue helped him wrest his party’s 1860 presidential nomination away from the avowedly pro-emancipation William H. Seward…”( Milkis, Nelson,p.160).They continue by stating that although Lincoln disliked slavery ,he was convinced that the federal government did not have enough

The civil war broke out. The war was mainly about preserving the Union and in the process to transform it. In the third year of the bloody civil war between North and South Lincoln decided to use his presidential powers and he announced the Emancipation Proclamation by an executive order. The end of war was nowhere in sight and Lincoln knew that the 3 million slaves who resided in the south were a vital force in sustaining the Confederate war effort. Even though Lincoln have stated before the he believed that the president had no constitutional right to attack slavery, he justified his decision to issue Emancipation Proclamation stating that the war has threaten the preservation of the Union and he as the commander an chief is bind by the constitution to preserve it. It is very important to notice that the Emancipation Proclamation did not abolish slavery in States belonging to the Union and it did not abolish slavery in the bordering states. The executive order abolished slavery in southern Confederate states in which technically speaking the president had no authority because these states had secede form the Union three years earlier (Land and Milkis,