Emancipation Proclamation

The period before the outbreak of the Civil War was one of the most tense in American history. As the Civil War began, African Americans in the North were largely excluded from the military. Only a few black regiments took shape in the some of the Union-occupied areas of the Confederacy. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation black enlistment increased rapidly and the Union military began to recruit Buffalo Soldiers (African Americans) soldiers and sailors. After 1863 the Buffalo soldier would play a crucial role in the Union’s victory over the Confederacy. Before the Civil War tensions between North and South were at a boiling point. One particular event, which gives a clear indication

The result was the issuing of the “Emancipation Proclamation.” Despite the fact that it merely freed the slaves in the states of the Confederacy where the Union had no power, leaving the institution of slavery untouched in the border states still loyal to the Union, satisfied the demands of blacks and abolitionists at least for the moment. The great value of the Proclamation, besides building support among blacks and abolitionists, was that it brought fear, chaotic despair and deprived the Confederacy of much of its valuable black laboring force. Another aspect of the Emancipation Proclamation was its effect in helping to promote the Draft Riots, which occurred throughout the North in 1863. In July of 1863 produced a violent four-day uprising in New York City in which as many as 100 people died.[1] White workers, who in the first place were fearful of the competition of blacks for almost non-existent jobs, were not increasingly angry at being drafted to fight a war (especially when the rich could buy their way out of having to serve) which would free more blacks to come north to compete for