The Emancipation Proclamation The Civil War (1861-1865) ended in a victory for the Union, however, such a victory was made possible by the Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln’s issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation paved the way to a Union victory in the Civil War by shifting the focus of the war from solely the restoration of a strong Union to the emancipation of slaves as well. This shift in the reason for and the meaning of the Civil War was the main factor that ultimately led to the Union victory due to the implications the Emancipation Proclamation had on foreign involvement in the war and the southern economy. Although Abraham Lincoln’s personal opinions were rather anti-slavery, as president, he had the obligation to not …show more content…
Whether or not this classification of the Emancipation Proclamation accurately defined one of Lincoln’s main objectives for the proclamation, or merely was to provide constitutional justification for the proclamation, there is no denying the effectiveness of the proclamation in weakening the south. Upon the activation of the proclamation on January 1st 1863, the result of the proclamation was extremely prevalent. The south went absolutely haywire as slaves fled their respective plantations to head north, newly invigorated at the prospect of legal freedom, leaving empty and unmanned plantations in their wake. In many places in the south, slave labor was the thing that allowed free white men to take up arms and go to war against the Union, however, without the slave labor keeping the farms running back home, many of those free white men had to return home to assess and/or replace the void of labor that the slaves had left behind in their flight. As General-in-Chief Henry Halleck explained, “Every slave withdrawn from the enemy is the equivalent of a white man put hours de combat.” In a way, what General-in-Chief Henry Halleck was true, whether it be less crop produced and