What Is The Emancipation Proclamation Dbq

Emancipation Proclamation DBQ Essay

By: Sofia Fornaca

When I was little, I’ll have to admit that I knew absolutely nothing about the Emancipation Proclamation, and just the Civil War in general. I thought the Civil War was just “another war,” and I can’t help but feel ignorant for not educating myself further. I didn’t seem to realize that it was a pretty brutal battle. The North wanted to abolish slavery, agitating the South. Abraham Lincoln, our president at the time, had seen the cruelty of slavery, and thought it was morally wrong, but he wanted his main goal in the war to be to keep the United States as one, and not let the South break free as their own nation. After 2 years of the bloody war, people were starting to ask themselves,

It was then that Licoln created the Emancipation Proclamation. In the document, he told all slaves in the South that they were free, including Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. However, the border states, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were states Lincoln didn’t free the slaves in, in order to retain their loyalty and not anger them enough to make them want to secede from the Nation. In order for a slave to be freed in the South, they had to sneak out, and as long as they were not caught trying to flee the South, they were free. Seems like a good play off of Lincoln, right? However, the Emancipation Proclamation is in controversy. Some people believe that slaves freed themselves, while

As I was reading Frederick Douglass's work, I came across the following, “ and, at his suggestion, agreed to organize men who would go into the rebel states, and carried the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.” I know I said above that slaves had to escape themselves, but this shows that Lincoln was actually trying to help out the slaves by sending people to tell them about the Emancipation Proclamation. It shows that he really thought slavery was morally wrong, and actually really wanted to help them. I'm also going to use a quote from my second paragraph, and go a little bit more in depth about it; “... I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor Faithfully for reasonable wages.” Lincoln was not only trying to free the slaves but also offer them jobs! If he really was just trying to free the slaves to join his army, then why would he be giving them the opportunity to have jobs in the first place? So not only did he want to free the slaves but he wanted them to be successful! I'm also going to use something I used from my third paragraph, except I'm going to kind of use it in a different meaning. At the very end of a text written by Frederick Douglass, he says, “I refer to this conversation because I think that, on Mr. Lincoln's part, it is