January 1st, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signes the Emacipation Proclamation, a bill that “freed slaves in the states at war with the Union.” But did this document really free even a single slave? Was the political purpose of the document really to free slaves, or did it have a “hidden agenda”?

First one should understand the state of the war that Lincoln faced before he signed the document. The war had been raging for two years, and the Federal Army had yet to win a single major battle in the East, and had done a bit of minor damage to the Confederate Army in the West. The citizens of the North were begining to question the war, and in many cases oppose its continuance. The Federal Army was experiencing mass desertion, as soldiers began to loose faith in their own commanders. The Federal Army had been crushed at both battles of Bull Run, Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville and attempts to sieze Vicksburg in the west had been repulsed time after time. As the year 1863 eved, Lincoln knew he needed to give some sort of good cause to all the bloodshed and war. He needed to give both the citizens and soldiers of the north something new to beleive in, so he proclamed that the war was a war to end slavery. In many ways, the Emancipation Proclamation was nothing more than a new cause the north could beleive in, a good exuse for wrongfully and illegally invading the Southern States, which had seceded legally.

One must also look at the foreign effect on the war in the year before the document was signed. Britain and France had both been trading guns for cotton with the Confederacy. They both relied on the Confederacys cotton trade for their own cotton, and the Federal blockade was ruining their trade. By 1863 Britain had troops in Canada, ready to invade the Union, and France had troops that had landed in Texas, ready to join with the Confederate troops in the West. Lincoln needed something that would make both Britain and France drop the war altogether, nothing better than a touchy subject. When Lincoln signed the Proclamation it automatically lied and accused the South of fighting only for slavery, even though only 6% of the Southern population owned slaves, and many of the slaves had alwready been granted freedom either by enlisting in the Confederate forces. Britain and France soon pulled their troops out of North America, breaking their alliances and tradewith the Confederacy. One could argue that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed to prevent Britain and France from intering the war using slavery as a decoy to both protect the Union, and wrongfully accuse the South of an institution used much less than was popullarly believed. Also, the Proclamation could go down in history as the document that prevented what would have been the first World War.

Now one must look at the fine print of the Proclamation; “All the slaves held in bondage in the states at war with the Union.” The last part of that phrase “the states at war with the Union.” is the part that could dis-prove the Proclamation of freeing a single slave. Problem #1: Lincoln had no political control over “the states at war with the Union” in the year 1863, therefore rendering the Emancipation Proclamation void and a useless piece of paper. Problem #2: What about the Union slaveholding states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and even some parts of Delaware? Those states are never mentioned in the document and therefore the slaves held in bondge in those states did not go free either, at least not untill the 13th Ammendment.

So when one really looks at both the wording of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the events that had been occuring around the time, both the validity and the motivation behind the famouse document come into question. Was the Emancipation Proclamation really ment to set men free, or was it simply a coverup to increase norther spirits and end the Confederacys alliances? One can decide for themselves.