Abraham Lincoln: The Great Emancipator?

Essay by stargirl143High School, 11th gradeA-, April 2004

download word file, 4 pages 4.5 2 reviews

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States of America, was the man who rose to the presidency and took the steps needed to end the situation of separation by making sure the South didn't secede from the Union and continue to be a slave-owning population. An emancipator frees people from bondage or oppression, Lincoln's main priority in his term in office was to re-unite the North and South, not to free the slaves. He believed that white people were superior to African-Americans and he was 'playing politics,' in the sense that he wanted to please the majority of the population, not the slaves he was freeing. President Lincoln did sign the Emancipation Proclamation, but that didn't make him "the Great Emancipator." In the end, the South was defeated, slavery was dissolved, and the United States of America lived, but President Abraham Lincoln was inaccurately labelled as the hero.

While in office, Abraham Lincoln's main objective was to re-unite the North and the South, which had seceded. Although many believed the Civil war was started to free slaves, it was mainly started so the South would become part of the Union again. If Lincoln did nothing, the Union would be permanently severed, the war was to save the Union (1). He would do anything to save the Union. In a letter in 1862, he proclaimed that everything he did with slavery and the Blacks, he did because he believed it would help save the Union (2). He lead the population to believe that the Civil war was all about the freedom of slaves. Lincoln just figured that the South would back down if there was the threat of freeing slaves (3). Abraham Lincoln could have cared less about the freedom of slaves, his goal was to get the...