A look at emancipation and the motives behind it.
When I first selected a topic I had planned a compare and contrast paper looking at the Governments of the North and South during the Civil War. However I quickly found that doing any justice to this subject would require much more than time would allow, nothing less than a book. Thus I was faced with narrowing my topic without loosing sight of my main goal. I believe that in looking at the Emancipation Proclamation I have done so. It was a sufficiently narrow subject to deal with in the time and space allowed yet at the same time requires enough background to help perceive the larger picture. The one drawback to this was that it did not allow for a detailed look at the functioning of the Southern governmental system. This proclamation is probably one of the most significant events political and social events of the war, with that in mind I beg forgiveness if I seem at times that I am taking my time with background and detail information. I simply felt that it would be incomplete without it. .
When I first refined my topic for further exploration I was under the impression that I would be able to review the differing views of President Lincoln's attitude towards emancipation, and then to draw some conclusions about his motives, and decide if it was the great gesture it is believed to be by many today. My question that I set out to answer was to see if the Proclamation was motivated my military necessity or somewhat of a moral wrong that needed to be made right. Indeed I must confess that much of my early research was confined to biographies of Lincoln, examinations of his presidency, and his speeches and letters. However in my further reading of this subject I found that this would not even scratch the surface. There are so many different factors that must be looked at. I particularly want to draw readers" attention to an excellent source for this study, Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era.
