Abe Lincoln: The Views and Drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation.
12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky. After the death of his mother at the tender age of 10, Lincoln's father moved him to Indiana. He did not know very much but at that age he learned how to read, write, and cipher. After his schooling Abraham spent 8 years in the Black Hawk Ways as a captain. Afterwards he rode through life a successful lawyer in the circuit courts, and in 1858 he gained a national reputation that won him the presidency in 1860.
Abraham Lincoln's election awakened the opponents of slavery to the possibility of using an amendment to abolish slavery. The southern secession that followed the election gave abolitionists an excuse to push the amendment through. However, it would be another two more years when Abraham and his party would consider an abolition amendment. There were many different views, and drafts written in regard to the emancipation proclamation: The African American View, a soldier's view, and the first and final drafts of the proclamation.
The most important view of the emancipation proclamation would be that of the African Americans. Their perception of Lincoln and the question of who freed the slaves remain varied and ambiguous. A past president of the Providence chapter of the NAACP remarked that the proclamation "was almost bogus, a lot of sound and fury, but there was no real enforcement power behind it" (Williams 13). Contrary to that belief the results of Mark Neely's research in the National Archives contributes to the fact that illegal slave owners after the amendment was passed were dealt with harsh punishments and without mercy. Such punishments included long prison sentences. Another attempt to answer the question of who freed the slaves comes from Mcpherson, who credits Lincoln, primarily because he would have war than allow secession. Mcpherson states that the slaves emancipated themselves, which contributed further to the African American view of Lincoln's Image as the Great Emancipator.
