Replies

It's called politics. Every President from Washington to Bush has had to restrain their ideas and plans until they could make sure it was the right time to implement them, sometimes that time never comes.

Even during the debates about our Constitution, men such as Washington and Mason (both southerners) felt that slavery was a blemish upon the new nation. But both knew that the infant nation couldn't abolish the institution at that time. Both were slaveholders and realized the economic and social impacts of emancipation upon the country, slaveholders and the slaves themselves. Even though they morally believed it should be done, they both knew that the country would fall apart if it happened in 1787.

The political situation at the time required that the new nation come first and be allowed to form and grow before slavery could be addressed. Unfortunately it took a horrible war that destroyed the lives of many honorable people, North and South, before we finally addressed the issue.

In 1861 the political situation seemed to dictate that that the Union be preserved first before slavery was addressed. Remember there was a great deal of sympathy for the Southern States in parts of the North before the firing on Fort Sumter. New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and even New York had some strong Southern sympathies until the first shots were fired. Rodman Price (former Governor of New Jersey 1854-57) was advocating that NJ become allied with the Confederacy in 1861. New Jersey was not a slave state anymore in 61 but it was one of the strongest bastions of "states rights and private property" at that time and as such, it initially sympathized with the south in it's struggle against the Federal Government.

Lincoln may have had Abolitionist views but I am sure he didn't want to be the President of a country that was falling apart in front of his eyes. He said so himself "A house divided against itself, cannot stand". If he had signed the Emancipation in 1861 when he came into office, it is possible that Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Kentucky and Missouri would have seceded within days or withdrawn their support for the Federal Union.

There was no good reason for him not to issue the EP once the war had started, yet he waited until the second fall of the war. Why is that? And why wouldn't he free the slaves in the non-secessionist states? I know the answer to the second question, and it is just more proof that he wasn't fighting the war to end slavery, as the revionist historians would have us believe.

Very interesting...

I am thinking about thinking about Professor Nash who was profiled in the movie "A beautiful mind". It seems his ideas were in place back then... small adaption "We do what is best for ourselves and the nation!" This was the clash of societal principles that took a civil war to resolve...

The one thing your post also shows me.... As a society, we have survived because of our ability to recognize a problem and work for a solution that is best for the nation... Not always fair to everybody...Not always nice...Every group is not always going to be happy but we are doing the best we can... And we have been around for quite some time... Sounds like we are a nation of pragmatists....

Nice post...