Emancipation describes a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln that all slaves in the Confederacy to be set free ( Byers, 2018) . Even though President Abraham Lincoln’s motivation for African-Americans freedom from bondage coming from abolitionists, notably Fredrick Douglass, slavery to some degree was condoned in the northern states ( Finkelman, 2006) . Ironically, emancipation gave African Americans their freedom but did not offer them any immunity against racial discrimination and profiling. African Americans were not allowed to hold public offices or their kids attend school with white kids. Until the civil war, African Americans were viewed as lower class citizens. Encouragingly, the emancipation proclamation allowed African Americans to join the Union army as well as the navy. The freedom to join the uniformed forces translated into the already freedmen becoming liberation agents, and liberated those still in slavery.
One fundamental responsibility of the president is the commander in chief of the army and the navy, as provided for in article two of the constitution. Therefore, the president is the head of the armed forces. As the commander in chief, president Abraham Lincoln effectively and wisely exploited section two of article two and used the emancipation proclamation to his advantage. Initially, President Lincoln was not for the conviction that African Americans could fight in the civil war alongside the union’s troops ( Keister & Zimmer, 2008) . After much deliberation and several meetings with both abolitionist, African Americans and radical Republicans, Lincoln resolved in allowing soldiers and sailors of color to fight for the union. As the war continued, it became illogical to deny African Americans, who had thus far participated in the Civil war, American citizenship. Among the first beneficiaries of the emancipation declaration were former and current soldiers and sailors and their families.
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References
Byers, A. (2018). The Emancipation Proclamation . Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC.
Finkelman, P. (2006). Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass Three-volume Set . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Keister, D., & Zimmer, E. F. (2008). Lincoln in Black and White: 1910-1925 . Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing.
