The Psychological and Financial Warfare of the Emancipation Proclamation

I'm sick of talking about Health Care and Government corruption so I need something else to talk about.

Let's go with history.

It's a favorite subject of mine (along with theology). The difference is you can usually talk freely about history without upsetting too many people around you.

That is, unless you talk about the Civil War and slavery.

On that note, let's talk about the Civil War and slavery.

More specifically, I want to talk about the Emancipation Proclamation.

It's a common misconception that the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. That's not entirely accurate. Had I been alive on January 1, 1863, I could have fit all the slaves it freed in my back pocket. You know why? Because it didn't actually free a single one. It did only technically.

Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation actually consisted of two separate executive orders. One was given on September 22, 1862 and the second on January 1, 1863,

These two proclamations did nothing to address the slaves in the loyalist boarder states of the Union where the Federal Government actually had the authority to set them all free. It simply punted the ball to Congress to do something about that "peculiar institution" at a later date.

While it did indeed proclaim that all slaves in the rebellious southern states were "thence forward and forever" free, the Federal government in Washington had no authority in the South because the south had seceded from the Union and formed it's own government. Because of this, the CSA was considered a nation of its own at the time of the Proclamation and was not under any Governmental control except for it's own recently established Government in Richmond, Virginia under CSA President Jefferson Davis. It certainly wasn't taking it's cues from Washington.

This led to someone, I'm not sure who, to say of Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation, "Where he could free the slaves, Lincoln would not, and where he would free the slaves, he could not".

I just want to be clear at this point that I am not in any way diminishing everything Abraham Lincoln did for this country by preserving the Union and bringing everyone (except maybe women) under the umbrella of the Declaration of Independence where it said that "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness". I'm also not saying that it was never Lincoln's intention to free the slaves and that their emancipation was just a happy accident brought about by fighting the preserve the Union.

***A quick side note: Originally the Declaration of Independence was supposed to say something along the lines of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Personal Property" but the framers didn't want to unintentionally give Constitutional legitimacy to slavery. That's right. Those racist, slave-holding Founding Fathers didn't want to perpetuate the institution of slavery indefinitely in their newly found Republic.***

At this point you might ask what was the point of the Emancipation Proclamation if it only freed the slaves in theory? Was it purely a symbolic gesture with no real-world consequences at all? The answer to that one is a big, fat "No".

One of the achievements of the Emancipation Proclamation was to strip away the perception by any foreign nations, that might lend a hand to the fledgling CSA, that this was not a war over slavery but one for independence or constitutional rights. No nation- like England or France- who had already abolished slavery on purely moral grounds could or would do anything for the CSA to help them fight a war whose chief aim was to perpetuate an immoral institution like slavery. With this facade stripped away, any chance the CSA had of outside intervention on their behalf vanished overnight.

The other, and in my opinion the most devastating, effect the Emancipation Proclamation had on the CSA was that it broke their back financially. In the blink of an eye, millions of dollars worth of assets disappeared overnight in the south.

Slaves were no different than land or cattle in the sense that they were physical assets. Suddenly, slaves who were one day considered an asset were the next day considered people. Though this did nothing to their immediate situation, since in the eyes of their southern masters they were still chattel, the effect on the south's financial situation was disastrous.

As far as bank books were concerned, the slaves simply disappeared. Slaves were used in the south, along with the land they worked, to back up the debts that southern plantation owners owed the bank. Not only did the slaves' disappearance, on paper anyway, throw the southern banking industry into chaotic disarray, the land they worked was suddenly depreciated because the slaves were crucial in that they gave extra value to the land they worked that was above and beyond the value of the land itself.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a subtle but supremely effective piece of psychological and financial warfare that eventually led to the fall of the CSA and the freedom of countless slaves who no longer had to toil in the fields in fear of master's whip. Finally, in the eyes of the Federal Government, they became (free)men.

I'm a high school graduate and just learned all of the intricacies of the Emancipation Proclamation earlier today while reading a book titled "A Patriot's History of the United States". If you had asked me yesterday what was the effect of Lincoln's famous proclamation I would have told you that it freed the slaves. What a difference a day makes.

I thank you for you time and apologize for any typos.