Why Today’s Republicans Might Have Voted Against the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment
The Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) was issued as an executive order by President Lincoln during the course of the Civil War. It applied to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves, but did not actually free most slaves because most were in states controlled by slaveholders. Also it did not apply to four slave-holding states that had not seceded from the Union. The order did not compensate slaveholders for the loss of their “property,” nor did it give citizenship to the freed slaves. In other words, it was a temporary and partial measure. …