What Lincoln Was Thinking When He Freed the Slaves
The President Grappled for Months Over Whether Signing the Emancipation Proclamation Was ‘American’
The American Civil War was, among other things, an epic inheritance quarrel, with both sides claiming to be the legitimate heirs to the nation’s founding principles as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. The Confederacy, of course, saw itself beating back the forces of tyranny much as Washington and Jefferson had asserted the sovereignty of the individual states from that of an “undemocratic” distant power. The Union, meanwhile, sought to preserve the republic forged by independence and fulfill the Declaration’s assertion of “inalienable” human rights bestowed by our “Creator,” for …
