The 16th President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln, was born in Kentucky, grew up in Illinois, and became the leader of the United States during the most tumultuous time in its history. He has monuments erected for him in Washington, DC. I’ve sat at his feet at the Lincoln Memorial. He’s on two pieces of currency, even though one is being phased out. The penny and the $5.00 bill. In the majority of African American communities, children, streets, schools or various buildings are named after him.
He was known as the greatest politician ever in the United States. But one of his major successes leaves room for debate. The Emancipation Proclamation that he worked on for the six months leading up to January 1, 1863, which, in a lot of people’s account, freed the slaves, in truth it did not.
The Emancipation Proclamation, which he brokered with the 1862 Congress, went from perhaps an idea to free all slaves, through the political maneuvering that we see evident even now in 2025 to being less of the document than first proposed. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in the states that had seceded from the Union. That was it.
Now, four Confederate states; Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri never seceded, never left the Union. So, this Emancipation Proclamation allowed them to keep their slaves. But not only that. The slaves who had escaped to the North, quasi-criminals known as fugitive slaves, were not free as well. They were still considered slaves and criminals.
So, when we look at the history of the United States and the history of Abraham Lincoln, I believe he was a man of good character. I believe he was a man of God. But I also believe he was a man that was hamstrung by the politics of the time, which juxtaposes to the politics of our time today. I believe he meant well. He even said in several of his speeches that he ‘would that all men would be free’. But as the President of the United States, that wasn’t his overriding concern, preserving the Union was. I’m going to stop right there because this blog could become a novelette very easily. This is History With a Twist.