Abraham Lincoln Freed the Slaves
After a troubling Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emansipation Proclimation. Many Americans rank Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents, if not THE greatest president. And the reason they give is that “he freed the slaves.” While the Civil War began as a war to restore the Union, not to end slavery, by 1862 President Abraham Lincoln came to believe that he could save the Union only by broadening the goals of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation is generally regarded as marking this sharp change in the goals of Lincoln's war policy. Under his authority as the Commander in Chief, President Lincoln proclaimed the emancipation, or freeing, of the enslaved African Americans living in the states of the Confederacy which were in rebellion.