How Did France and Britain Respond to the Emancipation Proclamation

How Did France and Great Britain respond to the Emancipation Proclamation after Lincoln issued it  – France and Britain responded to the Emancipation Proclamation by declining to acknowledge the Alliance. Announcing their support for slavery in the South, Building a trade association with the Confederacy, and Assigning representatives to settle the Civil War.

How Did France and Great Britain respond to the Emancipation Proclamation after Lincoln issued it

• • • • • • • By refusing to recognize the confederacy
            • Declaring their support for slavery in the south
            • Forming a trade alliance with the confederacy
            • Sending ambassadors to settle the civil war.

Originally, the North engaged in the Civil War with the South to prevent secession from the South and preserve the Union. Ending slavery was not a goal. This changed on September 22, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that the slaves of those states or parts of the state still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, would be enfranchised. One hundred days later, a proclamation of emancipation was promulgated by Lincoln declaring “that all persons held as slaves” in rebel areas “are and must henceforth be free.”

This bold move by Lincoln was a military step in which he hoped to encourage the slaves of the Confederation to support the cause of the Union. Because it was a military measure, the proclamation was limited in many ways.

It applied only to States that had seceded from the Union and maintained slavery in border States. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation did not put an end to slavery, it fundamentally transformed the nature of war. From now on, each progress of the federal troops grew the scope of freedom.

In addition, the proclamation announced the acceptance of black men in the Union’s army and navy. By the end of the war, nearly 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and for their own freedom.

 

How It All Started – The Emancipation Proclamation &

Why did european nations such as Britain and France distance themselves from the confederate war effort after the emancipation proclamation? 

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln decreed the Proclamation of Emancipation. When it came into effect on January 1, 1863, the executive order legally released about 4 million slaves in the rebel-held southern areas of the United States.

How was the emancipation proclamation tied to European and English attitudes toward the civil war?

The Emancipation Proclamation turned the civil war into a social revolution. It transformed the struggle, led by the North, to preserve the Union as it existed in 1860, a war for the destruction of slavery and the social and political order in which it ceased.

Given its historical content and Lincoln’s well-deserved reputation as a master of prose, the modest and legal style of the document might seem surprising. The decisive section appears only in the middle, where Lincoln writes: “On the first day of January, in the year 1863 of our Lord, in any State or any designated part of a State holding slaves, these will then be in rebellion against the United States, and will be from now on, and forever be free. “

The modest style did not weaken the revolutionary content of the Proclamation. “Lincoln is an unusual person in the annals of history,” observed Karl Marx on October 9, 1862, in Die Presse. “The most formidable decrees – which will forever remain remarkable historical documents – which he has thrown into the face of the enemy all resemble, and are made to coincide, routine injunctions that a lawyer would address to a solicitor. from the opposite side. ”

The “preliminary” Emancipation Proclamation, as it is sometimes called, referred to the possibility that if the rebellious states returned to the Union during the 100 days between September 22, 1862, and January 1, 1863, and they accepted a plan for the gradual enfranchisement of slaves, they can be spared from expropriation. In this initial version, Lincoln even raised the possibility that a settlement plan “on this continent or elsewhere” would be implemented for freed slaves.

Lincoln did not believe that these incentives would bring revolutionary states back into the Union. Their inclusion in the document (Lincoln did not mention plans for colonization in the Final Proclamation) was intended to appease the border slave states that had remained in the Union (Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, West Virginia, and Maryland) as well as a section of voters in the North, where the population was overwhelmed by relentless propaganda from the press and Democratic Party politicians regarding the “race-to-race” and “servile insurrection” objectives of the “Black Republican Party”.

After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation great Britain and France ….

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military order and as commander-in-chief. He invoked his powers of war to circumvent the opposition of the Democratic Party to emancipation. It was for this reason, as well as the existence of constitutional clauses enshrining slavery, that the Proclamation applied only to areas in rebellion.

However, there was little doubt at the time that the document meant the end of slavery. The President of the Confederation, Jefferson Davis, raved that the Proclamation was “an invitation to the widespread assassination … of the masters”.

In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery in the United States, was passed by both congressional chambers controlled by the Republicans before the end of the war and formally decreed in December 1865.

Lincoln’s personal opposition to slavery was well known. He was perceived by both his friends and his enemies as an anti-slavery politician, even though he was not an abolitionist. “I would not wish to be a slave, and I would not wish to be a master. That’s my conception of democracy, “said Lincoln.

However, the Republican Party had won the 1860 election by promising that slavery would not be abolished where it already existed, but only in new territories. Although the elite in the South had vehemently opposed this position through seceding and war, the Lincoln administration led the Civil War in 1861-1862 with the goal of restoring the status quo ante.

Even on August 22, 1862, Lincoln published a letter in Horace Greeley’s anti-slavery newspaper, The New York Tribune, in which he seemed to reaffirm his position. He wrote: “If I could save the Union by not releasing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by releasing part of it, I would do it too. “