Why did Lincoln wait two years before freeing the slaves?

Answer 1

ANSWER

The Emancipation Proclamation was instituted at a time during the war when the north was losing and it was used to create unrest in the south. The slaves weren't freed they were only freed in the south. The last 2 states to give up their slaves were Ohio and Delaware 2 years after the war. Gen. Lee inherited 50 slaves and released them 10 years before the war started. Gen. Grant was forced to free his slaves. The civil war was not fought over slavery it was fought over individual states rights.

Answer 2

Lincoln was actually for slavery for a while. He didn't really care much about slavery problems until the early 1860s. I think he either changed his mind or he thought it would be good for his next election.

Answer 3

Abraham Lincoln waited until 1862 to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in order to prevent it from being seen as an act of desperation on the part of his government. The Army of the Potomac had suffered numerous defeats in 1861 and 1862 and Lincoln was advised by his cabinet to wait until the Union army had won a victory to issue to the proclamation lest it be perceived as the Union's "last shriek of retreat. " After the Battle of Antietam in September of 1862, Lincoln decided that the time was right to issue the proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863.

Answer 4

Lincoln was not an Abolitionist, and he did not initially seek to interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed.

The war started because he rejected a last-minute compromise that would have allowed some new slave-states - it was the extension of the slave-empire that he objected to.

The Emancipation Proclamation looked like a human rights document, but it was actually an urgent wartime tactic, aimed at shaming the British and French out of their plans to help the Confederates.

As the newly-promoted Robert E. Lee swept across Virginia in Summer '62, Britain in particular came close to granting recognition to the Confederacy. But the worried Lincoln had to wait for a Union victory before he could issue the Proclamation with any credibility. When this victory was delivered at Antietam in September '62, Lincoln was free to present the war to the outside world as a crusade against the evils of slavery, and Britain and France had to stay out.

The Northern public was not so convinced, as the mid-term elections showed. The slavery issue was not front-of-mind among most of the troops on either side, and the labelling of the Civil War as the 'war about slavery' is still a matter for (somewhat irrational) debate.

Answer 5

Because he had not originally launched an Abolitionist war.

Like most people, he thought there would be an early Confederate surrender, and the states would be reunited.

It was when the war started to drag out, and Britain showed signs of supporting the Confederates, that he needed to discourage foreign intervention by turning it into an Aboltionist war.

Answer 6

He was not originally fighting an Abolitionist war.

It was when the war dragged on, and Britain and France were showing signs of supporting the Confederates, that he had to head-off this threat by turning it into an Abolitionist war, to prevent free nations abroad from helping the South. (It would have made them look pro-slavery themselves.)