Friday, May 9, 2014

EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS, PRE-LINCOLN'S

Gen. John C. Fremont emancipated the slaves in his military Department of the West--on August 30, 1861, in St. Louis, Missouri, owing to military necessity. In this respect, he preceded General David Hunter, commander of the Department of the South, who issued his proclamation on May 9, 1862. Abraham Lincoln rescinded Fremont's field order on September 11, 1861, for purposes of political expediency, hoping to induce the South to accept his gradual emancipation compromises with compensation for freed slaves. He did the same to Hunter's (pictured right) within days also. A few months later, in September 1862, even tepid Lincoln was, militarily, forced to reprise the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamations of his knowledgeable Generals David Hunter and John Fremont with one of his own. It took effect January 1, 1863. From that point on the North began to rally from its defeatist desuetude, having unleashed its "sable arm," the blacks, who fought "like tigers" for the freedom of their people, and to save the Union from dissolution, both of which they achieved in their : 'FREEDOM WAR.'