Abraham Lincoln Freed The Slaves

Slavery is one of the main reasons for the division between the Union of the North and the Confederacy of the South, during the Civil War. The North was opposed to slavery because they thrived off of their own self work through industrialization, machinery, and factory work. The south however, accomplished their work by using other people to do it for them such as slaves. The Union ended up winning the war and all the slaves eventually became free. Two opposing views on how the slaves became free are whether president Abraham Lincoln freed them, or they freed themselves. Both historical writers, Barbara Fields who believes the slaves freed themselves, and James McPherson who believes that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, put their arguments forth in their essays. Through much depicting of both essays, it can be determined that …show more content…
In McPherson’s paper, he uses a very strong persuasion technique of addressing both sides of the argument regarding whether the slaves freed themselves or Lincoln freed them. One way that McPherson goes about doing this is by saying “They (slaves) saw the Civil War as a potential war for abolition well before Lincoln did. By voting their feet for freedom -by escaping from their masters to Union military camps in the south-they forced the issue of emancipation on the Lincoln administration.” He also states “The Emancipation Proclamation, when it finally came, merely confirmed and gave ambiguous legal standing to the freedom which black people had already claimed through their own surging, living proclamations.” Both of these quotes are very helpful in showing readers that McPherson has recognized the other side of the argument and is giving the slaves credit where it is deserved for their actions, which is very useful for when he is stating his own argument because it proves that he is not biased. This act of addressing the other point of view as a counter argument, as