The Emancipation Proclamation legally freed the slaves in states that were not under Union control as a reaction to the Dred Scott case. Lincoln’s motive behind the issuance of the Proclamation remains one of the most debated topic of the president. In the famous Lincoln-Douglass Debate in Charleston (National Historic SiteIllinois), Lincoln claimed that he “as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race” when asked to talk about his opinion about the equality between the black people and the white people. This led to the theory that Lincoln was a white-suprematist in nature, but still signed the Proclamation in order to win the war.
