Effects Of The Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and its Impact on the American Civil War With great motivation, a certain idea can greatly impact any group of people. The American Civil war brought upon a vast amount of rivalry between the North and South over the idea of slavery being immoral. In order to express their power and distaste with slavery, the North published a legal document called the Emancipation Proclamation. This would become one of the most famous documents in American history because of the great effect it had on a large amount of people in many different ways, which contributed to how the war would be fought. The outcome of the Civil War was greatly impacted by the Emancipation Proclamation because of the effects it had on European …show more content…
By 1862, the Confederacy seemed to be leading their way to victory. However, after the close and important victory for the Union at the Battle of Antietam, in which Union General McClellan defeated Confederate General Lee, President Lincoln decided it was a fit time to publish the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a document that stated all slaves in rebel states would be free and would be able to join the Union army. While this document didn’t actually free many slaves in the South because the rebel states didn’t listen to the laws, it had many other important effects because of …show more content…
Because of the news of the proclamation granting freedom and military opportunity to the blacks in Southern states, many of them fled to the North to gain their independence and fight for the cause. This created an economic issue for the South, as a Confederate general said the escaping slaves were causing North Carolina to lose about one million dollars every week. The economic crisis due to the lack of slaves, created shortages of supply and resource production, which affected the economy and Confederate military, along with causing food shortages and riots to break out. This shifted the South’s potential victory of the war due to their major military disadvantage, because of their lack of slaves to produce food and supplies needed for Confederate soldiers to successfully fight. By 1860, the North’s economy was prosperous, as it was producing 32 times the amount of firearms as the South, 90 percent of the manufacturing production in the nation, and eventually had approximately 9,000 factories in the Border States. So in 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation was published, it exempted the slaves in the Union Border States from freedom, in order for economic problems not to arise in the North. The economic instability that the Emancipation Proclamation caused in the South changed the outcome of the war, due to the lack of basic necessities like food and