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Gettysburg College

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Great Emancipator

Social History

2016

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Great Emancipator Was Radical Of His Day: Lincoln Opposed Economic Injustice, Allen C. Guelzo Feb 2016

Great Emancipator Was Radical Of His Day: Lincoln Opposed Economic Injustice, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” Abraham Lincoln said in 1864. “I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.”

Yet there has always been doubt about just how great an emancipator he really was. Why did he wait for two years into his presidency to issue his Emancipation Proclamation? And why didn’t that Proclamation free all the 3.9 million African-Americans then held in bondage? [excerpt]