Well, if you actually read the Emancipation Proclamation, it says right there: " by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion"
So, if Lincoln had wanted, he could have actually freed a lot of slaves, but he didn’t want to.
I always find you Lost Causers funny when you accuse Lincoln of being a dictator, then complain that he wasn't more dictatorial.
There is no question that Lincoln wanted slavery to end, but neither before the war, nor during, was he willing to spend much political capital on it.
And yet, somehow, at the war's end the slaves were free.
Well, if you actually read the Emancipation Proclamation, it says right there: “ by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion”
An Obamaesque reading of the Constitution. The point that Lincoln was a dictator isn’t original with “Lost Causers” (which epithet shows you really don’t want to think). It is a point that was made during Lincoln’s administration, after, and later by NEW DEAL (i.e. liberal) historians such as Clinton Rossiter.
And, just to help you out, nothing I wrote was a complaint that Lincoln didn’t “free” more slaves. It was an accurate observation that where he had the power to actually set slaves free, he didn’t (with the exception of DC).Lincoln opposed slavery, but it was a ways down his list of priorities. He also wanted to send blacks back to Africa (the DC emancipation had money in it allocated for that, and sending black back to Africa was always something Lincoln favored.