No he couldn't. The North was not in rebellion.
He didn't because it was not a matter of principle as you Northerners like to claim, it was a matter of economics, for both the North and the South. And it was Lincoln's way of punishing the South.
Oh baloney. The North was a more powerful industrialized area as proven by the Civil War. Keeping down the South didn't prop up the North. South Carolina made it abundantly clear in their Declaration of Secession that Lincoln had an hostility to slavery.
You think Presidential Executive Proclamations are only valid against states in rebellion? Where do you read that in the Constitution? Oh, I forgot, Lincoln suspended the Constitution during the War...you may be right.
He didn't because it was not a matter of principle as you Northerners like to claim, it was a matter of economics, for both the North and the South. And it was Lincoln's way of punishing the South. Oh baloney. The North was a more powerful industrialized area as proven by the Civil War. Keeping down the South didn't prop up the North.
Again you have made my point for me. The North was industralized. The farms that they had were small farms. Owning slaves was not profitable in the North. However, it was very profitable for northern ship owners to import and sell the slaves to the South. Because the South was more agrarian and the crops raised in the South were more condusive to large tract farming, ie. plantations, it was more economically feasible for slaves to be used in the South. Thus there was an economic factor is why slavery persisted in the South rather than in the North...thus it was an economic punishment against the South to free the slaves there (in fact taking "property" without compensation) and not freeing the slaves in the North.