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A War for Union and Emancipation,...
Overview
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Southerners may have talked about “states’ rights” or “property rights” but they were going to war to preserve the political economy of slavery. Northerners made it clear that they were not going to war to abolish slavery. President Lincoln claimed to be fighting to restore the Union. Both sides began to mobilize men and supplies to the battlefield by the summer of 1861. Feeding, clothing, and arming tens of thousands was a monumental problem. Paying for the expense was a staggering proposition -- one that tested the competing political economies of North and South. In 1862, Lincoln adopted the radical Republican position that emancipation was a military necessity. Eventually Lincoln justified the war in abolitionist terms. After the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect (January 1863) the war lasted for almost two more years and public discontent with the war increased. For northerners and southerners alike, the struggle on the home front was intensifying. Despite setbacks, the Confederate Army persisted and the last year of the war was by far the most brutal.
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