Download The Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation
on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation
declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be
free."
The Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded
from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. Most important, the freedom it
promised depended upon Union military victory. Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not
immediately free a single slave, it fundamentally changed to focus of the war from keeping the
country together to ending slavery. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black
men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the
war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.
One unit that insisted on fighting without pay was the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, one of the first
African-American regiments organized in the North. The soldiers of the 54th—among whom were two
sons of Frederick Douglass—soon made the regiment the most famous of the Civil War. The 54th
Massachusetts earned its greatest fame in July 1863, when it led a heroic attack on Fort Wagner in
South Carolina.The soldiers’ bravery at Fort Wagner made the 54th a household name in the North
and increased African-American enlistment. The soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts and other
African-American regiments faced grave dangers if captured. Rather than take African Americans as
prisoners, Confederate soldiers often shot them or returned them to slavery.
1. When was the Emancipation Proclamation issued?
2. What states did the Emancipation Proclamation apply to?
3. What was the freedom the Emancipation Proclamation granted dependent upon?
4. How did the Emancipation Proclamation change the focus of the war?
5. What did the Emancipation Proclamation allow black men to do?
6. How many black soldiers fought for the Union during the Civil War?
7. What was the name of the most famous African-American unit that fought during the Civil War?
8. How did their bravery help the North?
The Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg National Cemetery was dedicated by President Abraham Lincoln a brief four months after the
Battle. Lincoln's speech lasted only two minutes, but it went into history as the immortal Gettysburg Address.
"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so
dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people.
. . shall not perish from the earth. "
1. What are the 2 main reasons Lincoln gave this speech?
a.
b.
2. What was the “cause” that many died for at Gettysburg and during the Civil War?