If it wasnt for Lincoln, blacks would still be suffering

During the American Civil War the 11 states of confederacy withdrew from the Union, fearing Lincoln would confine their right to do as they chose about black slavery. Abolitionists and some Union military leaders pleaded Lincoln to take force into freeing the slaves, and Lincoln agreed. Once, he declared “if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a basic proclamation. It stated that if the rebelling states did not return to the Union by January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves to be forever free. The South ignored Lincoln's alert, and so he issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Lincoln took this action as commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. He called it "a fit and necessary war measure." The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the United States and began to correct a great flaw in the Constitution. Lincoln well understood the importance of what many scholars have called his greatest presidential act. The day he signed it, Lincoln said, “If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”