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It argued that the Constitution could and should be used to eventually end slavery, but that the Constitution gave the national government no authority to abolish slavery in the states directly. However, multiple tactics were available to support the long-term strategy of using the Constitution as a battering ram against the peculiar institution.
Lincoln also was behind national legislation towards the same end, but the Southern states, which regarded themselves as having seceded from the Union, ignored the proposals. [2] [3] In 1863, state legislation towards compensated emancipation in Maryland failed to pass, as did an attempt to include it in a newly written Missouri constitution.
Lincoln understood that the federal government's power to end slavery in peacetime was limited by the Constitution, which, before 1865, committed the issue to individual states. [19] During the Civil War, however, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation under his authority as " Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II ...
On January 11, 1865, a state convention approved an ordinance abolishing slavery in Missouri by a vote of 60–4, [6] and later the same day, Governor Thomas C. Fletcher followed up with his own "Proclamation of Freedom". [7] This action effectively marked the end of legal slavery in the state of Missouri.
Chattel slavery was established throughout the Western Hemisphere ("New World") during the era of European colonization.During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the rebelling states, also known as the Thirteen Colonies, limited or banned the importation of new slaves in the Atlantic Slave Trade and states split into slave and free states, when some of the rebelling states began to ...
At the commencement of the Civil War, Missouri was a deeply divided state. Missouri had chosen to remain in the Union, and initially maintained a policy of neutrality towards both the Union and the Confederacy. However, Missouri was also a state in which slavery was still legal, a factor which generated sympathy for the Confederacy and secession.
On April 16, 1862, President Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act. This law prohibited slavery in the District, forcing its 900-odd slaveholders to free their slaves, with the federal government paying owners an average of about $300 (equivalent to $9,000 in 2024) for each. [9]
Although, before the war, Lincoln accepted the consensus that the federal government did not have the power to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed, he now believed that, under his power as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution, he could, "as a fit and necessary ...