Hey everyone, welcome to episode number 202 of our Civil War Podcast.

My name is Rich. And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Thanks for tuning into the podcast.

Last week we started our discussion of the Emancipation Proclamation and

in setting the stage for that event, we saw that from the very beginning of the

Civil War there was no shortage of northern voices to remind Abraham Lincoln

that an assault on slavery was both a logical means of waging war against the

Confederacy and a highly desirable end in itself.

The part played by black slaves inside the Confederacy provided ample

evidence to back up those assertions. Slaves made up almost 40% of the

South's population and their labor was an essential part of the Confederate

War effort. The U.S. Census of 1860 had counted almost four million slaves,

over 2.3 million in the states of the Deep South alone. Over half the

population of South Carolina and Mississippi consisted of slaves and over two

fifths in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. The slaves contribution to

the Confederate War effort was crucial and so it's no surprise that many in the

North during the early stages of the Civil War condemned the Lincoln

Administration for fighting with one hand tied behind its back as long as it

made no move to touch the South's peculiar institution. But as we indicated in

the last show early in the war the matter was not nearly so simple.

A mancipation of the slaves was not just a means of weakening the Confederacy

or even an act of long overdue justice to an oppressed and exploited race. It was

also a highly sensitive political and social issue within those loyal states

...