About Our Nation's "Original Sin"

All this to-do about the Confederate Flag and slavery has made me curious so I had to dig.

Everybody loves President Lincoln and cites the Emancipation Proclamation as proof that the Civil War was to end slavery, however, in this case, history has really been written by the victors – the north.  

It turns out that the freeing of slaves was NOT the real reason for the Proclamation as well as for the war.  If the abolishing of slavery had been the reason, then why didn’t slaves in any of the border states were freed?  ”In the context of the American Civil War, the border states were slave states that had not declared a secession from the Union ”  ”The Proclamation applied in the ten states that were still in rebellion in 1863.”  The proclamation did NOT “cover the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slave-holding border states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland or Delaware) which were Union states.” 

I learned in school that Lincoln had been the president who freed slaves.  Later, in college, I learned that he had been a Republican.  As I further researched and learned, I have seen that our past and politics have been just as convoluted as they are today with not one side being entirely free of blame for what President Obama called, our nation’s “original sin”  However, I find it disturbing that our President has chosen to ignore facts that he must have learned in college. 

Anyone who attends college has access to an online network of libraries that allow us to research what is known as original sources.  There are journals, books, essays, tons of information about the past – much more than what anyone was been exposed to in school textbooks.  I remember having an interest in the history of Hispanic Immigrants to the United States because…well… I grew up in Central America.  It’s my background!  Does anyone believe that having an African background, the President did not research the history of slavery in America?!  

I feel disappointment in that our president, having a scholarly education, has chosen to  push the same divisive rhetoric of blacks against whites and the north against the south.  He knows better but, then again, I should not be surprised – we have been asleep at the wheel for a long time and trusted people without integrity with the education of Americans.  For example, a visit to the Library of Congress – the place where one should expect to find the embodiment of the spirit that our founding fathers expressed in the documents that are the backbone of our country, I found perpetuation of lies instead:

I can understand the average citizen having a biased understanding of history.  Heck, I’m still learning!  I do not excuse people who went to college for, and who earn a living by the (supposed) preservation of knowledge. 

References:
http://www.nationalblackrepublicans.com/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/transcript.html

http://slavenorth.com/slavenorth.htm

http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/07/free_blacks_precivil_war_where_they_lived.html

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/civilwar/freedmen/freedmen.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_states_(American_Civil_War)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1523692/posts

Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery. by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang and Jenifer Frank. 

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