Bleron Suma

After analyzing Professor Edna Greene Medford’s lecture “Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation”, I was able to obtain a better understanding of President Lincoln’s percussion on the freedom of African Americans. Lincoln desired to free African Americans from slavery because he didn’t understand those who would claim the promise of the declaration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for themselves but not for others. He understood that if people weren’t going to fight for the lives of African Americas then he would have to do all he could alongside blacks to gain their freedoms and preserve the union. I knew that President Lincoln was a strong advocate for the black’s freedom, but I was unaware that he represented an African American woman’s court case. He argued that selling African Americans in Illinois was illegal due to Illinois being a free state.

In the one of the sections of her writing, she illustrates  into Lincoln’s actions to invite these former slaves and inform them that he was able to get congress to acquire funds to ship black people once freed to a whole other country. This doesn’t add up. Why would President Lincoln insist they fight in a war for their freedom in America just to be shipped to another country for their efforts? Knowing this, it made me question Professor Medford’s statement when she says that Lincoln did not want to originally include black men in the military because they wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up against their former owners on the battlefield. She then states, “He found out very quickly that black men were anything but cowards and that they were spoiling for a fight”. I believe he was very disappointed in what America has become and he knew that even with time African Americans will still be wrongly treated within America, but he wanted to ensure that equality was written truthfully within the lines of the constitution.